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Pluralism - True and False

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Paulin Hountondji

Extract

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Cultural pluralism generally signifies three things:

  1. 1) the fact of cultural plurality, considered as the co-existence of cultures which, in principle at least, belong to different geographical areas;

  2. 2) the acknowledgement of the fact of this plurality;

  3. 3) the affirmation that this plurality is a good thing, and the desire to make something of it in one way or another, either by preserving the various cultures in an individual sense in order to avoid any kind of reciprocal contamination, or, conversely, by organising between them a kind of peaceful dialogue, with a view to their mutual enrichment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 21 , Issue 84 , December 1973 , pp. 101 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 As a point of reference I have taken out of pure convention the publication of the classic work by Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, London, 1922. But the idea of a plurality of cultures is in fact older than this. For example, it was widely discussed in 1911 at the first Universal Congress of Races in London. (cf. Gerard Leclerc, Anthropologie et colonia lisme, Paris, 1972, p. 83).

2 Aimé Cesaire, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, Paris, Présence Africaine, 1956, p. 71-72.

3 The uninformed public generally attributes the term: negritude to Singhor. However, Senghor himself is the first to correct this error. Cf. the introduction to Liberté I. Négritude et humanisme, Paris, Seuil, 1964.

"We have been content to study (the negro-African civilisation) and to give it the name of ‘Negritude.' I say ‘we.' I was about to render unto Césaire what is Césaire's. Because it is Césaire who coined the word in the years 1932-1934" (op. cit. p. 8).

The verse quoted above is in fact the second occasion on which the word negritude appears in the Cahier. The very first mention of the word is however not very illuminating. It occurs in a verse in which Césaire draws up an inventory of his historical heritage. He says: "Haiti where negritude raised its head for the first time" (p. 44). In this instance the word seems to denote nothing more than the black race, and does not have any other quali tative shade of meaning. Its use in the long verse quoted shows, on the contrary, that it denotes a complex of virtues associated to the race.

4 The poem was in fact first published in the twentieth and last edition of a magazine called Volontés, Paris, August, 1939. Subsequently it appeared in a bilingual edition with a Spanish translation in Cuba in 1944, and was then published in Paris in 1947 by Bordas with a preface by André Breton, "Marti nique charmeuse de serpents," and finally by Présence Africaine.

5 Gérard Leclerc, op. cit.

6 Because to a certain extent he justifies this "mechanistic vocabulary" which is perhaps no more than a derision of strictness and "knowledge," but the intention of which is to expel speculation and ideology (op. cit., p. 89).

7 In order to avoid useless repetition, I shall allow myself to refer to my short work entitled: Libertés; contribution à la révolution dahoméenne, Cotonou, éditions Renaissance, 1973. Cf. especially the chapter on ‘Science et révolution,' pp. 41-52.

8 Aimé Cesaire, Lettre à Maurice Thorez, Paris, Présence Africaine, 1956. This is a letter of resignation from the French Communist Party. As far as the ‘Copernican revolution' is concerned, we know that Kant used this term for the reversal of the natural hypothesis according to which the human mind is regulated by things in order to know those things. For his part, on the contrary, he admitted that objects are regulated by the a priori structure of the human mind, and for this reason cannot be known except as phenomena. This reversal is analogous with the Copernican revolution in astronomy, which consists in substituting the heliocentric hypothesis for the classical geocentric hypothesis.

Aimé Cesaire demands a similar revolution in politics. Forgive us if we quote him at length:

"I think I have said enough to make it understood that I am denying neither Marxism nor Communism, that it is the use that certain parties have made of Marxism and Communism that I disapprove of. What I want is for Marxism and Communism to be put at the service of black peoples and not for black peoples to be put at the service of Marxism and Commu nism. I want the doctrine and the movement to be made for people, not people for the doctrine and the movement. And of course this does not just relate to the Communists. If I was a Christian or a Moslem I would say the same thing. No doctrine is valid unless it is re-considered by us and for us, and converted to our needs… In this context a true Copernican revolution must be achieved, because in Europe and all over the world, in every sector, from the extreme right to the extreme left, there is a deep-rooted accusto medness to do things for us, to handle things for us, to think for us, in short to question our right to exercise the initiative, as I mentioned just now, and in the last analysis this means the right of personality." (op. cit., p. 12-13).