Interrogatory theory: patterns of social deconstruction, reconstruction and the conversational order in African philosophy

Abstract

Africa is in economic and social terms widely regarded as an underdeveloped continent even though we in interrogatory theory (IT) would prefer the term developing instead. Its societies are characterized by unstable institutions. Societies ride on the wheels of institutions. Institutions are social structures or building blocks of any society. Repressive colonial times replaced traditional institutions with non-compatible ones ignoring any usable part of tradition and admitting without censorship every element in the imposed modernity. My position in this essay is that social structures in postcolonial Africa are ramshackled hence the massive retrogression of the continent’s social order. To get Africa on its feet and moving in the right direction requires the reconstruction of the social structures of Africa’s modernity and the construction of its futurity. I postulate interrogatory theory (IT) as a conversational algorithm that would provide the theoretic base for the authentic African renaissance. It is constructively questioning rather than being exclusively critical i.e. it questions to reconstruct rather than being merely critical to deconstruct; dialogical rather than merely individualistic; rigorous rather than merely informative; yet radical rather than being conventional.

KEYWORDS: Interrogatory theory, deconstruction, reconstruction, conversationalism, African philosophy