#137 Book Talk: Paul Hountondji and the science question in Africa - Professor Zeyad El-Nabolsy

Speaker 1: As far as I'm concerned, as long as that same respect and recognition is not shown toward every one of our people in this country, it doesn't exist for me. And during the few moments that we have left, we want to have just an off-the-cuff chat. Welcome back to another episode of the Malcolm Effect and...

Speaker 2: It is an honor and privilege to be speaking to someone I consider a friend, comrade, teacher, Ziad El Nabulosi. Welcome. For the first time, we've been trying to get you so long on this show. Thank you for graciously accepting the offer. So welcome to The Malcolm Effect.

Ziad El Nabulosi: Thank you, Habibi. The honor is all mine. It's a great honor. I'm a big fan of the podcast. And to be fair, I've been trying to pressure you to get me on the podcast. So it's socially awkward to get yourself invited to something. But here we are. It's a great pleasure.

Speaker 2: Now, this is I hope this is just one of many conversations that we have, because I often even when we're in physical company, we often think, damn, this would have been a good conversation to record. So I'm glad we're getting some of it down now. So we're talking about your book. Your recent book, Pauline Hotonji and the science question in Africa. Before we even begin talking about the substantive parts of the book, which we will go into and I'm really excited to speak about, why did you write the book?

Ziad El Nabulosi: Great question. So, of course, you know, I have an interest in the history of African philosophy, but that's a general statement. But there is a particular motivation, namely because if you study African philosophy, especially African philosophy in the 20th century, whether it's Francophone or Anglophone, People, of course, talk about Polan Hontanji all the time. He's an important figure, but people fixate on his critique of ethno-philosophy. So he had this very famous critique of a certain way of doing philosophy that rose to prominence around the mid-20th century, 1940s onwards, which essentially tried to describe the collective worldview of a given african people in philosophical terms so people you know you'll hear people and read people talking about dogon cosmology yoruba philosophies of the self and so on and he had a very transient critique of this approach we can go into it if that's of interest but people have always succeeded on that aspect of hantanji they haven't looked at his later work sorry

Speaker 2: No, no, no, sorry about that. I was going to say absolutely. So I won't, I find the critique of ethno, what did you say? Ethno-nationalism.

Ziad El Nabulosi: Ethno-philosophy, which is related to his critique of ethno-nationalism, for sure.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so I definitely want to unpack that, but sorry to cut you off. Please carry on. Why did you write the book? Tell us more.

Ziad El Nabulosi: Yeah, so there was an aspect of Hontonji which I thought was neglected, which is how he thought about scientific dependency. So starting in the 1980s, 1990s, he starts writing about a phenomenon that he calls scientific dependency. And he starts being really interested in this question of how do you reconcile modern science with what he calls endogenous knowledge systems. And he uses the word endogenous deliberately. He prefers that to indigenous. Again, we can go into why that's the case. Why does he have that preference? So I thought there was a neglected aspect. And the other thing that I was really motivated by was I thought there was an attempt to essentially say that, look, you know, modern science is intrinsically colonial in character and we have to keep our distance from it. So I thought that this was this kind of tendency was on the rise, specifically in the writings of people who adopt what they call a decolonial framework. So especially the Latin American people. decolonial theorists who have made careers in the United States, like Walter Mignolo and so on, and whose ideas are now being imported by African philosophers. And I thought that there was something mistaken about the decolonial account of the relationship between modernity, science, and colonialism. And I thought that Fontanji gives us the tools to think about this from a kind of, if you like, Marxist or historical materialist framework that takes the history of colonialism seriously. So that was my main motivation, really.

Speaker 2: No, no, I think that's a great motivation because I think you are speaking to contemporary debates about this question, right? And you see it. And it's also interesting that you choose Hotonji and he has a commitment to historical materialism when we often hear this question of Marxism is US-centric. It cannot deliver for the conditions of Africa, right? And that also is extended to other epistemological questions, right? about science. Is science, for example, is science a white man thing, right? You hear this sometimes, right? And I think this is a very important intervention on this question. So your book opens by foregrounding the longstanding question in Africa, in African intellectual history, and provocatively this question, right? Did colonialism bring modernity to Africa? So I guess first question is, how does revisiting this question through Hitonji help us rethink the very terms of that debate?

