African Potentials: Bricolage, Incompleteness and Lifeness - Paperback

by Itaru Ohta (Editor), Motoji Matsuda (Author), Francis B. Nyamnjoh (Editor)

This book is the result of a research project, called African Potentials, that we have been conducting for 10 years. This project was aimed at overturning negative stereotypes the world has imposed on Africa, such as poverty, hunger and conflict, the achievement of which would help to decolonise and de-Westernise our world while creating a new, alternative future. This book explores how this can be achieved, focusing on the wealth of African knowledge and institutions that African people have created and practised throughout their history. While learning from these indigenous systems, this book reconsiders the subservience to Western values that have been assumed to be universally applicable. This volume aims to establish an ideology that radically transforms the dominant framework of knowledge, and that can relativise and pluralise the hegemonic centre.