A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CHANBANI MANGANYI'S IDEA OF LIVED EXPERIENCE OF DIFFERENCE

Chanbani Manganyi was a Black South African who lived under the apartheid which influenced his idea of the lived experience of differences which was as a result of his experience in the environment he found himself. Manganyi's idea on "The lived experience of differences" is mostly seen in his Book titled " Being - Black - in - the - World", where he discusses extensively Being, Black consciousness and Freedom which are the center of his idea of lived experience of differences. However, the difference arose from the classical formation of phenomenology by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-paul Sartre, Merleau-ponty and other Western phenomenologist which is in contrary to African phenomenology. As the African phenomenologist claims that Western phenomenologist take their idea to be a universal reason which is not practicable in the Black society. As Fanon critique Hegel that, Hegel assertion that, "Man is human only to the extent to which he tries to impose his existence on another in other to be recognized by him' but in an anti-black racist society, the Black man is reduced to a non-person, not a man, hence, Hegel asserts about man does not pertain to the black".1 Manganyi was not really get influenced by the western phenomenologists' ideas as he only used their theories in relation to the situation of the Black person who is reduced to a non person by the white. However, Manganyi's aim is to understand the experience of being black and being defined by your race through the perception of others which he showed by reorganizing and problematizing the western phenomenologists' ideas, and this led to the idea described as "radical phenomenology of difference."2