Ziad El Nabulosi: Yeah, that's a fantastic question, really. You know, so one way to think about this, right? So let's say you think that modernity... was an intrinsic part of the colonial project so if you think that then it might be plausible to think that if i want to decolonize then i have to get rid of institutional actualizations of modernity whatever we wish to call them because they are part of the colonial project however i think that this has uh that this approach would have would have really bad ramifications of course So, one thing I was interested in is, is it in fact true that colonialism, for example, so let's make it more concrete. So, to then switch into the modern science stuff. So, you'll see people say that colonialism in its Portuguese form, in its French form, German form, Belgian form, English form, whatever. came to the African continent with the Scramble for Africa, for the most part, and imposed modern science on Africans. So they said, essentially, look, you know, the stuff that you're doing, your indigenous knowledge systems, forget about those. Here is modern science. Come, we're going to force you to learn it in our schools and so on. And in fact, in the majority of cases, the opposite was the case. The Europeans were hell-bent on making sure that Africans don't master modern science. Precisely because the Europeans understood that if Africans master modern science, then they will have the tools to regain their sovereignty, to develop their own societies, and to end dependency on the West. So actually, this is why the historical narrative is important. And in the book, I go into cases where actually people were punished for trying to study modern science or trying to study kind of theoretical disciplines in general. So my point is actually the story is much more complicated than the Europeans coming in and imposing modern science on Africans.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. So then what is the story then? And I want to tie that into a central claim in your book is that capitalism actively hindered the development of autonomous scientific institutions in Africa. Can you unpack how Tunji uses historical materialism to explain the underdevelopment of the science on the continent? And I think that feeds into a good segue to what you just said as well.

Ziad El Nabulosi: Absolutely. So I think to understand this, we have to have the classical image. of the relationship between science and capitalism and then see how Hontanji modifies it. So if you look at Marxist studies of the history of science, the most important one I would say is the work of Boris Hassan. So he was a Soviet physicist and philosopher and historian of physics. And he wrote this very famous article on Newton's Principia, where he said, look, I can show that there is a historical context which provided the necessary conditions for the emergence of something like Newton's Principia. And at the time, this was, I think he presented it in 1927, and it was stunning. At the time, people thought, well, what the hell is he talking about? What do you mean? Why are you talking about modes of production when we're talking about the history of physics? They seem to be things operating at different levels, you know? And Hessen simply says, well, look, you have to understand something. So I'm not saying that capitalism gave injunctions to scientists and said, okay, develop these theories because we have to control nature better. Actually, the picture is much more complex. He's saying that Capitalism allowed for the development of productive forces, and these productive forces, so technology, for instance, provided the kind of basis or substratum for reflections that eventually led to early modern scientific theories. And it's even clearer what he says when he tries to explain why thermodynamics emerges quite late in the 19th century. He says because the steam engine emerges quite late in the 19th century. So in a sense, he's saying that actually, first you needed the material, if you will, and then you develop the theoretical account, even if the scientist himself has no interest in the practical applications of their works. So Galileo, for example, famously says, you know, I don't really care if my model has practical implications. But in fact, for this model to be developed and for it to be taken up, there had to be a technological substratum that allowed for people to think that actually this model could mimic reality or model reality. I'm sorry. So, okay, this is the classical picture. So actually, the relationship between capitalism and science is positive on this classical image, right? So capitalism, at least in its early stages in Europe, it drove the development of science. Khantungji asks then, and here he's drawing on dependency theorists, so people like Samir Amin, people like Claude Aquet, you know, I don't know if he would characterize himself as a dependency theorist, but anyway. And he says, okay, but what does capitalism do in the colonies? And specifically, what does capitalism do in the African colonies? He says, actually, capitalism doesn't have that progressive role when it comes to the development of productive forces in the colonies. And this is a point that, you know, Walter Rodney had made, for instance, Amilcar Cabral had made, so it's not unique to Anton G. I think what's unique is the synthesis, to take this theory of the relationship between science and capitalism, and take the dependency theory analysis of what capitalism does in the colonies, and then tell us, okay, so what does capitalism then do to science? So basically, the kind of chain of causation, you can think about it as going from development of productive forces technology, which in turn gives the material substratum for the development of scientific discourse, which in turn provides the substratum for the development of an advanced philosophical discourse. And for Hontonji, capitalism in the colonies comes in and attacks this causal chain at its initial point. The initial point being that actually it freezes the development of productive forces. And in the book, I have some discussions of this, you know. So, for example, attacks on textile manufacturing in West Africa, attacks on industry in Egypt, and basically an attempt to de-industrialize these societies.

