Essay 10 Zadie Smith On Beauty

The premise for most of western philosophy has always been this idea of progressivism and

modernism. Paul de Man describes it as, "Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out

whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called a true

present, a point of origin that marks a new departure." During the colonial era, this particular

school of thought manifested as the wests desire to establish and utilise modernity throughout

many of the, as yet, undeveloped countries. The west viewed this as, "expanding humanities

frontiers." Unfortunately for many of these undeveloped countries," humanity" was a

subjective phrase and the western body politic directly equated a populations modernity to

their legitimacy of humanity. Given that the perception of the African rationale and

sensibilities were considered tribalistic and rudimentary it was predictable that the western

body politic would not recognize Africa's political legitimacy; after all, countries whose

political legitimacy was recognized were in no danger of colonization. (Bird-David, 1993:

112)

In the field of politics, few things can be as damaging as the broad agency that mainstream

political disciplines have. When applied with little regard for the identity, context and the

ideals of the people that they are being applied to, the idea of painting populations with the

same political brush is the very thing that leads to genocide, racism and exploitation. (Teffo,

2002) Context is extremely important within political systems, so, given that the majority of

modern political and philosophical disciplines originate from and were designed for the

specific context of western societies, it's unsurprising that African political culture suffers

greatly from a lack of political identity. The reason that western disciplinary knowledge

cannot fully explain the nature of African thought in political culture is simply because

context is missing. Western disciplinary knowledge cannot explain a culture that it is not a

part of.

The History of Western Political Thought and the Standardisation of Politics Worldwide.

LITERATURE: HOW AND WHY? (ELL1013F)