A dialogue between the law 10.639/03 and philosophical thought of Cameroonian Marcien Towa

Abstract

The aim of this work is to establish a dialogue between the philosophical thought of the Cameroonian Marcien Towa and the law 10.639/03. By turning compulsory the teaching of history and African-Brazilian and African culture in schools in Brasil, the proposed law 10.639/03 aims to deconstruct the strong presence of Eurocentrism and the ideology of whitening in Brazilian education. Across the Atlantic, the philosophical thought of Towa seeks to question the possibility of the existence of an African philosophy. By doing so, he aims to answer the question "Is there a black African philosophy?". During the construction of his answer, Towa shows the wrong way as the Europeans built the fallacious syllogism which infers that African blacks are incapable of rationality and therefore unable to participate in the construction of universal history. The deconstruction aimed by the author has many points in common with the deconstruction that the law 10.639/03 seeks to deconstruct the wrong way the black population is seen in Brazil - not as subjects of their own history and the history of Brazil. In order to think on the construction of the idea of not historical initiative of blacks, we will use the thinking of Knolo and in order to think on the deconstruction of the ethnocentrism we will use the thinking of Gilroy.