Speaker 2: I really appreciate that response. And you're seeing the kind of Lenin in that argument as well, right? When if we take the telos that's positive by so much of Western Marxism, which talks about communalism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and that the productive forces will inevitably give rise to a socialist takeover. Let me ask him the question, right? In the colonies, capitalism is not that progressive role. As opposed to developing and advancing their productive forces, it does the opposite. It hinders it, right? And slows it down. So I really, it's nice to hear that this author, Hotunji, is bringing them all together as well. So thank you. And also making it relevant to the continent of Africa. But I think given the intervention your book is making, In terms of speaking to contemporary debates of science, the role of science, the way epistemological roots of science, right, as it pertains to Africa, etc. There is this like anxiety that exists in much of decolonial scholarship. Maybe they will not call it an anxiety, but I, you know, this question of cultural authenticity. So you describe a pervasive anxiety among African philosophers around authenticity and concessions to colonial legacies. So why do you think this anxiety persists so strongly? And a question following that, how does Hotunji navigate it without falling into kind of cultural relativism?

Ziad El Nabulosi: Yeah, fantastic questions. So, you know, the anxiety aspect is really interesting because, you know, it's very understandable, right? I mean, there is the question of, well, if I think that there is this unequal relationship of domination and it gets expressed in an attempt to denigrate my cultural identity, then, of course, I take up a defensive posture, right? But then one worry that somebody like Khantungji would have is that when you take up a defensive posture, you do exactly what the person, the dominating party wants you to do. You close in on yourself and you isolate yourself from the kinds of things that can help you overcome that relationship of domination. So I think that's the key issue. And of course, you know, there is a worry, and I think you mentioned it, right? There's this notion that science, modern science, is a white man's thing. And actually, even progressive scholars, philosophers of science, such as Paul Feyerabend, was actually quite influential in an indirect way in the modern, sorry, contemporary decolonial stuff. He has this critique of the dominance of science and he says, you know, and he means it in a good way. He says, you know, why should we subject Africans, Indians and Chinese and Arabs, whatever, to the white man's manias? He calls them that. So manias, obsessions. But if you think about actually what's happening there, this is not a gesture of generosity because you are assuming, Feyerabend is assuming, that the white man will always dominate science. In fact, the historical record shows that this is not true. So this gesture of generosity where I say, you know, you keep your discourse, I keep mine. It's fine. You don't need to confront it. I'll protect you from its evil elements or its dominative aspects. It's actually quite condescending, right? I mean, if you think about what's going on there. And for me, and in the book, I don't discuss it a lot, but I've been thinking a lot about this. China is a really interesting case. So why is it a really interesting case? Well, obviously, for a variety of reasons. But one reason is that if you let's take something very simple that most people are familiar with, namely high speed railways, high speed railways were not invented in China. Right. This is just a fact. As a matter of fact, they were not. But. Over time, by stipulating conditions for technology transfer that are necessary to allow companies like Siemens to operate in China, they were able to negotiate in a certain way so that this technology transfer eventually led to China becoming the world leader in the design and engineering of high-speed railways. So the problem is, if I come along, and let's say I'm in the 1950s, 1960s, and I take a snapshot, if you will, in time, and I say, oh, so those people, they are the people who really have developed high speed railways, and they have some kind of mastery over it, and that this mastery is perpetual. well actually history shows that this is not how stuff works and to take again you know something more you know cultural if you will if you think again for example of different religions so you could say well look you know islam and its basic theological discourses was not in fact developed in west africa it was not originally developed in west africa however Over time, it came to be assimilated by parts of the West African population, where eventually you had people who have mastered these theological discourses and who are now teachers of people from the Arabian Peninsula, of people from Northeast Africa, and so on, right? So I think we have to be really careful that we don't lock ourselves into the view that if somebody... has had some kind of primacy in an area, then they have ownership over this area. Because I think this is not true. Same thing, I mean, we're talking about, and I just want to mention one more thing, because we, I know in the podcast, we talk about, for example, resistance and the technological under basis of resistance. So if you think, for example, ballistic missiles, these are Nazi inventions. Right. The V2 is the first, you know, proper ballistic missile. But this technology then gets transferred, gets assimilated, and becomes a means of deterrence, of self-defense, and so on.

