panel 13

PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURAL MOBILITY: CONTRIBUTIONS OF AFRICAN SCHOLARS TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

CONVENOR:

• MUYIWA FALAIYE, UNIVERSITY OF LAGOS (mfalaiye@yahoo.com)

DISCUSSANT:

• MUYIWA FALAYE

Cultural exchanges between Africa and the rest of Europe have existed forcenturies. One remarkable area of these exchanges is in the development of ChristianThought as well as the potential of Africa being a fertile ground for the Christian faith totake root. Undoubtedly, narratives from anthropologists such as Pliny the Elder, Levy-Bruhl, James Frazier, Edward Taylor, amongst others, were a catalyst in these exchanges.However, while religious actors from Africa such as St. Augustine, Origen, etc, have putforward submissions that tended to have culturally enriched their spaces of influence,scholars from Europe such as Placide Tempels, E. A. Ruch, etc engaged in intellectual crossfertilization of ideas that expanded the scope of philosophical scholarship in Africa.This panel seeks to examine the roles cultural mobility plays in the politics of knowledgethat has shaped the cultural spaces of Africa and Europe. It raises questions concerning theaxiological dimension of these exchanges from antiquity to date, and examines how wellthe discourse of power and knowledge has facilitated the mutual appreciation of culturalmobility as an index of global intellectual development.Some of the questions it seeks to address include the following: Did the exchangesbetween these two parts of the world attain mutual cultural enrichment? What are thebenefits derivable from these exchanges? Or is it just the case that these culturalexchanges are a one-sided affair that disadvantaged the African?

PAPERS: