African Intellectuals in the Post-colonial World

Fetson A Kalua

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000699722
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Critical Theory

This book examines the role of African intellectuals in the years since the end of colonialism, studying the contribution that has been made by such individuals, both to political causes and to development within Africa.

Studying the concept of the "intellectual" within an African context, this book explores the responses of such individuals to crucial issues, such as cultural identity and knowledge production. The author argues that since the end of colonialism in Africa, various, often intertwining, factors, such as nationalism and co-option, have been used by black politicians or the political elites to muddle the roles and functions of black African intellectuals. Focusing on these confused roles and functions, the book posits that, over the years, most intellectuals in Africa have found the practice of "cheerleading" for a political cause more productive than making valuable contributions towards dynamic and progressive leadership in their countries.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African studies, politics, and development studies.

1 Theorising the concept of an intellectual

What or who is an intellectual?

The question of who an intellectual is has been a complex subject for a long time. In a determined effort to define, contextualise, expound on, and provide an overview of the notion of the intellectual, it is the logic of Stephan Collini which instantly strikes one in that the idea of an intellectual has both an expansive definition and a broad application. As he has put it, the word intellectual

is a term with a complex history, and many of the various senses and resonances deposited by that history are still active in the semantic field constituted by contemporary uses of the word.

(2006: 15)

Such a reading of the term intellectual is interesting because, rather than the meaning of the word being a delimited one which is confined to a particular field of study, it is grounded on and open to various understandings and assumptions – the kind of assumptions which entail that the meaning of the concept goes beyond any distinctive, circumscribed, and specified definition. Clearly, the word’s semantic field is a broad-based one. Hence, apart from the conventional understanding of the term to mean an academic or scholar, it is quite clear that history has bequeathed different shades of meaning to the word or concept of an intellectual.

In his further delineation of the term intellectual, Collini states that, because of its wide-ranging semantic field, the term

refers to a type of person who acts in certain specific ways; and that therefore the question of determining whether or not this type of person exists or existed in various societies is … a matter of relatively unproblematic empirical investigation.

(ibid: 15)

In other words, an intellectual is either a thinker who carries out a specific task or an advocate of some important vision or rights in society. Collini goes on to state that there is no “stipulative definition” (ibid: 46) of the word intellectual; hence, a person known as an intellectual “takes a committed interest in the validity and truth of ideas” (ibid: 46). In short, an intellectual is someone who is a savant in a particular domain of knowledge and, hence, has the confidence of his or her own people as she or he goes about the task of demonstrating what a commanding voice she or he has in a particular field of knowledge. Put another way, such a person could be involved in any kind of service, career, or vocation. The fact is that the defining and distinguishing nature of such an individual is that she or he carries out his or her duties in such a way as to bring about the force and agency of the various ideas in the realm of knowledge he or she is involved in so as to help society.

Yet again, Collin argues that the category of intellectuals

tries to discriminate those whose occupations involve a primary involvement with ideas or culture from those whose orientation and purpose are directly practical: thus it will tend to include, say, journalists and teachers, just as it will tend to exclude, say, businessmen as well as manual workers.

(ibid: 46)

What is interesting is the fact that Collini sees the idea of an intellectual as one whose meaning has become fluid and shifting in that it pinpoints and identifies particular groups of people in society, against others, whose unique vocation concerns the need to grapple with problems whose solutions are not self-evident. In other words, the word intellectual is a term which is applied to many individuals in society whose inclination and abilities are not confined to the conventional idea of an intellectual as referring to a member of the intelligentsia.

One other scholar who has demonstrated great reflection on the idea of intellectuals is Thomas Molnar for whom “intellectuals … are the products of the Renaissance period” (1994: 20), and the emergence of this category of people “coincided with the initial stages of the transformations of Utopia into reality” (ibid: 20). Put another way, the idea of utopia had been used to refer to the medieval era which bore the hallmarks of the Christian faith of just the Roman Catholic Church mould. Thus, what reflected the idea of utopia during the medieval period was the ideology of the Christian faith. For Molnar, as the medieval society and era began to come apart, or disintegrate, it was the advent of the Renaissance period which ignited within some individuals the desire to go about their business like intellectuals so they could effect change in their society. This explains why Molnar states that “we may not speak of ‘intellectuals’ in the early Middle Ages (until the twelfth century), and can hardly speak of them in any previous age” (ibid: 9). This is because, for him, it was the Renaissance period which engendered the emergence of intellectuals, most of whom were either scientists or those who introduced the idea of the Reformation in the sixteenth century in an attempt to reconstitute the Christian church, which was the Roman Catholic church. Thus, apart from scientists, other intellectuals were those individuals who wanted to move the religious worldview from Catholicism towards Pentecostalism. Further, Molnar asserts that

an intellectual cannot be measured by his mental powers, insights, and creativity alone. It is, rather, the social milieu of which he is part, and the nature of his relationship to this milieu, that determine his role and status as an intellectual. In order to speak of “intellectuals”, therefore, those who belong to this category must possess some degree of common consciousness of their role, their place in society, their relationship to those who are in power, and to those who seek it. In short, intellectuals form a class not by virtue of their organization, but to the extent that they have similar aspirations and influence, and a chance to be heard.

