AFS 152: African Sacred Worldview and Science

Given Africa’s stupendous resources, Africans have undoubtedly been bastardised since the expansion of Islam from Arabia to North Africa and sub-Saharan in the 17th and 9th Centuries, respectively and Century Europe’s entry into its modernity since the 16th Century, Africa has been framed as the human Other. Through racist-laden theories such as the Hamitic hypothesis, the Euro-Arab and more recently Asiatic worlds have pushed Africa to the backwaters of history. Of course, Africans have also contributed to their own predicaments as compradors. For this reason, the course, Africa’s sacred worldview, never assumes that Africans are irrational, non-scientific, and incurably religious in a “modern” world. Instead, the course title provides us with insights into the African world, and of course, the human world, which is deeply non-binary in all terms – including time and social structures and cultural creations.