1993 Articles

Beyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism

West, Cornel

The European construction of distinctive forms of historical consciousness that highlight the operations of powers and especially human powers, the human making and remaking that provide the fundamental challenge not simply to our philosophical claims but to our conception of ourselves. That is, we discover the radically contingent character of whatever claims we put forward as well as the capacity of human beings to make and remake themselves and thereby to make and remake history, and hence to project possibilities, both for the self and for society, for the individual, for individuality-all of these terms not to be confused by discourses on the subject.