Abstract

This study takes issue with the notion of cultural relativism, a notion which translates into the proposition that all known (or knowable) cultures are co-equally worthy, valid in their own right, and need therefore to be addressed on their own terms so as to be genuinely appreciated. Accredited by the liberal school of Western cultural anthropology, the proposition is basically a moral concession, nay, a compulsion to redistributive egalitarianism within the cultural kaleidoscope that our planet has grown to be. But beyond its unctuously moral appeal, cultural relativism becomes an intellectual humbug. For it conceals the starkly conflictual dynamic to the very comparison of cultures or peoples in the first place. The dynamic is no other than the order of modernity, an order that has levered into relief, over the past four centuries, the inequality among cultures. It is mainly to help combat the propagation of said faith among Africans that I have contributed the "Agonistic Imperative". The last is a category for distinguishing among the culture complexes that make up the field of modernity. Underlying it is the idea of self-transcending, unrelenting struggle as a property of the human mind, an idea that finds expression in the survivalist potentials of given cultures.