Abstract

Culture is as old as history, yet its contemporary distinction lies in its omnipresent holding over diverse aspects of life. Culture has become the crux of academic psychological, social, anthropological and philosophical analyses with the impact of poststructuralism, communitarianism and cultural studies. Debates in these areas acknowledge cross-cultural dialogue. The paper interrogates two approaches to such dialogue, namely, Rabindranath Tagore’s benevolent Indian cultural pluralism and Kwasi Wiredu’s mainstream “critical and reconstructive” universalist position. The paper attempts to critique cultural subordination through symbolic, political and economic recognitions with reference to Indo-African perspective in general and the philosophical debates of Tagore and Wiredu in particular. This entails transcending rigid and undemocratic cultural identities to invent flexible and egalitarian cultures.