Pre-Texts Of Black Intellectual Tradition: Some Examples

Abstract

Any intellectual tradition, it may be argued, emerges through constant acts of transgression, translation and appropriation of prior epistemological positions. These prior epistemological positions may be thought as constituting points of reference for emerging traditions, in fact as pre-texts around and against which new textualities (traditions) announce their presence and distinctiveness. In the context of African literary tradition, which is my concern here, I use the term pre-texts to refer to both oral (African) and written (European) traditions, themselves already inscribing multiple traditions, and whose presence in African texts give the later a hybrid identity.