Croyance et connaissance bantoues

Abstract

It is necessary to deconstruct the division of epistemological tasks according to which others believe and we alone, modern people, possess knowledge worthy of the name. For not only do we believe, but others know. This knowledge does not depend solely on the consistence of their symbolic formations: it derives from their mode of existence in a particular ecological milieu; it consists in the effort to deduce the data they observe or the experiences they experience. What is at work in others, as in us, is a complementarist dialectic which allows them to communicate between themselves complex explicatory levels of real knowledge. To show this, I drawn upon the Africanist Jacqueline Roumeguere-Eberhardt’s little-known work on Bantu knowledge. Lastly, I consider the reasons for overlooking such an original contribution to the project of comparative epistemology.

Keywords

• comparative epistemology
• implicit knowledge
• Bantu sociology
• complementarist dialectic
• Jacqueline Roumeguère-Eberhardt
• French school of ethnography