prejudice which we need not share. Intellectual activity is intrinsically social both in its constitution and in its practice. It can be stated emphatically that what puts intellectual issues on the agenda is social praxis.’
Mafeje continues: ‘It would seem that intellectual systems are capable of a clean epistemological break.’41 For example, there is no necessary affinity between Marxism and positivism or idealism. This raises the question of whether intellectual systems grow by accretion or by epistemological ruptures. If the latter were true, it would be difficult to explain why and how Mafeje was evaluating anthropology as late as 2001, when he and others had already done so in the 1960s and 1970s. Mafeje’s repudiation of anthropology does not translate into its repudiation by all Africans, or even most Africans. This speaks precisely to the view that earlier analyses of anthropology do not necessarily entail a complete break with the discipline.
Mafeje argues emphatically that ‘epistemological ruptures in sciences as well as in other forms of knowledge are usually preceded by crises’.42 This is analogous to the Leninist notion of a ‘revolutionary situation’, which constitutes the necessary (though not always sufficient) condition for a revolution proper. Crises in the social sciences had long been identified by Mafeje, Magubane and others. The question was why this had not led to an epistemological rupture – particularly in Africa. Knowledge making in and about Africa was still very much centred in the West. Therefore, revolutionary crisis was a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a rupture. Revolutionary crisis in the social sciences had to be understood in the wider sociological context, which informed knowledge making – the working example being the skewed relations between the global North and the global South. Mafeje observes that ‘social crisis occurs in society when the requisite processes of social reproduction cannot be attained by normal means i.e. means which are presumed to work because they have done so before’.43
It is still not obvious, however, whether Mafeje believed that, in spite of the analyses of the 1960s and 1970s, the social sciences had reached a point of an epistemological break. And it is not clear either whether African scholars missed the opportunity to capitalise on the momentum of the said crisis. Elsewhere, Mafeje argues that although social studies in African universities continued to be organised along disciplines, the critical studies of the late 1960s ‘played havoc on disciplinary boundaries’.44 He maintains that of all the social sciences that were subject to critical analysis, anthropology never fully recovered and underwent a crisis, particularly in the post-independence period.
There is a lot to tease out and reflect on in Mafeje’s argument. First, it appears that anthropology has recovered from the crisis of the 1960s – Mafeje’s re-evaluation of anthropology in the 1990s and 2000s suggests this. Second, it could be argued that although other disciplines were assessed by radical social scientists in the 1970s, they have survived the onslaught. Indeed, scholars of the global South would not now speak of Eurocentrism and the need for epistemological and curriculum decolonisation if the situation were as severe as Mafeje presented it. If anything, analyses of anthropology reflect a particular epoch, both intellectually and sociopolitically. In the age of neoliberal complacency there is now, more than ever, a need to revisit those critiques that have been overshadowed by conservative scholarship. To be fair, Mafeje was reflecting on the state of affairs in the 1980s and much has happened since. The consolidation of conservatism, both intellectually and sociopolitically, by an academic orthodoxy the world over, implies that what radical social scientists are pursuing now is the recovering of intellectual nerve about which Jimi Adesina speaks, rather than an epistemological break proper.45 Mafeje said that one had to make a distinction between an epistemological break and the emergence of a new or alternative theory. Although methodologies can produce valid results, each methodology is limited by its underlying assumptions. According to Mafeje: ‘It is when such underlying assumptions are found not to apply to an increasing number of observable instances that a theoretical crisis occurs.’46
The nagging question was why and how an epistemological break – or even an alternative theory – was reversed so that the gains already made lost their relevance. Mafeje’s response to the question:
In the social sciences the ideological component, which earlier we referred to as intellectual prejudice, appears to be incorrigible, ultimately. For instance, irrespective of the evidence that might be brought to bear, there is no way in which social scientists in the imperialist camp could be persuaded that imperialism exists and is a major problem of development in the Third World. It is also noteworthy that it was only possible to convince the practitioners that there was colonial anthropology after colonialism had been fought and defeated.47
Formally, colonialism may have been fought and defeated but anthropology has not and, as Mafeje points out, ‘while it is true that “modernisation theories” have been discredited, to assume that they have disappeared would be dangerous complacency’.48 Although the social sciences may be deemed technical subjects, their theories do not change because of technical reasons that are inherent or internal to the social sciences. Revolutionary changes in the social scientific theories usually stem from social changes or crises. This means that the social sciences, more than the natural sciences, ‘are strongly ideologically-conditioned’.49 This notwithstanding, it is not always clear when such social crises occur or where the point is at which social problems amount to a societal crisis. Mafeje argues that social problems amount to a social crisis when they are no longer amenable to practical and theoretical rationalisations.
One way of objecting to Mafeje’s argument would be to point out that it broke the old philosophical taboo on deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’ – that X exists, or will exist, is no sufficient justification for its moral goodness. Such an assumption commits the naturalistic fallacy. Substantively, however, such an objection may do little to dent the necessity of the societal crisis for historical changes, for it seems extraordinary that a rupture could simply come via spontaneous combustion. That notwithstanding, the moral or inherent goodness of societal crisis is still in doubt. This is so because the crisis in the social sciences in the 1970s has not necessarily led to an epistemological rupture. The incorrigibility of alterity in anthropology is a case in point. Yet it might be better to seek ruptures at meso levels instead of the level of totality of the social sciences. The works of Oyeronke Oyewumi on gender are representative of an epistemological rupture in the global discourse of gender, particularly The Invention of Women.50
Although Mafeje was critical of anthropology as a discipline, he understood very well that all of the bourgeois social sciences are deeply implicated and he attempted to show that anthropology must be understood as consistent with the growth of functionalism and colonialism more generally. Anthropology, he said, was founded on studying the ‘other’. Quite why the practice of othering persists even to this day is a question that exercised Mafeje a great deal. The lingering problem of alterity, it should be remembered, continues years after anthropology had gone through a crisis as a result of critical evaluations by Mafeje and other radical social scientists.
Three issues generally emerge from Mafeje’s investigation: (i) the self-identity and role of African anthropologists in the post-independence period; (ii) the question as to whether there can be an African anthropology (not anthropology in Africa) without African anthropologists; and (iii) the question as to whether authentic representation on the part of African anthropologists would entail a ‘demise of Anthropology as it is traditionally known’.51 The general point is that deconstruction carries little weight if it does not entail reconstruction: negation without affirmation is meaningless. But attempts at reconstruction have always been difficult since much of it was conducted in the North, with only a few exceptions from the South. Mafeje captures something of this when he says: ‘From a historical perspective, it could be said that in the main African anthropologists did not anticipate independence in their professional representations. What this would have entailed is an anticipatory deconstruction of colonial Anthropology so as to guarantee a rebirth or transformation of Anthropology.’52
In a review of Mafeje’s Anthropology and Independent Africans, Godwin Murunga notes that in making these remarks, ‘Mafeje overlooks the work of Okot P’Bitek in that the difference between [P’Bitek] and other African