European archives, African exchanges

Abstract

To observe that psychology in Africa has been influenced by Euroamerican presuppositions, notions and morals is not an argument for a Euroamerican-centred psychology in Africa. Of course not. I am against precisely the wholesale importation of Euroamerican-centric ideologies, explanations, ways of seeing, values, norms and ways of being, conveyed in psychology, and their imposition upon the ways of living of the Others of white, capitalist, middle-class America and Western Europe. At the same time, to argue against a psychology that centres Euroamerican presuppositions and ways of living in itself – although these may be thinly concealed by questions, theories, models and approaches that claim to be universal while privileging Western European and American ways of knowing, being, and relating to others – is not to be interpreted as a call to expunge all foreign ideas from African psychology. This would be an impossible task. Euroamericanism is in us. And some of its ideas are definitely worth keeping. Augustine Nwoye (2017: 44) has contended that ‘although some Eurocentric theories of the human personality or personhood … already exist, including those developed by some African American psychologists … some of which are very relevant to our experience, a continental African version of the theory of African human personhood is still needed’. All psychologists in African countries, but in particular Africa-centring psychologists, ought to assert their right to, and avail themselves of, the European archive. It is common knowledge that Africa's encounter with Europe from the fifteenth century onwards forever changed both continents. Additionally, European civilisation contains property and ideas stolen from Africa and the New World. Most significant for African psychology, however, is the pronounced need for more interchanges, and more openness to influencing each other, across African countries. In this respect, mobility between different countries and exchanges among continental psychology students, researchers, teachers and therapists are necessary. Beyond such intra-African exchanges, African psychologists need to interact with African psychologists in the diaspora. And African psychologists must produce psychology for the world, not only for Africa.