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1 Susan Abraham, "What Does Mumbai Have to Do with Rome? Postcolonial Perspectives on
Globalization and Theology," Theological Studies 69 (2008): 376-93.
2 Such is the case with Franz Fanon, who has been co-opted as a postcolonial thinker, Edward
Said, and others.
4 Ania Loomba et al., "Beyond What? An Introduction," in Postcolonial Studies and Beyond,
ed. Ania Loomba et al. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University, 2005) 1-38.
2
5 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York:
Random House, 1970), xxii.
6 Ibid.
8 Ibid., 204.
9 Ibid, 273.
3
10 Valentin Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of
Knowledge (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1988).
11 Y. V. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988, ix.
14L. S. Senghor, Rapport sur la doctrine et la propagande du parti, quoted by Lilyan Kestelot
in Philosophie africaine: textes choisis, 2 vols, éd. A. J. Smet (Kinshasa: Presses
Universitaires du Zaïre, 1975), I: 12 [Our translation].
15Ibid.
mention it again. It is not part of the historical world, it does not evidence
historical movement or development."18
As a result of such writings, oral African histories and any African past
were overruled by European social mores and their primacy, while Christian
attitudes conflicted enormously with localized African customs and beliefs
about the world and the action of God in the world. The colonization of
African minds was at the center of the educational system and with few
exceptions newly converted African Christians were expected to think
differently than other Africans and to behave m different cultural ways.
So, Aguilar concludes,
The absence of history assigned to Africa by Europeans tried to erase the long-
standing process of African gnosis, in order to replace cosmological systems of
social and religious knowledge with a European episteme Christianity in its
European cultural form produced a religious discourse that followed an
epistemological fallacy. Such a fallacy, that the continent of Africa had not
encountered or responded to Christianity in the past, could not be sustained
historically. The history of Africa included the presence of Tertulhan, Cyprian, and
Augustine in North Africa and the rapid development and establishment of
Christianity in Ethiopia.19
18 Ibid., 231.
"What hides and reveals at the same time the African quest for philosophy?"
His answer is, the desire to assert an identity that was denied.
Second, postcolonialism matters because Africa has become a
postcolonial space is, which as Achille Mbembe says, made up not of one
coherent 'public space', nor determined by any single organizing principle,
but rather of "a plurality of 'spheres' and arenas, each having its own separate
logic yet nonetheless liable to be entangled with other logics when operating
in certain specific contexts: hence the postcolonial 'subject' has had to learn
to continuously bargain [marchander] and improvise."21
Third, postcolonialism matters because colonialism has morphed into
new forms. 'The mutated forms include domestic nationalistic tyranny
imposed on minority groups, and collusions of nationalistic power with
militarized global economic power spearheaded by the United States. Such
power, they argue, easily co-opted postcolonial theory to ensconce it within
the networks of power."22 The nexus of postcolonial theory and theology
produces an oppositional discourse that challenges theological method in the
Western academy. Such a resolutely critical method does not yield any
unified methodology of application. Since theology produced in the academic
centers of the West is implicated in neocolonial relations between various
geopolitical contexts, the emphasis on culture investigates theological
production as a site tainted by power differentials. The claim of religion and
theology to be sui generis fields requiring protective strategies such as
excluding social, cultural, ethical, theoretical, or political methods to verify
the intelligibility of its assertions is being steadily assailed by globalization
and postcolonial theories. The assault on the self-proclaimed "sui generis"
constitution of the field of religion and theology has resulted in the
paradoxical contention that theology ought to become an integral part of the
study of religion. In other words, religion and theology are disciplines to the
extent that their boundaries are policed by those who consider the
frameworks to be thoroughly distinguishable from each other. Postcolonial
perspectives on globalization that point to the many ways academic
frameworks exacerbate Orientalist perspectives on times, places, and cultures
different from Euro-American Christianity resist and oppose rigid
disciplinary boundaries.
Fourth, postcolonialism matters because it fosters the otherness and
difference, which find their source in the revelation of the Trinity. Indeed, the
deconstruction of inherited Christianity liberates for Africa the resources of
the entire Christian faith. One example would suffice here. It is a well known
22 Suzan Abraham, "What Does Mumbai Have to Do with Rome," 379. See also Ania
Loomba et al., "Beyond What? An Introduction."
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fact that when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, the West, following
Augustine, has tended to focus of the oneness of the Trinity, while East,
following the Cappadocian Fathers, focuses on the three-ness within the
Trinity. These two perspectives yield different worldviews. Where the
oneness is emphasized, sameness is fostered as virtue and universality as
ideal. Yet, where three-ness is emphasized, one discovered that the Trinity is
ultimately about being in communion (fellowship). God is one not despite
the fact that there are three persons within the Godhead, but God is one
because there are three persons within the Godhead. Here difference is a
virtue and not a vice because the Father is not the Son, and the Son not the
Holy Spirit. Furthermore, difference does not exclude unity, for the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one. A communal life that is patterned after
the latter understanding of the Trinity is one that fosters difference while at
the same time holding on to unity. Unity where differences are erased is not
Christian unity.
Fifth, postcolonialism matters because it is in keeping with the spirit of
Pentecost. Pentecost is the reversal of Babel. The ideal of Babel of one
language, one thought, and one project echoes the ideal of the project of the
Enlightenment of one humanity adhering to a set of universal truths and
engaged in the one project of technological progress. Babel is the celebration
of unity in diversity, the celebration of ethnicity to the praise of the One God.