Archie Mafeje : an intellectual biography

Abstract

This thesis is not a life history of Archie Mafeje. Instead, it is an attempt to grapple with his ideas. This thesis is said to be a ‘biography’ insofar as it is dedicated to a study of one individual and his contribution to knowledge. In trying to understand Mafeje’s ideas and the intellectual and political environment that shaped them, the thesis relies on Lewis R. Gordon’s concept of ‘epistemic possibility’. The thesis comprises four main parts. Part I locates Mafeje and his work within the broader African intellectual and political environment. Part II evaluates his critique of the social sciences. Part III focuses on his work on land and agrarian issues in sub-Saharan Africa. Part IV deals with his work on revolutionary theory and politics. Broadly speaking, this thesis is the first comprehensive engagement with the entire body of Mafeje’s scholarship. Specifically, the unique perspective of this thesis, and therefore its primary contribution to the existing body of knowledge, is that it seeks to overturn the idea that Mafeje was a critic of the discipline of anthropology only. The view that Mafeje was a mere critic of anthropology is in this thesis referred to as the standard view or the conventional view. The thesis argues that Mafeje is best understood as criticising all of the bourgeois social sciences for being Eurocentric and imperialist. This is offered as the alternative view. The thesis argues that the standard view makes a reformist of Mafeje, while the alternative view seeks to present him as the revolutionary scholar that he was. This interpretation lays the foundation for a profounder analysis of Mafeje’s work. In arguing that all the social sciences are Eurocentric and imperialist, he sought to liquidate them and therefore called for ‘non-disciplinarity’. It should be noted that in this regard, the primary focus of this thesis consists in following the unit of his thought and not whether he succeeded or failed in this difficult task.