African Philosophy: Colonialism and Postcolonialism

This philosophical investigation interrogates the relationship between G.W.F. Hegel’s concept of the master-slave dialectic in The Phenomenology of Spirit and the critique and reformulation of it by Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks. As a means of contextualization and expansion of Hegel’s original textual account, I consider Susan Buck-Morss’ seminal defense through grounding the dialectic in Hegel’s possible historical knowledge of the Haitian Revolution. I maintain that despite a compelling picture, Buck-Morss’ insights are unable to fully vindicate Hegel from (...) the rebukes of Fanon, and as a result, Hegel’s phenomenology necessitates a concrete analysis of the actual conscious experiences of the racialized and colonized subject in order to realize its aims. In pursuit of this critical methodology, I develop the upshot and positive movement of Fanon’s critique through what I describe as a “phenomenology of flesh” in conversation with Maurice Merleau Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible. (shrink)

This is my reply essay (1000 words) to Travis Timmerman's "A Case for Removing Confederate Monuments" in Bob Fisher's _Ethics, Left and Right: The Moral Issues That Divide Us_ volume (2020). In it, I explain why I think the mere harm from the racial offense a monument may cause does not justify removing it.

This paper will reflect on the possibility of epistemic decolonization, particularly in terms of curriculum, as a transformative educational process in the context of the South African university, and with respect to my own positionality. The argument will centre around two difficult interdependent positions. On the one hand I will argue for the university’s task as transformational, even offering, via Cornel West, the ‘salvific’ possibility that knowledge offers those who seek it. To develop this claim, I will draw on and (...) develop the notion of paideia though the work of Plato and Heidegger.On the other hand, within the postcolonial African university, the question of decolonization in the tertiary space cannot be elided, particularly since the 2015 #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements. The university is a powerful colonial relic, and it can be used to reinforce and perpetuate epistemic violence through unreflective or unconscious pedagogical and curriculum decisions. Here I draw on decolonial thinkers such as Santos, Mignolo, Maldonado-Torres, and Mbembe: I argue for a reckoning with the forces of coloniality, and advocate for epistemic justice and criticality, as part of the decolonizing project. In conclusion, working with ideas from Cornel West, I argue to reconcile paideia, as the ‘turning of the soul’, with the decolonizing African university. (shrink)

The main objective of this chapter is to explore individual and collective approaches in exploring the African identity that lies within in support of collective liberation. We begin with the premise that Africa is rich in its culture, spirituality, and resources. From colonization to globalization, eurocentrism and its cultural dominance have attempted to weaken African identities. Drawing from the work of Black African and Diasporic scholars, this chapter will start by providing a brief snapshot of Africa’s history through an exploration (...) of our roots and African practices. Understanding the deep historical roots of the underdevelopment of the continent exposes the causal relationship between colonization and exploitative governance. It is through resistance that we can disrupt the colonial legacy and create a new status quo. Ultimately, through personal narratives and accounts, the chapter explores individual and collective approaches for resistance and recommendations for reparations. Implementation would encourage transformational healing and restorative change resulting in the successful resurgence of African identities and collective action. (shrink)

A Post-Colonial Reconstruction of Africa surveys the significant reconstruction work undertaken in the social and political organization of sub-Saharan African society in the decades following the colonial interruption and subjects these efforts to rigorous criticism in order to establish whether they can carry the weight of modernization efforts in Africa. To examine the significant trends, it highlights the work of African intellectuals such as Kwasi Wiredu, Kwame Gyekye, Paulin Hountondji, Kwame Nkrumah, Anthony Appiah, Ato Sekyi-Otu, and Bernard Matolino. Pieter H. (...) Coetzee argues that reconstruction inspired by traditional communitarian systems of social organization, including the modified form presented by Matolino, do not adequately do justice to the liberty aspirations of individuals in an era when the demand for increased democratization has become globally paramount. Reconstruction efforts inspired by appeal to native traditions of liberalism, including native conceptions of individual rights, fare better in this regard. However, current reconstruction efforts have done little to rescue Africans from the negative economic effects of colonialism and neo-colonialism and fail to alleviate self-perception problems created by Western racism. Appiah’s cosmopolitan option and Sekyi-Otu’s left universalism are notable exceptions. (shrink)

