The emergence and evolution of civilizational consciousness and identity in Africa unfold within a context marked by profound identity crises and shifting mentalities, shaped by contemporary sociocultural and political transformations, Elena Kharitonova writes.
African history, marked by profound sociocultural, political, and psychological upheavals, brings to the fore the complex issue of identity. These transformations – whether affecting individuals, communities, ethnic groups, or entire civilizations – sharply raise questions of self-determination and belonging. The problem of identity is inextricably linked to fundamental existential inquiries: Who are we? (self-definition in an evolving world), Who are we with? (the search for alliances and solidarity), Where are we going? (the navigation of collective trajectories), and What is our mission? (the articulation of purpose within the emerging global order).
Since the 1960s, the term “identity” has become ubiquitous in both scholarly discourse and popular media. Its prominence grew during the era of decolonization, as former colonies gained independence, and in the United States amid the African American civil rights movement and struggle against systemic racism. The renowned German-American psychologist Erik Erikson, a pioneering scholar of identity studies, observed this transnational phenomenon. Analyzing parallels between US race relations and global independence movements, he wrote: “The concept of at least the term identity seems not only to have pervaded the literature on the Negro revolution in this country, but also to have come to represent in India (and in other countries) something in the psychological core of the revolution of the colored races and nations who seek inner as well as outer emancipation from colonial rule and from the remnants of colonial patterns of thought.” In the era of globalisation, the relevance of the problem of a specific African identity has acquired a global scale. American futurologist Alvin Toffler wrote: “Millions of individuals search frantically for their own identities or for some magic therapy to re-integrate their personalities, provide instant intimacy or ecstasy, or lead them to ‘higher’ states of consciousness.” It is identity, namely, civilisational identity, that largely determines the vectors of modern civilisational development of the countries of the African continent. Whatever problem of modern Africa we touch upon, we will find traces of the deepest crisis of identity – both individual and collective. This crisis, which began in the era of the European invasion, is aggravated in each historical period and draws into its whirlpool more and more new generations of Africans. The crisis of identity can be defined as the collapse of the familiar picture of the world, the logic of the foundations of life, the devaluation of values, the destruction of norms and stereotypes of behavior, the undermining of trust in one’s own culture, and at the present time – as a search for one’s own identity, as an affirmation of one’s own significance and one’s own mission. The emergence and evolution of civilizational consciousness and identity in Africa unfold within a context marked by profound identity crises and shifting mentalities, shaped by contemporary sociocultural and political transformations.
This process is far from complete; civilisational identification is carried out primarily in the form of images, civilisational representations and individual civilisational ideas are constantly adjusted, revised and clarified by Africans. At the same time, fairly clear civilisational prospects are emerging. First, this is further unification, integration of African countries along the main vital lines – economic, political, social, cultural, environmental. Second, this is, obviously, the inclusion of African countries in the global economic space. The forms of this inclusion, which are actively being worked out and discussed by Africans themselves, remain in question. Africans are in search of their identity, their mission, their purpose, scaling their ideas to civilisational, global levels, striving to answer the classic questions of self-identification: Who are we? Where are we going? With whom are we going? What is the meaning of our life? Identification processes involve not only separate individuals, but also collectives, communities of individuals who are included in wider communities and acquire higher levels of identity. Thus, ethnic groups as communities of individuals united by a common language, culture, customs and symbols can be part of a national state, acquiring a state identity; in turn, states, based on the cultures included in them, acquire a civilisational identity. At the same time, the people included in them acquire a new, supranational, supraconfessional, suprastate – civilisational – identity.
The processes of identification and self-identification obviously presuppose not only the introduction to new identities, but also the preservation, development of one’s own identity, its adaptation to changing conditions. Such radically different conditions are created by globalisation, which seriously threatens the existence of both individual identity and collective identity, in particular, national, ethnic, and state.
Globalisation, firstly, spreads the principles and practice of market economy in all regions of the world, and, secondly, promotes the widespread distribution of modern communication technologies – television, the Internet, mobile communications. The consequence of these factors is the penetration of consumer mass culture, practically the same everywhere, into all corners of the world.
According to a number of theorists, in the conditions of such unification of the world, primarily of the postmodern persuasion, any identity – both individual and collective – loses its meaning, the boundaries between individuals and groups are blurred. Globalisation, along with its advantages, conceals serious humanitarian threats. Thus, the market economy, developed according to uniform (Western) principles, often does not correspond to local conditions – natural and human. The global communication and information networks not only promote interaction of cultures and contacts between people, but also create opportunities for manipulation of consciousness and control of people. All this, ultimately, threatens the preservation of national cultures, as well as the existence of a man himself. Probably, at present, increased attention to the problem of identity has become a response to the challenges of globalisation, to the threats of the general levelling of the world. The theory of identity opposes the growing homogeneity of the world with the ideas of preserving the “self” of the individual and culture, originality, features, differences, differentiation.
Thus, among collective identities in the era of globalisation, civilisational identity acquires the greatest significance. The problem of civilisational identity itself obviously arose at the end of the twentieth century and was formulated with sufficient certainty in Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations”. In the era of globalisation, as Huntington notes, “a civilization-based world order is emerging: societies sharing cultural affinities cooperate with each other […] countries group themselves around the lead or core states of their civilization..” Huntington understands civilisational identity as “the broadest level of cultural identity.” “It is defined,” writes Huntington, “both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people. People have levels of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with varying degrees of intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a Westerner. The civilization to which he belongs is the broadest level of identification with which he intensely identifies. People can and do redefine their identities and, as a result, the composition and boundaries of civilizations change. Civilisational images that shape civilisational consciousness can be formed “by contradiction” according to the classical dichotomy “us – them”.
Thus, if the positive civilisational identification of the West was formed on the basis of pushing away from the negative image of the East and, later, Africa, then the African positive civilisational identification is carried out, on the contrary, pushing away from the negative image of the West – in fact, by means of a mirror-image change of evaluative poles. In the images of African civilisational consciousness, the protest component, directed against colonialism, racism, oppression, discrimination, and humiliation of dignity, was formed first of all.
If we talk about the structure of civilisational identity, then, according to the Soviet and Russian philosopher and culturologist Igor Kondakov, in its most general form, as applied to any civilization, it can be presented as a “triad”, which, first, contains expressed forms of self-awareness; second, it correlates itself and its specificity with the surrounding (according to the author, “adjacent” or related) civilizations; third, it seeks to project its achievements and problems onto the world community as a whole and onto world culture. Kondakov calls these three components of civilisational identity the “mentality of civilization”, its “locality” and “globality”. Moreover, he considers the presence of all three elements of this triad to be the criterion of the civilisational nature of identity.
As we could see, Africans have a pronounced self-awareness; their correlation with other civilisations often occurs according to the principle of building “oppositions” (for example, with the civilisations of the “whites”, former colonizers, and today – in the “opposition” to the “Western” civilisation). As for the third component, the desire to project their achievements onto global processes can explain such African actions as various peacekeeping initiatives of 2022–2024, as well as the “Agenda 2063” of the African Union, which adopted a long-term program of action for Africa in the modern world.
