For an African elenchus: colonial and postcolonial misprisions and Classics in Africa

Abstract

This paper reflects on the god Dionysus in the context of African explorations of the role and meaning of Classical traditions in and for Africa. The problem of decolonization entails the creative challenge to conceive an African modernity, but how we shall recognize what that is to mean remains open. Knowledge as claim and contestation are foregrounded with Dionysus and in his presence. He is a figure who is chronically misprised, so that misprision itself becomes a feature of his experience and meaning. Offering examples of two kinds of popular interpretive stances and arguing that they represent typical but weak readings, the idea is developed that Africa requires elenchus as hermeneutic ideal, an epistemic pessimism and commitment to seeking as it finds its own way. It ought not, from a peripheral position, to adopt or reject the popular and low-yielding misprisions and cultural contestations that obtain in the Western academy and offer little to a flowering African Humanities.