Dualism and the Third World Modern Intellectuals

Abstract

This paper is concerned with a particularly ignored factor of the Third World problematic: that is, the nature of the intellectuals/educated elite. To locate this particular problematic we employ the concept of ‘dualism'. It is our contention that because of the dual character of the Third World intellectuals/educated elite it has been weak and ineffective as a ‘progressive vanguard' in the Third World social formations and its transformation. We use examples from Nigeria, Ghana, and other Third World countries to highlight this phenomenon. The paper emphasizes the impact of the West on the Third World traditional societies and demonstrates the symbiotic dualities that permeated the formations. The historical disruption of the internal development of these regions is animated in three distinct period and patterns: the mercantilist, the colonial and the neo-colonial (post-colonial) periods. It is our contention that it was in these periods that the European hegemony was established and consolidated. We demonstrate that the colonial administrators were the hegemonic intellectuals of the colonial state, which fused together the differentiated capitalist apparatus with the native pre-capitalist social formations. It is within this context of a “fused” machinery of a Western capitalist state exerting its hegemony over non-western, pre-capitalist civil society, that the phenomenon of “dualism” took its historical roots. Thus, unacceptable dualism will continue unless efforts are made at the cultural ideological levels to transcend this immense yoke of our historic past.

Lagos Historical Review Vol. 7 2007: pp. 125-133