Speaker 2: No, I think you make a strong case, and I really am excited to have this discussion. I'm very intrude to the kind of polemical dialogue that I engage with often. You know, the kind of readings that say Marxism is a white man's science. So now, even though we're talking about Western science or science more broadly here, I think what's important is that I'm saying that it has so much other bearings and other contemporary debates which are currently happening as well. So I really do appreciate that. So much to think about. And your case about West African assimilating Islam is so poignant here, right? Because there's cases of scholars coming from the Arabian Peninsula attempting to study in Timbuktu and being told you have to go back to your country and study for another 10 years before you're on the level to study here, right? So that's an example of that, right? So I guess the question is then, And forgive me for asking this a very simple way. As opposed to writing Africa out of the story of modernity or exercising modernity qua Europe, exercising that from knowledge systems in the continent, are you trying to write Africa in?

Ziad El Nabulosi: Right. Yes. I mean, I'm trying to write Africa in. And the other thing I want to say is actually, that we should be careful when we associate modernity with European societies, because European societies, you know, it might be that the discourse of modernity kind of first emerges in European societies for a variety of accidental historical reasons that somebody like Samir Amin and Eurocentrism covered anyway. But if you think about it, European societies were and are anti-modern in a lot of ways. And so, for example, take, for example, this notion that humans just by virtue of being human are free. Well, for long swathes of European history, even after the early modern period, this principle was not actualized. And people like Toussaint Louverture in Haiti said, pointed that out, right? So they said, well, actually, you claim you're talking about the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and yet you are perpetuating slavery, right? So the idea is that actually Europeans don't have some kind of monopoly that they inherited from their ancestors on modern discourse. And in fact, they fail by these standards frequently. And of course, they're failing now, if you look at the way that the genocide in Gaza is being justified. And actually, then you see that maybe some of these modernist principles were being used as a cover. And when they enter into a contradiction with interests that need to be defended, then they are simply pushed aside, right? You just say, okay, actually, the stuff about human rights, we're not so earnest about it. We were joking.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And again, it's like that's when we say we're dealing with things level of abstraction, right? You take the concept of human rights and you really try to tear it apart and undo it and look for what are the, in a Marxist lens, the social relations that produce concepts, right? That produce these things, right? Who incorporate the sayer and the said within that as well, right? So I think that's, I really do appreciate that. Okay, now this is, I've got a, so this, I'm really enjoying this conversation. I have your, as you speak, there's so many light bulbs going off in my head. So I'm just like, okay, cool. Let me just sort this out. But okay, so, ooh, there's another one to go for. Okay, you know that endogenous African knowledge systems were never static. They changed in response to empirical challenges, though at a slower rate than modern science. How does this historical insight complicate understanding

Ziad El Nabulosi: romantic or essentialist readings of indigenous knowledge yes so uh so so take for example one way in which people try to defend you know maybe what they can label uh ancestral knowledge. Sometimes they'll say things, well, my parents or my grandparents believed that this happened because of this, right? So they'll assert some causal claim. And this is fine, of course, but they also sometimes forget to recognize that their grandparents lived in a society that was dynamic and that when it was confronted by counter evidence, they changed their views. So one worry about efforts at retrieval is that you come and you actually take something that's dynamic, that was in a process of transformation, And again, you take a kind of synchronic screenshot of it and you say, you know what, this is what I'm going to defend. This is it. This is what we have. This is what we're going to defend. And of course, then that leads people to defend claims that they wouldn't want to defend otherwise. So Hunton G has an example of talking about the kings of Daomi, and the way, for example, that sometimes women were sacrificed and so on, I think it was part of a ritual to guarantee the king's passage to the underworld. And he says, well, look, today I wouldn't want to defend this view as Beninwa. I don't want to defend this notion. But if you have a very naive view of culture as static, then you actually think that, okay, I'm backed into a corner. My ancestors used to do this thing. I have to go and defend it. Even if deep down I really have reservations, I think, okay, this is maybe not a nice thing I want to defend. And you see it too with beliefs about nature. So Cabral famously says, nobody should think that it's essential for being African to believe that the spirits of the forest can hurt you or something. I mean, he says that explicitly. He says, okay, look, in human history, people have always believed this stuff. And maybe due to experience and so on, they end up revising these views. So there's no need to trap ourselves into these views. And it's the same, you know, if people today, you know, I know you're based in Egypt, but people today, there is a debate about khitan always, right? So female circumcision and this debate about, well, it's, you know, a cultural institution that we've had for a long time, even though it's not sanctioned by religion and so on. But, you know, our ancestors do it. Again, that's one of the things that you think, okay, if I really reflect on it, is this something that I want to defend in earnest? Or do I feel that I've backed myself into a corner because of my views on culture as static? And now I feel that I've been forced to defend this thing.

