THE DETERMINISM OF THE RATZELIAN MYTH AND OF THE DIOPIAN ANTI-IMPERIALISM

a necessary comparison

Abstract

Charles Darwin's natural selection, Lamarck's theories, the European imperialist race to share and conquer Africa, colonialism and the rise of ideologies of racial and ethnic superiority: this is the context in which the world finds itself during the 19th and early 20th centuries. In this sense, geography is not left out of the desire to establish itself as a useful science, by elaborating general laws and functioning as an instrument of the Nation-State. Furthermore, the simplified and even erroneous use of Ratzel's concepts and theories condemned him to be seen as a determinist, with his works being used as a strategy in the midst of a conflicted Europe, in a context of epistemological historical rivalry between France and Germany, which made ascend and establish the myth of Ratzelian Deterministic Geography. Following a contrary line, Cheick Anta Diop emerged as a determinist alternative that breaks with the imperialist character of European Determinism. This article aims to compare two Determinisms, Friedrich Ratzel's deterministic myth and Cheick Anta Diop's determinism, built in similar historical contexts. Thus, the following article starts from a bibliographical analysis of original texts by Ratzel and his commentators, in addition to readings of texts by Diop and his re-readers. Therefore, the following work was able to establish correlations between convergent and divergent points between the two authors who are very similar in explaining the ethnic-racial diversity of the world: geography.