Reading Lyotard’s postmodern condition with an Afrocentric gaze: The nature of knowledge and Ghana’s higher education

Jean-François Lyotard explored ideas about the nature of knowledge, performativity, and other topics in ‘The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge’ (1984). On the nature of knowledge, Lyotard questioned the totalizing effect of modernity’s grand narratives and the neglect of narrative knowledge. Although Lyotard’s focus is on post-industrial Western countries, some of his ideas appear useful for non-European societies, and in the case of this article, African societies. The Afrocentric pursuit has emerged as a result of the politics of knowledge and the dislocation of African worldviews and knowledge systems. Lyotard’s discussion of the possibilities for multiple narratives and his critique of universalizing narratives align with Afrocentric claims about the plurality of knowledge and knowing, as well as the quest for African agency. The article draws on Lyotard’s expositions on the nature of knowledge to discuss the prospects for and tensions in attaining the Afrocentric goal in Ghana’s neoliberalized higher education space. On the future of the university, while Lyotard predicts the ‘death of the professor’ in industrialized societies, Ghana’s academy is still grappling with how to make both the professor and the university relevant to their societies—a central ideal of Afrocentricity.