Speaker 2: So that's okay. I really appreciate that response, but I can already hear some of the rebuttals, right? And I think it's always good to, in a good faith dialogue, I would love to hear what people will say and how you come to think about these things, right? So immediately I can hear someone saying that, two things, doesn't Africa have anything? Why do we always have to go, quote unquote, to all these other places, right? And secondly, on the question of belief, yeah? How do we balance the real forms of colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism that do operate at the level of culture as well, right? They denigrate, diminish, slander in soul, call these cultures primitive, these ways of thinking primitive, et cetera, et cetera, right? And again, the examples you gave are like very clear-cut examples, right? Okay, the spirits in the forest or...

Ziad El Nabulosi: khitan female circumcision i think these are well but i think how about the issues where maybe that are not to that level to that extreme yeah yeah i i mean so one way to think about it is look of course there is a lot that has to be preserved so if you think about african art especially plastic arts which were really you know i mean they kind of were taken up and actually they shaped modern European art through people like Picasso and so on. There is a long story to say about that. So nobody would come and say, you know, that the plastic arts in West Africa, sculpture in West Africa in general is something that, you know, we should abandon and, you know, do do something else and i think i think that we have to be clear about what are the criteria that we're using to keep beliefs or practices or abandon them i mean one one very simple criterion that somebody like cabral uses he says does this advance the struggle for emancipation or does it hinder it if it hinders it we get rid of it if it doesn't hinder it we can keep it i love that right so for example For example, when he gives the example of the spirits in the forest, he says, why is he worried about it? He says, I'm trying to convince my guerrilla soldiers to take cover in the forests when the Portuguese are running air raids. But if they have this belief that there is a spirit in the forest who will hurt them if they take cover in it at night... That's going to impede the struggle. That's going to leave them out in the open where they can be heard. So I think there is always going to be some kind of criterion, right? We don't just go and say, and some beliefs you could say, look, even if I think it's not true, but maybe it's harmless. And then in that case, there is no point fighting against it. If somebody believes that, you know, if they burn incense around the house, this will keep evil spirits away. I can say, well, assuming that incense doesn't have harmful effects on your respiratory system, maybe I don't believe that this is what incense does, but I'm not going to go fight with my mother over it. Right. It's silly. It's not hurting me. It's not hurting her. So I think we have to be clear about why are we sifting through our beliefs in the first place? Exactly.

Speaker 2: You're not going to get me to hate Bukhor. OK, I'm always going to burn. Yeah, I like Bukhor. I'm not an anti-Bukhor guy at all. Absolutely, no. Okay. Many... So I want to look into, kind of like wrapping up, 10 minutes left for questions. One is, Hontunji's legacy for today's decolonial debates. So many contemporary decolonial scholars argue for radically indigenous knowledge systems. You suggest that some of these positions miss key nuances in Hontunji. So what do today's decolonial conversations... get wrong about science? And what can Hontunji and beyond help us recover?

Ziad El Nabulosi: Right. So one way in which I think decolonial theorists can have a simplistic view of science is that they think of it as always a tool for domination, right? That it's always intrinsically a tool for dominating, especially dominating the non-European other. And in fact, the historical record is much more complex. So you have cases, for example, where early modern European botanists. I think I talk about this in the book. I'm trying to remember. Yeah. Portuguese botanists in India, for example, they go and they have their botanical knowledge, which they have imbibed in Europe. And it's essentially Greek Arabic botany. This is what European botany was at the time. And they go to India and they encounter a different botanical discourse. And they actually say, well, actually, we think that these people understand things that we don't understand. And we have to learn from them. And we have to learn from them sometimes as equals as well, right? It's not always a relationship of domination. So these kinds of complexities, I think, are missed. And the other aspect which is missed in the decolonial account is in the other direction. That you have, for example, Africans. So somebody I've worked on a lot, James African, is Bill Horton, who makes a brief appearance in the book. But I've worked on him in other contexts as well. And he's really interesting because he's the first African to criticize race science from a scientific perspective. So he goes and he studies at King's College London as a physician and so on in the mid 19th century. And then this is the period also where race science is kind of coming into its own, right? It's becoming really popular as a form of discourse. And somebody like Horton, who's trained as a physician, actually says, look, I understand the kind of empirical basis that these claims ought to have. And when I investigate, I see that they don't have this empirical basis. So here you can see a scientific discourse becoming a weapon in the hands of Africans who say, no, no, I actually understand anatomy better than you. It might be that I've learned anatomy in your institution, but it's clear to me that my claims have better epistemic justification than your claims. that is the case so again i think again some of the decolonial discourse kind of flattens these developments and it's important i think to to to really grapple with this stuff because one worry that one could have is that if you just say look why don't we just keep whatever indigenous or indigenous intellectual discourse we have so one worry with that is actually you are playing into the hands of forces that are redeveloping the african continent. And in the book, I'm talking about it in terms of defunding higher education, defunding all of these research institutes, which were built during the Bandung era state, you know, this developmental state project. And so if I come and say, well, actually, you know, why do we need, so take somebody like Sheikh Anta Diop, who's totally opposite to the decolonial discourse, because, you know, many people don't know this about Sheikh Anta Diop. But aside from being an Egyptologist, he was also a physicist and he studied physics in France. And he had this project of actually developing an institute for nuclear physics on the African continent. And so there is somebody who's deeply immersed in African intellectual discourses, but who sees that, look, there is this other intellectual discourse and we need elements from it. We shouldn't be afraid to go and understand these elements and institutionalize this discourse in our own home countries, because this is the path forward for defense. And actually he was, Sheikh Anta Diop was also thinking about developing a nuclear deterrent to apartheid South Africa's nuclear weapons. So it's really that pragmatic, I would say, you know.

