Recreating Humanity with Humanism: Africa, the de novo Cradle

Resumo da minha contribuição na Conferência Internacional "Echoes of the South Atlantic" que teve lugar em Salvador, Bahia, em Abril de 2018. Apesar da conferência ter sido organizada por uma instituição alemã (Goethe Institute) e ter tido lugar num país lusófono, a língua de trabalho foi inglês. Todos os papers e debates foram nesta língua...

(c) Goethe Institute

After a rather turbulent and painful historical period, which lasted for almost five centuries and included the most cruel forms of subjugation that has been memorized in the history of mankind, such as slavery and colonization, all Africans (from both sides of the Atlantic), whether from an engaged position or a camouflaged stance, share a deep rooted feeling: a score to settle with History.

The outcome of a common past of domination, oppression, and humiliation within and outside Africa, plus the generalized existential discrimination and marginalization, have had, as “collateral effect”, the emergence of a shared feeling of belonging, which is more and more expressive.

The African American Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison characterizes this feeling in her very first novel The Bluest Eye (1970) as follows: “Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality - collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other.”

By expanding and generalizing this “sense of belonging” in such a rooted, elaborated and perennial way, the critical issue at stake is not the rehabilitation, reaffirmation, or redemption of the African. It is much more than that. It is the redefinition and assignment of a new dimension and scope to African identity.

However, to ensure that this complex and necessarily enduring process unfolds within the parameters defined by its noble ideals and objectives, free from all types of revanchism and recurrence of past disasters, it is essential that a "sense of perspective" be added to the "sense of belonging".

This implies, in practical terms, concrete actions, in a broad temporal perspective, to be developed with the aim of creating new, genuine “moments of History”, capable of altering what has been the course of the History of humanity of the last few centuries. It is recreating Humanity with humanism, with Africa as its cradle – once again!