ABSTRACT
Christopher Miller's discussion of the interpretation of African literatures relies on an examination of cultural or theoretical projection onto a text. The relationship between ethnography about Africans and colonialism of Africa is evident in travelogues and novels, often written by members of the British colonial service, and 'ethnophilosophy', which incorporates African literary criticism and presents itself as either resistance to, or resolution of the problems of colonialism. African literary criticism has founded itself on projects of decolonisation and nationalist independence movements. If 'cultural difference' as a concept emerges from the 'culture gardens' in Fabian's discussion, or the higher and lower 'races' of anthropologists like Avebury, an approach to African literature which sees only otherness risks these totalising and essentialising strategies. Johannes Fabian's argument relies on a bid for 'Intersubjective Time' in anthropology, which refuses any absolute distinction between the temporalities of one culture and another, and relies instead on the dynamics of human interaction and communication.