In this article, the nature of Ethiopian modernity will be explored through the usage of concepts like coloniality, entangled modernities and uneven histories that are borrowed from decolonial and postcolonial perspectives. Through such an analysis, the Ethiopian discourse on modernity will be presented as a conception of social progress that developed in a dialectical relationship with liberal, Marxist, indigenous and religiously inspired conceptions of modernity. It will be argued that resisting the attempts to romanticize the past as a foundation of (...) cultural revival and also the attempt to confine the discussion of Ethiopian modernity to the introduction of western modernization, Ethiopian modernity should be alternatively conceptualized as a discourse that is co-constituted in an active confrontation with alternative visions of progress. The article argues that the diagnosis of the multiple and interconnected discourses that shaped the Ethiopian discourse on modernity serves as a foundation of an Ethiopian critical theory. Such a theory creatively synthesizes cultural values, hosts an inclusive political culture that furnishes the culture of public criticism and introduces a world of knowledge production that overcomes Eurocentrism. (shrink)

According to Nana (chief) Ani Marimba, “your culture is your immune system” (n.d.). This is to say that culture is a universal reality that provides its members specialness and a shared sense of collective identity. Therefore, for me Wairimu—daughter of Wangũi and Njoroge (my late-mother and still living father, and that of my fore parents and ancestors)—culture is not only about my/our people’s values, traditions, and heritage from our common origins in the Nile Valley (The Earth Center, The history of (...) the Dogon. Retrieved May 10, 2023, from https://www.theearthcenter.org/history, 2023). Most importantly, African culture “holds remarkable solutions to our problems and potential for our greatness” (Marimba, What is culture? Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItHbLahuPBw, 1999, n.p). In this chapter, I as a “continental African” who acknowledges my insider-outsider identity as a resident and student being “mis-educated” in the western colonial institutions, I will explore from an African-centered lens: (1) What is Culture? (2) What is Cultural Genocide? and (3) What is its Impact on my/our holistic being as a Pan-Africanist(s), by looking at What Was, What Became/is Becoming of African culture? (Njoroge, “Mtu Akikuita Mmbwa Usibweke”/When Someone Calls You a Dog, Don’t Bark Back! In Eizadirad, A. & Wane, N. N. (eds.), The power of oral culture in education. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18537-3_2, 2023). In conclusion, since the afflicted is the expert of their reality and with utmost humility, I offer that “the best way to fight an alien culture is to live your own”, as Okuninibaa Safisha Nzingha Hill Adélékè reminds us (The best way to fight an alien culture is to live your own, n.d.). In accordance with the African tradition of honoring thy ancestors, I will capitalize on the already existing and passed-down ancestral and elders’ knowledges and wisdom (The Earth Centre, The history of the Dogon. Retrieved September 10, 2020, from https://www.theearthcenter.org/history, n.d.). (shrink)

In the last two decades, we have witnessed the quest for decolonization; through research, writing, teaching, and curriculum across the globe. Calls to decolonize higher education have been overwhelming in recent year. However, the goal of decolonizing has evolved past not only the need to dismantle colonial empires but all imperial structures. Today, decolonization is deemed a basis for restorative justice under the lens of the psychological, economic, and cultural spectrum. In this book, the editor and her authors confront various (...) dimensions of decolonizing work, structural, epistemic, personal, and relational, which are entangled and equally necessary. This book illuminates other sites and dimensions of decolonizing not only from Africa but also other areas. This convergence of critical scholarship, theoretical inquiry, and empirical research is committed to questioning and redressing inequality in contemporary history and other African studies. It signals one of many steps in a bid to consultatively examine how knowledge and power have been both defined and subsequently denied through the sphere of academic practice. (shrink)

