Marimba Ani, Ph.D., is a veteran scholar, activist, and trained cultural scientist.

She is a
long time associate of the legendary world-renowned Egyptologist and African scholar Dr.
John Henrik Clarke. She is a professor at The City University of New York’s Hunter College
and the author of Let The Circle Be Unbroken. This is an extract from chapter one of her
body of work called Yurugu, which is a critique of Eurocentric thought.

The birth of the archaic “European” utamawazo was accompanied and supported by the
introduction of the literate mode as the dominant and valued mode of expression in the culture.
The written mode preserved communication in an ever-increasingly precise form in what was
to become “Europe.” Writing had been used much, much earlier in other cultures, but as in the
Kemetic MDW NTR (ancient “Egyptian Hieroglyphs”), it involved forms that symbolized much
more than sounds or objects.

The MDW NTR contains transformational symbolism that embodies African conceptions of
universal and cosmic truths. It is an indication of the nature of the European world-view and of
course an example of the intensity of European cultural nationalism that European scholars so
consistently characterize the MDW NTR of Kemet as being merely “concrete.”

This form of “reductionism” is an effort to oversimplify ancient African writing, the earliest form
of writing. It is an effort to make the MDW NTR appear conceptually limited and sometimes
contradictory. In truth, the MDW NTR was too complex for Plato’s purposes. He needed a
modality that robbed the symbols of their “symbolic,” their esoteric content. They had to be
disengaged from the cosmos.

It is important to understand the process by which the literate mode became dominant in the
culture and to understand exactly what is meant by the “literate mode” in this context. Although
for many centuries to come it was inaccessible to most of the population, it still had a valued
place in nascent, archaic, and feudalistic European society, and so greatly effected the shape of
the culture. We are describing a process of development, and because the development had a
“direction” does not mean that other characteristics were not identifiable.

The poetic or, as Henri and H. A. Frankfort call it the “mythopoetic” continued to exist among the
vast majority of the population, but it was relegated to a devalued position, implying inferiority
of intellectual capacity. That is why “the primitive,” defined Euro centrically, is always
associated with a lack of writing, and this is called being “pre-literate.” In nascent Europe the
literate mode had ideological force. Remember that according to Platonic epistemology we must
achieve objectivity in order to know and that in his terms this is achieved by causing our reason
to dominate our emotions, which in turn gives us control. We gain control Professor Marimba
Ani Yurugu Workshop over that which we wish to know, therefore creating an “object” of
knowledge.

The mode of preserved communication (which had characterized most cultures and which
would prevail in Greece centuries after Plato), was the poetic, the oral, and to some extent the
symbolic mode, although Greek culture was not nearly so well developed in that regard,
borrowing from other cultures their sacred and religious concepts. This mode relied on the
identification of the knower with the known. On powers of memorization, and familiarity of the
listener/participant with the subject-matter being used. The symbolic modes of the more
ancient and developed civilizations also required apprehension of abstractions, but these were
not the rationalistic abstractions that would come to dominate in European thought.

In the analysis of Eurocentric theorists it was this memory, this emotional identification and
“involvement” caused by the poetic, “oral,” and “Homeric” mode that had limited “pre-Platonic”
man. This characterization thrusts us into yet another “split,” another dichotomy of invidious
comparison. And with this another aspect of the supposed “superiority” of the European rears
its head. The “pre-Platonic” man (Havelock’s term), whom Homer’s epics represented and
whom they addressed, was in trouble according to Havelock. He is described as being
“nonliterate,” which of course has much more ideological force than just saying that he
preferred the poetic form. It surfaces as a weakness and inability to conceptualize, a negative
characteristic.

It devalues him as a person. This “nonliterate,” “pre-Platonic” person also picks up a host of the
characteristics, which, in the European world-view, are either valueless or absolutely negative.
Havelock describes the “Homeric man” as being a “sleeping” state, as though drugged. His mind
is governed by “uncritical acceptance,” “self surrender,” “automatism,” “passivity of mental
condition,” “lavish employment of emotions,” “hypnotic trance,” “complacency.” He uses “dream
language” and is the victim of “illusion.” He is in the “long sleep of man” and is even “lazy.”Why
is Havelock so hard on those whom he places in intellectual opposition to Plato? It is as if this
stage in Greek history or European development must be destroyed; certainly thoroughly
repudiated.