(ibid: 9)

In other words, it takes more than brains for someone to become an intellectual as, in addition to cognitive and rational abilities, which are linked to the idea of an intellectual, such an individual should also use such competences as growing involvement in the community in order to help society to change and move with the times. An intellectual is someone who has a clear awareness of his or her role in society, particularly with regard to those who wield power.

In a different context, for Christophe Charle, “the most direct ancestor of the intellectuel was the philosophe, or ‘a man of letters’ of the eighteenth century” (2015: 12). The core of what Charle means here is that the precursor to the current concept of the intellectual was “a man of letters”, or a highly knowledgeable person. He goes on to state that the idea of “ ‘a man of letters’ had a much broader sense than it has today and included not just ‘literary’ writers but also philosophers and scientists” (ibid: 12) and that such an individual was “defined in opposition to the decadent academics stuck in their jargon” (ibid: 12). This is instructive in the sense that, even though Charle points to the eighteenth century as the time when intellectuals materialised, interestingly, the aforementioned attributes (of an intellectual) point to the fact that intellectuals have existed down the centuries. Also known as “a man of letters”, an intellectual was either a writer of fiction, a philosopher, or a scientist. Thus an academic, as we understand the term, was outside the realm of the concept of an intellectual. As far as the origin of the concept of an intellectual is concerned, Charle argues that “whereas earlier studies have always seen it as a transhistorical ideal” (ibid: 46), the “social figure of an intellectuel could appeal to an old tradition, that of the philosopher, the romantic poet, the artist ‘for art’s sake’, and more recently that of the scientist” (ibid: 7). In other words, in order for one to have a full grasp of the idea of an intellectual, it is crucially important for one to examine the history of ideas. It is quite evident that the idea of an intellectual is a trans-historical reality, with different intellectual traditions with regard to definitions, attitudes to them, and other related factors as the shifting variants of the idea. Thus, even though the antecedent of the idea of an intellectual was a philosopher, this meaning shifted to refer to other thinkers, notably writers of fiction and scientists, who are located in various forms of knowledge.

Charle’s conception and presentation of the concept of an intellectual is a compelling formulation, as it evokes and points to this notion as being a trans-historical one. In other words, the domain of knowledge known as intellectuals has existed since the dawn of time, and so it is plausible to reflect on different kinds of intellectuals throughout history or human existence. Thus, on reflection, and going back to the ancient Greeks, Socrates was a Greek philosopher who is famous for having come up with Socratic dialogue, which was about rhetorical examinations of any idea with a view to arriving at the truth. Thus, it is not surprising that, in order to arrive at the truth on any issue, Socrates used to ask probing questions and get people to come up with various responses to a particular, universal question until a consensus was reached with regard to various answers. To that end, Socrates was a powerful Greek intellectual. Plato was another philosopher of ancient Greece who conceived the idea of a hypothetical republic in which, so he argued, only philosophers could be the rulers because he believed that only a philosopher is a savant. Thus, in Plato’s ideal republic, only philosopher kings would be the rulers. This is why Plato decided that in such a republic, poets should be banned because it could “damage the minds of the audience” (1974: 240) as poets as were seen as mere imitators whose work could cause unnecessary emotions in the audience. This explains why Emil Reich has described Plato as having been “certainly one of the best minds of the world” (1969: 1) because his criticism always bore “directly on the intellectual and emotional machinery of mankind” (ibid: 2). Further, as presented in the Bible, the first century AD saw the Pharisees as exceptional thinkers, or intellectuals, with regard to their fine grasp of the religious universe which defined their Semitic history and society because they were knowledgeable about Judaic laws and tradition. But, remarkably, it was Jesus Christ who emerged as the intellectual with a most pragmatic approach to perceiving truth and reality. Whether seen from a religious or secular perspective, Jesus demonstrated his practicality as a typical intellectual in many ways. For instance, while the Pharisees’ approach to the day of Sabbath was a rigid one, Jesus’s approach to the issue was such a flexible one it made sense to state that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Further, Jesus paraded his pragmatism as an intellectual through his teaching by means of parables. For example, in his famous parable of the Good Samaritan, he demonstrated the importance of perceiving human identity by reminding the Jews to accept gentiles, or the idea of Otherness or difference. Fourthly, during the Middle Ages, or the medieval era, monks and friars were regarded as a type of intellectual as far as understanding life in terms of the religious world view of the time was concerned. In other words, it was the monks and friars who always taught the people what the worldview of their time was like. Fifthly, during the Renaissance period, the domain of intellectuals was defined first by the rise of science and later those who were involved in the process of the Reformation. Finally, during the period of Enlightenment, intellectuals were those individuals who were at the forefront of the discourse of modernity – “a period after the decline of feudalism in which we see the rise of secular science, technology, and rational philosophy” (Castle 2007: 317). A number of intellectuals would rise to question the idea of race, which was at the core of the notion of modernity – the notion which largely justified the idea of colonialism.

