Hegemonic “Modernity”
A problem to consider is that modern writers of African descent have
engaged themselves with western theoretical frameworks. Africologists,
however, understand that frameworks such as modernity and postmodernity
are no good for African people.11Perhaps should more accurately
be described as western modernity or “westernity”. In fact,
Africologists avoid engaging in such frameworks, only doing so in cases
where Afrocentric theory is in need of defense or repair from hegemonic
malignity. Modernity is to be understood as a paradigmatically
eurocentric framework and a byproduct of the European Imperialist
Cultural Project (EICP). Scholars such as Karl Marx, W.E.B. Du Bois,
James Blaut, Molefi Asante, and Toyin Falola, have made it clear that
“modernism” or “modernity” came about due to the imperialist
expansion of European countries such as Britain, Spain, Portugal,
France, and Belgium (Monteiro-Ferreira, 2014, 40).
While modernity may be responsible for the expansion of technological
and scientific advancements that have somewhat facilitated human social
progress, the very same cultural project was involved in the kidnapping
and enslavement of human lives, ruthless and murderous colonization
antics, and developing erroneous racial theories that, to this day, have
horrifying repercussions for African people. Further, the African
people’s involvement with so-called “modern technologies”, such as the
automobile, cellular phone, and television, is not a conscious
involvement with modernism. To be absolutely clear, the western
academy’s application of “modernism”, despite its broad implications,
should not be viewed as some universal human endeavor but merely a
eurocentric concept of social reality.
Modernism was developed out of Europe’s imperialist quest for power. It
was able to be maintained due to the oppression and ontological and
cosmological reduction of African people. The simple engagement with the
modernist system (e.g., the creation of rockets for a European space
program, the development of more efficient traffic signals for American
cities, and the creation of music using “modern” technologies), does
not make an African person a modernist. To be more clear, such
involvement does not automatically make an African person an adherent or
inheritor of the western intellectual heritage that is modernity. It is
clear from the historical record that African people lived different
realities and relied on intentions both unfamiliar and inconsequential
to European ethos.
As with most bi-products of the EICP, modernism has had a significant
role in psychological terror towards African people. It is through
modernism that we have come to adopt such negative ideas as “Third
World Countries”, “tribe”, “pygmy”, “bushman”, “native Indian”,
and “negro”. These terms represent extant eurocentric ideological
negations about oppressed people and cultures. Within modernism, there
exists no plurality of ideas unless there is a hierarchy that
establishes eurocentric ethos as standard or, more insidiously,
universal, while all other cultural ideas are marginalized to the
fringes of societal thought.