We will see in subsequent chapters of this study why these are precisely the terms that
Europeans use to describe and demean other cultures, cultures that are labeled “primitive.” And
these are the terms they use to characterize the abilities of children of African descent and other
groups who are seen as lacking cultural and racial value within the societies in which Europeans
dominate.

In fact, European academies “create” such nomininds. In each of these instances, including
Havelock’s critique of the mental habits of humankind “before” Plato, the statements made have
ideological significance. They are supporting a chosen way of life, a set of beliefs. The objective
is to establish the “way of life” as superior to all which either preceded it or that is different
from it. It is the ideological nature of Platonic epistemology that makes this possible: an
epistemology dictated by the European asili, carried in the cultural genes.

For Plato, the poet does not appeal to the proper “principle” in the person or to the proper part
of his or her soul. And so the poet would not be able to help in the task of lifting us out of the
darkness of the cave and correcting our ignorance towards the “light” of truth. The poet
obstructs the proper functioning of reason and does not help us to gain control of our emotions.

The imitative poet…is not by nature made, nor is his art intended, to lease or to affect the
rational principle in the soul; but he will prefer the passionate and fitful temper, which is easily
imitated…his creations have an inferior degree of truth…and he is concerned with an inferior
part of the soul; and therefore we shall be right in refusing to admit him into a well-ordered
State, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason.

As in a city when the evil are permitted to have authority and the good are put out of the way, so
in the soul of the man, as we maintain, the imitative implants an evil constitution, for he
indulges the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, but thinks the same
thing at one time great and at another small he is a manufacturer of images and is very far
removed from the truth.

Plato’s argument with the poets is that they do not foster the view of the State and of the “good”
of which he wants to convince people; of which they must be convinced in order for them to
play their parts well. The Republic is perfect because it is absolute. But what if human realities
are not absolute? Suppose there are ambiguities endemic to human existence?

Plato solves this problem by simply “eliminating” the ambiguous nature of our existential
reality, by pretending that it isn’t there. Who, after all, is creating “illusion” and who is dealing
with “reality?” The philosophy underlying the Republic says that human beings fit into neat
categories, that they are each suited to specific tasks by nature, and will be happiest doing that
for which they are best suited and that such is best for the order of the whole. Isn’t that
convenient? Plato doesn’t need the poets “messing” up this picture—they won’t help him sell his
myth.

If the poets and the poetic in us is bad and backyard, certainly the other side of the coin is that
our better, more rational natures are brought out by the literate mode, the substitution of object
for symbol. When the literate mode dominates, we nurture a new and different mindset. That is
the important thing. That is the significance of Plato’s work. Contrast Havelock’s
characterization of this “new” man with that of the “old.” The new man is governed by “self-
conscious critical intelligence,” “individual and unique convictions,” a “critical psyche,” “inner
stability,” “inner morality,” and “calculated reflection.

” He is “self-governing,” “emancipated,” “reflective,” “thoughtful,” “self-organized,” “calculative,”

“rational,” “self-generated,” “awakened,” “stimulated,” “thinking abstractly,” and “autonomous.”
In the rhetoric of European value the deck is clearly stacked. This “new” person is smart! What
we see is the epistemological basis of the conviction that literacy renders progressiveness and
that when the literate mode becomes valued and finally dominant, we have a “higher” form of
culture in terms of European civilizations, since that is where human being learned to be
“critical,” “indeed to think.”

But the European is certainly not very “critical” if that means questioning the European
worldview as Plato inspired its configuration. The world of literacy, it is believed, is a world of
objectivity, a world of “impartial” truth. Oral media is “subjective.” In it personality is merged
with tradition. How do we change this? “The fundamental signs enabled a reader to dispense
with emotional identification….” Plato urged a move away from “emotional involvement,”
“unquestioned precepts,” and “imitation.” (Today Habermas urges us away from pre decisive
validity claims based on cultural tradition.) Plato supposedly introduced “technical” learning
“on the highest level of consciousness.”

