Not for the first time, I’m struck by how much Paulin Hountondji’s critique of African philosophy applies just as forcefully — perhaps, even, more devastatingly — to USian analytic philosophy. The most obvious node of that critique, of course, is that analytic philosophy is largely a variant of ethnophilosophy.

Today, however, a deeper resonance occurred to me as I came across squeals of delight from analytic philosophers whose programs have gotten the nod from the cargo cult PGR report, punctuated by the wounded yawps of those whose programs are — in the dystopian idiom of analytics — “unranked.”

Consider, then, the following passage from Hountondji’s Combats Pour Le Sens: Un Itineraire Africain modified just a tad for the analytic philosophy crowd:

“The quest for rankings is always bound up with a desire for the gaze. It has meaning only in relation to the Other, from whom one wishes to distinguish one’s self at all costs. This is an ambiguous relationship, inasmuch as the assertion of one’s difference goes hand in hand with a passionate urge to have it recognized by the Other. As this recognition is usually long in coming, the desire of the subject, caught in his/her own trap, grows increasingly hollow until it is completely alienated in a restless craving for the slightest gesture, the most cursory glance from the Other.”