In the third seminar of the “Speakers’ Lecture Series” organized by the College of International Studies (CIS) at the American University of Iraq-Baghdad (AUIB), the American Space at AUIB hosted an online lecture delivered by Dr. Zeyad El Nabolsy, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at York University, on “African Political Thought: African Socialism and the Critique of Marxism”. The lecture and the ensuing discussion focused on the theme of “intellectual autonomy” and originality versus “dogmatism,” manifest in the importation of ideology and the attempted imposition of it on a reality different from that which gave birth to the ideology in question.
African societies have traditionally been communal, even “anti-individualistic”, as per Dr. El Nabolsy who saw that the African anti-colonial movement was largely about “defending African traditions,” and that socialism in the continent aimed to modernize African societies while buttressing their communal normative values. He elaborated on the views of prominent African socialist thinkers and leaders who rejected perceiving the realities and dynamics of African societies through the lens of ideological impositions from different realities, “European realities,” such as the conceptions of class war, “stadial theories of history,” and “technological determinism.”