Speaker 2: No, no. Thank you so much for that. And I think you make the case extremely strong by providing these examples, right? Especially invoking someone like a figure, Sheikh Anta Job, who's almost universally accepted by so, well, so many people accept him anyway now in Black Studies. So, in closing then, talk us through what, well, three things. First, talk us through what people can expect as they go through the book, and how would you, being the author, how do you want people to read the book, right? I think that's important. Second question. Oh, sorry, sorry. Yeah, I mean, I can say them all now and you can just weave it up into one response. The second question I would say is, where can people get the book? That's also very important, right? Where can people get it? That's also very important. And then finally, I'll leave you for any closing remarks as well.

Ziad El Nabulosi: Fantastic. So let me start with where can people get the book? It's very expensive. Unfortunately, Springer makes it very expensive. But if they email me, I'm going to send a PDF. I mean, I'm happy to send PDFs to whoever wants. I don't recommend you buy it. I like my own book. Don't get me wrong, but it's not worth $175. I'm just being very honest. honest here so if you want a copy you know i i don't know if there is a way we can you know have my email in the description or something but yeah we can do that we can definitely do that we can so if we get something out okay cool yeah and with respect to reading the book so i think What I would want people to get from reading the book is actually how important it is to grapple with what African philosophers have written about the issues that we've been talking about. Because there is a way of talking about, and Anton G is very good on this, because he wrote on this question, actually, because there is a way of talking about the African continent, where actually all you get from the African continent is data and case studies, but the theory you get from Agamben or whoever. And this is supposed to be some kind of progressive discourse. I don't believe it's a progressive discourse. I don't know if I can be this blunt, but anyway. Please, please, you can. Absolutely. I'm being polite. I'm a polite guy. But yeah, so I think really this approach is not adequate. And the other issue I think I would really want people to grapple with in the book is How Hontanji draws on these different strands from Boris Hassan, from Marx, from Samir Amin, from Amilcar Cabral, maybe, to develop a synthesis that actually attempts to explain the phenomenon that he wants to grapple with. And I think it's really interesting to see him, Hontonji himself, as a paradigm of this kind of synthesis or assimilation or synthesis of external and internal discourses in his own writings. I think this is interesting, actually. Yeah, so these are the main things I'd like people to get from the book, really.

Speaker 2: No, thank you very much. And I think this is a great introduction to your book. I highly encourage the listeners to read it and engage in this question. And I think, as I would say, as people, because how I've come to read the sections that I've read from the book so far is that, you know, this question of like, yes, we understand the legacies of like race science. We understand that. Right. But scientific method, scientific development, technological advance could be used. to advance the material conditions or when we think about the struggles that plague africa right now and i think that's important right that should not be a thing of oh it's therefore these people have a primacy in dominance therefore we could we cannot use it no we don't that's not the world we live in and again it's also deeply ahistorical because the world has always borrowed from each other learned from each other stole etc that's just how knowledge systems have been developed right throughout history So Ziad, any final comments you want to leave off with?

Ziad El Nabulosi: No, I think your concluding comments are really perfect and they encapsulate the spirit of the book.

Speaker 2: Brilliant. All right. Until next time, please check out Professor Ziad and Nabilusi on social media or message me. I can put you in contact if you have any follow-up questions. And this will not be, I'm saying it publicly so people can hold me to this. This will not be the first time you hear Professor Ziad's voice on my podcast. Until next time, peace out.