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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Ideology and culture: the African experience |
Author: | Oruka, H. Odera |
Year: | 1982 |
Periodical: | Journal of Eastern African Research and Development |
Volume: | 12 |
Pages: | 73-82 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Subsaharan Africa |
Subjects: | culture ideologies |
Abstract: | Ideology, properly conceived, does and must not defy questions of truth and rational judgment. Ideological propositions are truth claims and they can be defended or rejected on a rational assessment. The problem usually is to establish the objective context on which to make the assessment. Beliefs and propositions are not just true, but true in a given context. In socio-political life, a context usually is a given cultural system or consciousness, a cultural domain. It is on the basis of a cultural domain that ideological and other socio-political beliefs acquire meaning and truth-value. It may be important, therefore, to bring the connection between culture, ideology an philosophy into focus. The author hopes to tackle this by reflecting philosophically on the possible types of cultural domain in modern Africa. Before doing this, he makes a brief statement on the general meaning of culture and cultural consciousness in Africa: master-slave culture, colonial culture, Negritude ideological culture, Black Existential culture, trans-radical ideological culture. The diversities and contradictions in the current search for black African cultural authenticity and revival are connected to these various cultural domains. Bibliogr., notes. |