AFRICA‟S SELF DEFINITION IN A PLURALIST WORLD

Abstract

The looming trend of cultural assertion in our world is both indisputable and indestructible. The phenomenon therefore cannot be taken with levity or ignored. Arguably, it is an offshoot of the epistemological crises that attend the modernist tradition and consequently of its post-modernist offspring. This growing trend necessitates a need for Africa to assert her cultural difference from which it can project self- identity. Since Africans are part of humanity, they share many things in common with people from other socio-cultural settings. However an authentic African cultural identity will be based on that which is in some ways peculiar to Africans in their cultural practices. While avoiding misguided relativism as well as the fixed stereotypical conception of culture, which, paradoxically, breed not only polarism, but also negative pluralism, parochialism, ethnocentrism and primitivism, this paper espouses positive plurality as a means of ensuring genuine and original contribution of Africa to the aesthetic goal of globalisation. The underlying assumption of this paper is that, in Africa and for Africa, a genuine cultural identity will reinforce positive national growth and development based on the fundamental principle of plurality which ultimately enhances the dignity of the human person.