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Orality & African Identity
Emevwo Biakolo (University of Botswana, Gabarone)
In this paper, I engage the epistemic status of orality in culture. As part of the rationale for this engagement, I posit a close connection between technologies of communication and the epistemological and ontological status of cultural productions and subjects. But the main thrust of my paper is a critique of the discourse of oral tradition in African philosophy and the crisis caused to the discipline as a consequence. I argue that this identity crisis in African philosophy is traceable to only one cause: doubt regarding the epistemological status of African oral tradition. I conclude that some African philosophers manifest the same Eurocentric and graphocentric conception of what constitutes truth and knowledge
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