Like any other part of the world, Africa is not immune to the intermingling of cultures and civilizations, heritages and horizons, the endogenous and the exogenous, knowledge and imagery. The effects of new communication and information technologies, which still remain the privilege of a minority of political and intellectual elites, cannot conceal the far more profound transformations and reconfigurations that characterize its societies and cultures.

The twentieth century in Africa, more than elsewhere in the world, has been an era of startling and unprecedented changes. These changes have been most dramatic with respect to the sociopolitical organization of the continent. While at the beginning of the century, most of Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, had hardly emerged from prefeudal or feudal social formations, the advent of European colonialists, whose avarice for conquest and colonial territories was fueled by the blossoming technological capabilities of the Industrial Revolution and the expansionist market demand of a new and burgeoning capitalist economy in Europe, transformed the face of Africa forever.

Among the intellectuals who have significantly contributed to the discussion of Africa's place in the concert and/or shock of civilizations, Kwane Nkrumah, Cheikh Anta Diop, Samir Amin, Ali Mazrui, Amilcar Cabral could be found in a pertinent sampling. These different personalities indicate the linguistic and geographic diversity of a multidisciplinary and critical production.

As James Caesar highlights in Reconstructing America, the word “globalization” seems sometimes to be synonymous with “Americanization” or “Americanism,” evoking negative images. Globalization may bring indigenous cultures to their death and cause national individualism to disappear into a shapeless muddle. On Americanism, Heidegger declared that it was “the future monstrosity of modern times.” This would be homogenization, the rubbing out of cultural specificity, life in one universe, one dimension. Extremists like Alexandre Kohève take it further still. It would be the end of history. Third world nations, particularly the Caribbean countries, would be predesignated victims of such an order, without power in political or economic realms, only making the front page of newspapers during cataclysm and natural catastrophes like Hugo, George, and Mitch. The tiny island of Montserrat, never before known to the West, rose to international fame when its volcano La Soufrière began to erupt. Rwanda would be known for genocide, and the Congo for a civil war and the assassination of its leader.

One day a newly hatched eagle fell from its mother's clutches as she was flying over a chicken yard. The young eagle grew up in the chicken yard with young chickens and took on the habits, customs, and behavior of chickens. He ate like a chicken, walked like a chicken, and generally performed his daily routine like the birds who surrounded him. One day an eagle flew over the chicken yard, perhaps a parent eagle, looking for the lost eagle. Perched high on a tree's limb over-looking the chicken yard, the eagle saw the young eagle that had fallen out of its mother's clutches. The old eagle called to the young eagle, “Eagle, can you hear me?” The young eagle thought of himself as a chicken and did not respond to the call of the eagle in the tree. However, the old eagle continued to call out to him, “Eagle down there, hello.” Finally the eagle in the chicken yard thought, can that eagle in the tree be yelling to me? So he looked up at the tree and saw that the old eagle was beckoning to him to fly up to the tree's branch. The young eagle said, “I cannot fly. I am a chicken.” Insisting that he try to fly the old eagle said, “No, you are not a chicken you are an eagle and I know your parents, in fact, I am your mother and your father is waiting for me to bring you.”

It is always pretentious to treat African art as though a unitary vision of art as it is currently practiced in Africa were possible. This point of view in fact ignores or neglects African diversity: the individual plastic art experiments of African artists. These diversities, tied to the varied contexts and rapid changes that are steadily taking place everywhere, no longer permit such claims.

To speak of women in Africa is to take a number of symbolic relationships governing individuals’ lives into consideration. It is a fact that societies today are characterized by the massive presence of the phenomenon of urbanization. The women I am concerned with here are those who inhabit an urban environment or exist in relationship to one, since the city, real or imaginary, forms an integral part of the space in which women, whatever their origins, live and move.

Before 1972 Somalia had no official writing system for its language. In spite of this, those who bred animals (camels, cattle, sheep, and goats) and who, owing to a lack of water in the country were forced to become nomads, had an authentic oral tradition that found its voice in a rich oral literature. This was well and truly oral in that it was composed, memorized, and passed on without having to resort to any type of writing or other means of communication or recording. Many of these genres are typical of any oral tradition: various dance or work songs, fairy stories and other tales, riddles, sayings, proverbs, and so on.

The question is this: we as African writers have always complained about the neo-colonial economic and political relationship to Euro-America. Right. But by our continuing to write in foreign languages, paying homage to them, are we not on the cultural level continuing that neo-colonial slavish and cringing spirit? What is the difference between a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism and the writer who says Africa cannot do without European languages?

The controversy currently surrounding national literatures in foreign languages can be summed up by the famous statement: “to be or not to be, that is the question.”* But how is one to be oneself without having been that other whom one cannot deny (in the Marxist sense) since one sings as one grows? How, whatever effort one makes to deny one's father, can one fail to be presently what one is by separating oneself from the story of one's own birth or from the birth of one's own story?

I'll say first why I write. It intrigues me, I wonder why I write. How it is that I write and why it's so important. I take this as an act of life. One thing that scares me as a writer is a Lari song “ndombi ku ndombi sadidi mukanda komanda diandi Matsoua Ndele.” That can be translated as “even a black can write, hey, things are progressing. “ In the beginning going to school was considered an enormous act, it was civilization, it was the very center of civilization, and writing a letter for a black person, a poor black, was a grandiose thing. It was in Matsoua's time, in the forties, that people sang this song in the pool to make rubber.

Economic models, like scientific paradigms, predispose actors towards certain patterns of behavior or practices. Over time these become accepted as normal practice which everybody is expected to observe or to follow. This is how theoretical orthodoxies are established. However, even orthodoxies rely on refinement of techniques. In economics this is widely recognized, as it guarantees competitiveness among various practitioners. The context within which this occurs is often taken for granted since it is implicit in given theoretical models. For instance, in development theory it is assumed that the prevailing Euro-American economic model is universally valid. It is more than likely that this itself has become a social value which the West wants to maintain. Consequently, as a scientific proposition, it cannot be clarified since the West uses its political and military power to guarantee the necessary conditions for the reproduction of the same globally. Insofar as this is true, it is only reasonable to grant the fact that economic models inevitably carry with them unacknowledged normative presuppositions. This is best illustrated by the fierce ideological battle that occurred between the so-called socialist and “free market” adherents during the cold war.

In our book, Arms and Daggers in the Heart of Africa, Michael Olisa noted that external intervention in an internal conflict could be problematic even if carried out on humanitarian grounds. All sides of the conflict must see the intervening force as indeed neutral for it to succeed in its mission. The conflicting forces must also accept, separately and individually, that intervention is in their interest. In turn, the act of intervention must be precise and clear in objective, with the capability to be implemented in accordance with a program endorsed by all parties.

What is palabre? Not only an exchange of words, but also a social drama, a procedure, and set of human interactions. Palabre is therefore a putting into scene, a putting into order, and a putting into words

Sozaboy's language is what I call "rotten English," a mixture of Nigerian pidgin English, broken English and occasional flashes of good, even idiomatic English. This language is disordered and disorderly. Born of a mediocre education and severely limited opportunities, it borrows words, patterns and images freely from the mother-tongue and finds expressions in a very limited English vocabulary. To its speakers, it has the advantage of having no rules and no syntax. It thrives on lawlessness, and is part of the dislocated and discordant society in which Sozaboy must live, move and have not his being. (K. S.-W.)

As we push closer to the twenty-first century, it is relevant to speculate whether the different peoples of the world can have any prospect of a more peaceful coexistence in the coming millennium than hitherto. It seems reasonable to suppose that intercultural dialogue in philosophy can be of service in the pursuit of this ideal and ought therefore to be promoted or, at least, cherished by all philosophers of goodwill. In this way they would be playing their part in the re-education of humankind. But if “ought” implies “can” then whether philosophy can be intercultural is a prior and more fundamental question.

When the “object” gazed at is called Africa and when the gazing subject is Africa, the observer cannot help but conclude that any gaze that is related to Africa is an intersection of gazes calling forth several questions: Who is looking at Africa? What is Africa looking at? Who looks at the one who is looking at Africa? Two problems emerge from this: the identification of the subject, and the discrimination among objects and themes produced by the limited scope of these gazes. If the gaze at (or of) Africa is an intersection of perspectives, these perspectives will only find stability if they are related to the African history that is in the making. This is a plural history, for geographic diversity, and the multiplicity of acting figures and sociopolitical organizations give African history a “changeable and diverse” character. Any evaluation of the relationship of Africans to their history must be an attempt, a sketch that makes no pretense of providing a unique and certain interpretation of the African lived experience (Erlebnis) by implementing the kind of controlling philosophy of history that fixes the beginning, the length, and the order of a people's history. It is more a question of restating, with the uncertainty that characterizes any evaluation of a specific history, the problem of the relationship of African history to its becomings. How, by which conditions and through which actors does this plural history speak its moments of creation today? At its heart, how does it articulate the conflicting overlap of the gravity of existing institutions and the audacity of creation? The exploration of these questions first centers around the often discussed theme of African identity (self). The stakes at this level involve the detachment of the conditions of a dynamic re-appropriation from this notion of identity - at the very moment when globalization is conjugating itself by turns in the imperative, the indicative, and the conditional. Next, the examination will focus on relationships to otherness (the other). How can intersubjective relations be declined differently?

*Suffering

Why so much pain/Why so much hate/When we are brothers/And should offer a hand?/Look at the suffering/Look at the torment/Coming from within/Our land is dying./Look at the suffering/Look at the torment/Coming from within/Our land suffers too much./Look at this mother/She has no more tears/She has nothing left to lament/Our land is dying. /Angola is so great/So rich and so beautiful/Let there be a place for all of us and for those who love it (bis)./Long live Angola/Long live Angola/Long live Angola