Probably the most influential intellectual to have emerged in the Western world in the first half of the twentieth century was a French philosopher by the name of Julien Benda. Although Benda was a philosopher, he was an intellectual par excellence and, hence, made an immensely positive contribution towards notions of politics and governance. For Benda, intellectuals are

that class of men whom I shall designate “the clerks”, by which I mean all those whose activity essentially is not the pursuit of practical aims, all those who seek their joy in the practice of an art or a science, or metaphysical speculation, in short in the possession of non-material advantages… . Indeed, throughout history, … I see an uninterrupted series of philosophers, men of religion, men of literature, artists, men of learning…, whose influence, whose life were in direct opposition to the realism of the multitudes.

(1955: 30)¹

As an avowed humanist himself, Benda’s delineation of the word intellectuals, whom he gave the label clerks, might sound idealistic, or impracticable, remains probably the most profound and insightful theoretical formulation in that his model of intellectuals represents the kinds of individuals who make up the voice of reason, or the conscience, of humankind. Benda sees intellectuals as “men of religion, men of literature, artists, and men of learning” whose overriding aims in their lives are “in direct opposition to the realism of the multitudes”. In short, there are various groups of individuals in society who comprise, reflect, and evince the notion of an intellectual by challenging certain forms of knowledge which are taken for granted. For Benda, at the core of the idea of an intellectual is the fact that she or he is a disinterested thinker who spends time reflecting on issues which affect society, ensuring that she or he fulfills her or his obligation of standing for justice and truth at all costs, even if the consequences of such actions may lead to her or his death by those in power. Benda’s approach points to the fact that he is a firm believer in universal and eternal values which intellectuals should promote, as they are a constant reminder of what it means to be human. For Benda, on one level, an intellectual is almost a Socratic philosopher king – a man or woman of some learning who is indispensable to the running of the state because of the skills she or he has. It is clear that Benda’s model of intellectuals represents those individuals who devote their lives to the kinds of causes which are meant to nourish the mind, as well as the soul. This explains why some of the examples Benda gives as his type of intellectuals are people such as men of the cloth, academics, and artists, including musicians and writers of fiction. Interestingly, like Benda, Henry Girouw has also defined a public intellectual as someone who belongs in the category of individuals including “artists, journalists, academics, and others who have been innovative and daring, willing to challenge the conventions of the dominant political and social order” (2002: 383). In short, both Benda and Girouw provide a wide-ranging and compelling framework of who an intellectual is or what he or she should be like. What emerges from the various elaborations is the fact that an intellectual is a well-informed individual who inhabits a privileged space in a social group or society, in that she or he has a clear sense of direction, as well as possessing particular skills and ample critical independence to be able to lead and meaningfully engage in discourses which matter and contribute towards society’s transformation. Unsurprisingly, Benda’s approach to thinking about the concept of an intellectual would be used or adapted by later scholars, notably Antonio Gramsci and Edward Said.

In the second part of the twentieth century, Europe saw the emergence of various scholars who would build on the work by Julien Benda with regard to notions of what or who an intellectual is. One such scholar was a famous Marxist scholar, Antonio Gramsci, who also provides comprehensive and particularly illuminating insights into the notion of who an intellectual is, as well as spelling out what special functions such an individual is expected to perform in society. Writing in an essay entitled “The Intellectuals” (from “Prison Notebooks”), Gramsci delimits the concept of an intellectual in a way which renders visible the certainty of the existence of intellectuals of different shades and hues in every community or society. Presumably, drawing on Julien Benda’s ideas, he defines an intellectual broadly as “an organizer of society in general” (Gramsci 1996: 184). For Gramsci, just like Benda before him, intellectuals are to be understood in terms of their social function. They are mandarins, or pundits, of lateral thinking – a vital dimension of creative and imaginative reasoning which is key to addressing problems in society. Hence, as persons who can take command of and direct operations, processes, and all manner of functions in society, intellectuals are, in many ways, matchless or exceptional individuals who are “independent, autonomous, and endowed with a character of their own” (ibid: 186). Unlike Benda, who saw the “multitudes” as being incapable of deep reflection, or the cultivation of the mind and the soul, Gramsci believes that

[e]very man, … outside his professional activity, carries on some form of intellectual activity, that is, he is a philosopher, a man of taste, he participates in a particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustaining a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being, new modes of thought.

(ibid: 187)

From such a delineation, it seems self-evident that, for Gramsci, every community has its fair share of individuals from all walks of life who embody and exemplify the major characteristics of an intellectual life. Gramsci believes that, at some level, every man or woman is an intellectual because most men and women tend to be keen on being involved in either knowledge production or shaping discourses. To shed more light on the issue, he differentiates between two types of intel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Theorising the concept of an intellectual
• 2 The “ivory tower” intellectual
• 3 The dilemmas of African intellectuals since the end of colonialism: how modern African intellectuals should steer clear of such sticking points
• 4 African intellectuals, culture, and decolonisation of knowledge
• 5 Taking a leaf from the Western intellectual
• 6 A paradigm of an African intellectual in the twenty-first century
• Conclusion
• Works cited
• Index