Well-Being in African Philosophy: Insights for a Global Ethics of Development, edited by Bolaji Bateye, Mahmoud Masaeli, Louise Müller, and Angela Roothaan, explores the notion of well-being in African and intercultural philosophy and its insights into global ethics of development. Drawing from longstanding debates on communitarianism in the context of personhood in African philosophy, as well as those in intercultural philosophy, the diverse contributors present manifold ways to philosophize about well-being from African contexts. Hailing from sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and the (...) Middle East, they address questions of human well-being related to the major global challenges of our time, such as climate change and socio-economic, gender, and racial inequality in society, education, and organization. This collection, building on the work of African independence philosophers as well as oral traditions from a critical development studies perspective, offers fresh views on well-being, development, and morality, thus contributing to global ethics from an African vantage point. The first author of this book's introduction is Louise Müller. See: Müller, L and A. Roothaan (2023). ‘Introduction’. In: Well-Being in African Philosophy: Insights for a Global Ethics of Development. Maryland, USA, Lexington Books by Rowman and Littlefield, 1-11. (shrink)

There has been a recent increase in interest in the place of race in the writings of modern canonical European philosophers (e.g., in Locke, Hume, Kant, and Hegel). However, while it is undoubtedly necessary to undertake such investigations, we should also not stop there, insofar as stopping there does not, in fact, overturn the charge of Eurocentrism or parochialism which has often been leveled against academic philosophy. Because the circle of interlocutors is not being expanded in such an approach, it (...) results in merely asking different questions about the same people (primarily male white European thinkers). Hence the importance of taking into consideration and critically evaluating the response of African philosophers and scientists such as James Africanus Beale Horton (1835 – 1883). (shrink)

This chapter aims to revisit some of the key questions which were debated at the University of Dar es Salaam during the 1970s and 1980ss. The University of Dar es Salaam was a hotbed of progressive politics during the period in question. Radial political economy was frequently taught and discussed by the students and professors at the university. The ruling party, the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), under the leadership of Julius Nyerere, was embarked on a project of building socialism, (...) but this was not a Marxist project, rather it was informed by the theory of ‘African Socialism’ which was adhered to by Nyerere. Proponents of African Socialism claimed that because African societies were and are classless societies, a theory of social transformation which was centred on class struggle was inapplicable to such societies. There were other proponents of African Socialism, but it was only in Tanzania that this theory was applied as a theory of socialist development. The proponents of African Socialism in Tanzania held that the situation there was exceptional compared to developments across the African continent in so far as communal forms had survived into the end of the colonial period. On this basis, the claim was made that such communal forms could provide an alternative basis for building a socialist society without the need for going through a stage of independent capitalist development. This view might have appeared especially plausible when its proponents contrasted the case of Tanzania with the case of neighbouring Kenya, where a fairly strong class of rich peasants able to hire the labour of others emerged during the colonial period. (shrink)

Work on the conceptual amelioration of race concepts is usually negative or critical: it uncovers social features that contribute to racial hierarchies. Much less focus has been placed on how ameliorative accounts contribute to positive change. Using an account of race developed by Steve Biko during South African apartheid, I will argue that we can extract a novel account of positive amelioration in which racial categories can have normative or aspirational force, contributing to positive change.

