Developing a Post-Colonial Classical Hermeneutics: Rereading Ancient Texts Through African Interpretive Horizons

Classical hermeneutics, the theory of how ancient texts should be interpreted, has been developed within European scholarly traditions that assume a broadly shared cultural and intellectual lineage between the interpreter and the classical world. A postcolonial classical hermeneutics, which explicitly accounts for the interpretive position of scholars from formerly colonised societies engaging with texts that arrived through colonial mediation, constitutes a significant original theoretical contribution to the discipline. This study develops an original post-colonial classical hermeneutics drawing on postcolonial theory, hermeneutical philosophy, and the distinctive interpretive practices of Nigerian Classical Studies scholars. A theoretical-constructive methodology was adopted, drawing on philosophical hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur), postcolonial theory (Spivak, Bhabha, Achille Mbembe), and reception studies theory alongside analysis of Nigerian classical scholars' interpretive practice through close reading of twenty scholarly publications and interviews with fifteen Nigerian classical scholars at universities in Enugu, Lagos, Ibadan, and Zaria. The proposed post-colonial classical hermeneutics operates through five interpretive principles: epistemological situatedness (acknowledging the interpreter's colonial inheritance as a hermeneutical factor), cultural dialogism (treating African and classical cultural horizons as equally legitimate interpretive resources), ideological suspicion (critical attention to colonial power structures embedded in classical text transmission), restorative reading (identifying silenced African perspectives in classical encounters), and generative reappropriation (the right of postcolonial interpreters to deploy classical texts for new cultural purposes). The framework is validated through applied readings of Virgil's Aeneid, Thucydides' History, and Aristotle's Politics.

Keywords: postcolonial hermeneutics, classical interpretation, African interpretive horizons, theoretical framework, original contribution