So while Plato is seeking to produce minds capable of the “highest” form of thought, “nonliterate
man” emerges as being barely able to “think” at all. Indeed, we cannot be sure that he is even
“conscious.” And, what is more, this epistemology is seen to have moral implications as well. The
literate participant of the ideal state is more moral because his ethics are subject to questioning,
criticism, and analysis, while the earlier Greek ethic was not. (Of course, once the “questioning”
takes place in the Socratic dialectic, not too much more “questioning” is necessary.)

Within the logic of European nationalism these ideas were to be later echoed in nineteenth
century evolutionary theory where Victorian culture was judged as the “highest” form,
representing a more objectively valid moral state, the assumption being that European values
were arrived at “critically” and “rationally” and were therefore universally valid. This was
legacy form the “enlightenment,” so-called.

Plato had set the stage for important ingredients of the European self-image. He sees himself as
a critical being, rational and in absolute control. His mission is to control and rationalize
the world, and this he achieves through the illusion of objectivity. Plato himself must have been
something like this. Stanley Diamond draws a portrait:

He was it seems, a man of a certain type, incapable of tolerating ambiguity, intuitive in his
conviction of an objective, superhuman good…. He believed in logic with the cool passion of a
mathematician, and he believed, at least abstractly, that the perfectly just city could be
established, through perfectly rational and perfectly autocratic means.

The desacralized written mode allowed the object to be “frozen,” reified into a single meaning;
Kemetic MDW NTR is not of this nature:

The ordinary consideration of the Egyptian symbol reduces it to a primary, arbitrary, utilitarian
and singular meaning, whereas in reality it is a synthesis which requires great erudition for its
analysis and a special culture for the esoteric knowledge that it implies.

R. A. Schwaller De Lubicz characterizes the MDW NTR in the following way, distinguishing them
from the merely literal mode: “symbolism,” which is the application of a “state of mind,” or,
again, a “mentality.” “Symbolism is technique; the symbolic is the form of writing of a vital
philosophy.” “The symbol is a sign that one must learn to read, and the symbolic is a form of
writing whose laws one must know; they have nothing in common with the grammatical
construction of our languages. It is a question here, not of what might be called “hieroglyphic
language,” but of the symbolic, which is not an ordinary form of writing.”

De Lubicz is concerned with describing “the principles that govern the symbol and the symbolic
in the expression of a vital philosophy, not a rationalistic philosophy.” He says that there “exists
no hieroglyphic language, but only a hieroglyphic writing, which uses the symbol to lead us
toward the symbolic.”The significance of these passages is that it affirms my belief that the
MDW NTR of Kemet does not represent a “primitive” form of secular or profane script and is not
therefore “pre-European.”
Rather, it represents a quite different view of reality—a mindset that sought to understand the
universe as cosmos, therefore careful not to attempt the separation of spirit and matter. So that
when we speak of the literate mode as championed by Plato, we mean to stress a unique
definition and use of that mode: one devoid of the “symbolic” in De Lubicz’ sense. This writing
lacked something. It was only able to deal with “one-dimensional realities,” and as Diamond
says,

It reduced the complexities of experience to the written word…with the advent of writing
symbols became explicit; they lost a certain richness. Man’s word was no longer endless
exploration of reality, but a sign that could be used against him…writing splits consciousness in
two ways—it becomes more authoritative than talking thus degrading the meaning of speech
and eroding oral tradition; and it makes it possible to use works for the political manipulation
and control of others.

It was not that this literal mode represented or led to higher truths, but that the claim was made
that it did and that it gave the illusion of having done so, making this medium useful. It worked!
It helped to control minds, values, and behavior, just as any media does, but in a new and for
some a “desirable” way.

The written language was more impressive than speech. Platonic epistemology achieved this
once it was valued. Then speech came to imitate this writing, which was no longer “magical,”
sacred, and truly symbolic. The permanence of the written word gave it ideological strength.
The permanence of the written word gave it ideological strength. Written dialogues, written
laws, and strangely enough, written prayers—the sacred reduced to profane “scriptures”; all of
this became evidence, for the European, of the superiority of his/her culture.

Marimba Ani, Ph.D., is a veteran scholar, activist, and trained cultural scientist. She is a long time
associate of the legendary world-renowned Egyptologist and African scholar Dr. John Henrik
Clarke. She is a professor at The City University of New York’s Hunter College and the author of
Let The Circle Be Unbroken.