I employ Oliver Mtukudzi—the late Zimbabwean musician’s Murimi munhu lyrical composition—to highlight the coloniality embedded in “small scale” subsistence farmers in Zimbabwe. Arguing from a decolonial perspective; this chapter seeks to achieve two things. Firstly, in deploying the decolonial theory, attention here is focused on confronting the negative stereotypes and marginalising practices that are systematically expressed and practiced against “small scale” subsistence farmers in rural “reserve” Zimbabwe. By their very nature, dehumanising stereotypes and exclusionary practices are not only a negation (...) of African communal values, but also perpetuate and entrench coloniality. Secondly, by addressing coloniality as the basis of dehumanising tendencies towards small scale subsistence farmers, the chapter endeavours to conceptually restore the humanity of subsistence farmers in rural Zimbabwe. Therefore, the central argument here is that decoloniality is imperative to countervail dehumanising practices and orientations as highlighted in the Murimi munhu song. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to address the question: is the end of development possible? Post-development theorists declare the end of development. They insist that the problematisation of poverty by development theory is one of the key defects of development. The irony in this problematisation is that development practice as an offshoot of development theory does not actually alleviate poverty, particularly in colonial spaces. Rather, the agents of development have perpetuated underdevelopment at the fringes of the colonial metropolis. Given (...) this perpetuation of underdevelopment, post-development theorists argue, the idea of development has run its course and is no longer efficient; it should be put to an end. We assess this declaration of post-development theory from the perspective of Agbakoba’s intercultural philosophy of development. Using the philosophical methods of analysis and critique, we argue that Agbakoba’s intercultural proposal for a transition to development in Africa holds more prospects and is more feasible in addressing the concerns of post-development scholars. This is because, Agbakoba’s intercultural philosophy of development does not insist on the end of development, but on hybridity as the end of development. (shrink)

In recent years, the struggle to decolonize knowledge in academia has largely focused on addressing cognitive concerns such as curricular development matters (materials to be taught) and pedagogical strategies (how it is taught) to transform education in Africa. Hardly does the issue of non-cognitive concerns such as the right attitude required to guide the development of this reformed curricular and pedagogical strategies get explored. Indeed, what is lacking in our struggle to decolonise the curricular and pedagogical strategies is an interdisciplinary (...) perspective because the extant approaches rely largely on curriculum theories and practices that leave the role of allied disciplines such as social epistemology (specifically virtue epistemology), educational psychology and paremiology that deal largely with non-cognitive concerns utterly unexplored. However, it is widely argued that curriculum and pedagogy (material to be taught and students’ processing of the material) is insufficient to make any meaningful impact on educating the mind without the help of allied disciplines that will teach the right attitude. This chapter, therefore, underscores the importance of the study of non-cognitive factors in the curriculum development and transformation effort by connecting it with the resources in virtue epistemology, educational psychology and paremiology to emphasize the teaching of epistemic virtues in Akan proverbs to provide a comprehensive approach to the concerns of decolonising knowledge in Africa. (shrink)

To liberate African philosophy from the remnants of the colonial style of thought, Kwesi Wiredu promotes the idea of the conceptual decolonization of African philosophy. He argues that, to accomplish this project, African philosophers must theorize in African vernaculars. This article attempts to show that the project of the conceptual decolonization of African philosophy by recourse to theorizing in African vernaculars is challenging. It examines a particular strategy that Wiredu deploys in “Conceptual Decolonization as an Imperative in Contemporary African Philosophy,” (...) in which he hopes to demonstrate that the Akan conception of mind is superior to the Cartesian conception of mind. It demonstrates that Wiredu’s attempt to show the superiority of the Akan conception of mind is unsuccessful and that his project of conceptual decolonization fails. Nevertheless, it concludes that Wiredu’s conceptual decolonization project still shows promise even in light of our criticisms. (shrink)

In his provocative book, Against Decolonisation, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò laments how a concept that once referred to escaping political and economic subjugation by powerful states has come to mean something far less precise. According to Táíwò, “because modernity is conflated with Westernism and with ‘whiteness’—and all three with colonialism—decolonisation (the negation of colonialism) has become a catch-all idea to tackle anything with any, even minor, association with the ‘West.’” Táíwò argues that such undisciplined uses of “decolonization” have a perverse effect, stymieing (...) attempts to understand, let alone improve, the situation of formerly colonized peoples. (shrink)

