Abstract

In the first part of Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action, Africa serves as the paradigmatic “mythical” world against which the author establishes the achievements of the modern “rational” worldview.1 In addition, the modern societies analyzed through concepts such as “internal colonization,” “the uncoupling of system and lifeworld,” “the welfare state,” etc., in the second volume of that work are capitalist nation-states whose economic and political growth presupposed, from the 17th century on, imperial dominions, slavery, colonization and accompanying ideologies of white supremacy.2 Thus, in Habermas' thought, Africa is present only as a negative case.3When Talcott Parsons wrote that 'What…