Teilhard de Chardin and Senghor on the civilization of the universal

III.3.2. Négritude in the light of the Civilization of the Universal

We have seen with Senghor that the Négritude movement is not racism but rather humanism. It then favours the coming together of all civilizations in order to build up the Civilization of the Universal which is also founded on humanism.

Nevertheless, Négritude is marked with ethnocentrism which seems almost unavoidable. The Civilization of the Universal accepts the humanistic character of Négritude but it rejects ethnocentrism because no race, no civilization, is supposed to claim superiority over others. We have seen with TEILHARD DE CHARDIN that all human races are complementary and that each race has something to contribute to others.

Furthermore, if Négritude is the ideology behind the valorisation of the black race, there are also ethnocentric tendencies inherent in globalisation as it presents itself today. If we are condemning ethnocentrism as far as Négritude is concerned, we are also condemning the auto-theorisation of the western world, the rich countries on the poor countries of the third world. Even if the western civilization has proven its worth as far as technosciences are concerned, ameliorating the conditions of life and facilitating communication among all the citizens of the planetary village, it has no right to play the master over the rest of the world. The war in Iraq, for example, is an expression of the will to power which characterises the richest countries. These rich countries have many things to learn from the third world, especially from Africa where the sense of respect of nature, for example, is very strong and where the ecological conscience is well sharpened.

In an article entitled «Globalisation or Westernisation?» Godfrey B. TANGWA criticises this instinct of domination of western civilization on the other civilizations, thus westernising the world instead of making it a table of dialog, a rendez-vous of giving and receiving. In effect, he begins by defining globalisation in these terms:

Globalisation, as a descriptive process, has been made possible and inevitable by advances in science and technology, especially in loco-motion and communication technologies. The net result of these advances has been increased contact between the various peoples and cultures that populate the world. Thanks to this state of affairs, the world is today, unlike yesterday, aptly described as a `global village'. This villagisation of the world should have as one of its logical consequences the slow but sure transformation of the world into a `rainbow village', by analogy with our appellation of South Africa, in our optimistic moments, as the `Rainbow Nation'. Resistance to this aspect of the process of globalisation, exemplified in the savagery with which persons from some parts of the globe are sometimes forcibly excluded from some other parts, cannot but create a lot of tension within the process. Modern technology, in general, and locomotion and communication technologies, in particular, are, of course, inventions of the Western world which have been very effectively used, inter alia, in colonising and dominating peoples in other parts of the world.^100(*)

And he goes further to point out the risk of westernisation in the global village when he asserts:

Globalisation, as a prescriptive process, arises from increasing awareness of both the diversity as well as interdependence of the various parts, peoples and cultures of the world. Globalisation in this sense, is essentially a moral concept. Underlying such blueprints of globalisation as the Biodiversity Convention and the Human Genome Project, are clear ethical impulses, concerns and imperatives. But between globalisation as a descriptive process and globalisation as a prescriptive ideal, there is a difference which involves the danger that globalisation might end up as or, in fact, might not and never has been more than, mere Westernisation, given the history and reality of Western industrial-technological power, colonisation of non-Westerners, domination and insensitivity to all things non-Western.^101(*)

Finally, he defines Westernisation in these terms:

The spirit of omnivorous discovery which the Industrial Revolution engendered and made possible in Europeans guided them to all parts of the globe where they discovered peoples and cultures so different from theirs that they felt reluctant to qualify them as `human'. From then on, Europeanisation (Westernisation) of other peoples and cultures appeared naturally in their eyes as humanisation and civilisation. It is in this way that both altruistic and egoistic motives became mixed and confounded in the relationship between the technologically very advanced Western world, peoples and culture and other (technologically less advanced) worlds, peoples and cultures. Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has been propelled to great heights by Western commerce and the profit motive, by war and the will to dominate, by pure epistemological and scientific curiosity, as well as (occasionally) by the altruistic urge to improve human well-being. In this process, Western culture has developed the penchant for patenting, monopolising and commercialising any of its so-called discoveries and a nach for spreading and promoting its ideas, vision, convictions and practices under the guise of universal imperatives of either rationality or morality which ought to be binding on all human beings who are sufficiently rational and moral.^102(*)

Indeed, Europeanisation is to be fought because it is founded on the will to power of the western world, technologically developed, and based mainly on egoistic motives marginalising the third-world, less technologically developed, in the dialog of civilizations. As a bioethician, TANGWA goes a step further in expressing the enduring danger of Westernisation at the level of biotechnology, thus affirming inter alia:

Today, biotechnology, an aspect of Western industrialized culture, is capable of manipulating or modifying the genes of living organisms. This raises many ethical problems, some relating to biodiversity and the environment in general. Bioethics owes its own development to awareness of the seriousness and magnitude of these ethical problems which cannot leave any culture indifferent, no matter its own level of technological development. Africa, for instance, which presents remarkable biodiversity, against the background of which human values and attitudes different from those of the Western world have developed, cannot be indifferent to the problems raised by biotechnology. It is possible for global ethics to emerge, provided globalisation does not simply translate in to Westernisation.^103(*)

* ¹⁰⁰ Godfrey B. Tangwa,"Globalisation or Westernisation? Ethical concerns in the whole bio-business." in Bioethics, Vol. 13. n°3, Oxford, july 1999, p. 219.

* ¹⁰¹ Godfrey B. Tangwa,"Globalisation or Westernisation? Ethical concerns in the whole bio-business." in Bioethics, Vol. 13. n°3, Oxford, july 1999, p. 219.

* ¹⁰² Ibid., p. 220.

* ¹⁰³Godfrey B. Tangwa, English Summary of "Technologia genetica y valores morales una opinion Africana" p. 1.