The Living Dead: A Past That Links the Present with the Future

An age that prioritizes rationality regards belief in invisible entities residing in the world as imaginary, illogical and irrational. However, the African belief system upholds invisible beings as real and central to the day to day running of human affairs. Therefore, it is marginalized and underestimated in discussions on scientific advancement, human freedom, continuity and survival. This work examines the relationship between modern science, an envisioned new age and indigenous studies by exploring concepts of singularity, extension, enhancement and expansion as ideas embodied in the African worldview and myth but enabled through scientific and rational processes to become universal. It argues that the African worldview does not separate, clearly distinct or differentiate between the realms of spiritual and physical therein, it contrasts the notion of time as linear and the universe as separated and fragmented. Its cyclic presentation shows a unified integrated universe that is of scientific interest because it gives an impression of a 'merging' between two things that are of unlike nature. For humanists and post-humanists who seek ways of overcoming the limitations imposed on man by nature, the projection of continuity in the myth of ancestors as dead relatives who exist in a world where their motor-sensory abilities are enhanced in such a way that enables an expansion in capabilities and change in form and function is insightful to understanding the workings of nature and achieving their desire to be like God. This work adopts the intersectional critical historical approach in demonstrating Africa’s relevance to humanity’s continuity, growth and wellness. It highlights racial discrimination, culture erasure and death of God as overlapping historical facts in the discontinuity and continuity of knowledge production among a people regarded as primitives but with potentials, beneficial to humanity and the making of a new age