In postcolonial Africa, development has, generally, been premised on the philosophy that; it is a product of collective or collaborative approach. This implies that men, women and all other groups are part and parcel of this development process. Demographic data for most African countries show that the highest population percentage is attributed to women and children. It can therefore, be expected that development on the continent is by and large driven by the collective or collaborative effort of both sexes. However, (...) it is an established fact that women in Africa have had to endure enormous challenges in making their mark on development. For quite some time women in Africa have had to contend with being treated as minors who needed an adult male to represent them legally in making business transactions. Instances are abound to support this assertion. A gap, therefore, exists in the area of women’s rights in their quest to make a claim in the development of the continent. For the continent to tap into women’s potential to the fullest, an enabling environment has to be created. This actually brings the discussion to interrogate the question of how Africa can achieve its development when women are not given sufficient space to meaningfully participate. Yet it is well accepted that, women’s rights as human rights are a precursor for catalyzing and achieving development in all spheres of human endeavor (social, cultural, economic, and political spheres). This chapter will therefore explore what the term development means from women’s perspective. For instance, the term development for women in Africa may mean increased access to economic opportunities, resources and greater participation in decision making at all levels of society. This line of thinking actually comes with positive and negative effects to development in Africa which will be discussed as the chapter unfolds. Thereafter, the chapter interrogates whether women’s rights are recognized in practical terms (that is their rights towards development in Africa). To this extent it will be demonstrated that women in Africa have been and are engaged in the formal and informal sectors of the economy as entrepreneurs. Outstanding issues relating to women’s rights will be highlighted and used to discuss development or lack of it in Africa, maybe that’s why Africa is still underdeveloped. Thus, in this chapter it is argued that human rights including women’s rights are a vehicle towards development in Africa. The discussion on women’s rights and development will be linked to development ethics grounding it on one of the applied ethics theories referred to as consequentalism (mainly utilitarianism). Thus, in this chapter the research is constructed using a phenomenological qualitative research design. (shrink)

With the contemporary global resurgence of interest in Marxism, including its Marxist‑Leninist form(s), as a theoretical framework that can orient contemporary struggles against capitalism and its attendant depredations, it has become even more urgent to address some of the key criticisms that were leveled at Marx, Engels, and Lenin when they came to be treated as “dead dogs” toward the end of the twentieth century. One key criticism was the charge that alleged that Marxism, including its Marxist‑Leninist form(s), was and (...) is irredeemably Eurocentric in character. While there have been attempts to counter such charges by excavating and reframing Marx’s writings on the “non‑Western world,” this essay proposes to take another approach toward the charge of Eurocentrism in relation to Marxism (and Marxism‑Leninism in particular). This essay proposes to contribute to responses to the charge of Eurocentrism, by taking seriously the theoretical contributions of two African Marxists to the development of Marxism‑Leninism. This essay shows the specific ways in which two prominent East African Marxists, namely Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu (1924–1996) and Dani Wadada Nabudere (1932–2011) were both deeply influenced by Lenin and made important contributions to Marxism‑Leninism. (shrink)

Hountondji contends that without investment in the creation of autonomous African research institutions that are integrated with the national economies of African states, Africa’s scientific and technological dependency will persist. To be sure, Hountondji did not neglect what he termed “endogenous knowledge,” yet for him such knowledge had to be integrated with the research programs of contemporary scientific disciplines and critically assessed on this basis. Endogenous knowledge can have a role to play in ending Africa’s scientific and technological dependence, but (...) only if it is liberated from the petrification that it is subjected to when it is described purely in ethnographic terms, and only when its truth claims are assessed in a serious way using the means of hypothesis testing that having been developed in the relevant contemporary scientific disciplines. To the extent that Hountondji thinks of modern science as the paradigm of successful inquiry, he is a modernist. His work on scientific dependency is especially relevant in this current moment given the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that Africa’s dependence on imported vaccines is not sustainable in the long run. The fact that the African continent as a whole imports 99% of the vaccines that are delivered to its inhabitants shows that thinking about scientific dependency in a serious way is imperative today. (shrink)

Compared to the COP26 summit in Glasgow last year, the COP27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh has been distinguished by greater inclusion of voices from the Global South, as evidenced by the acceptance of a proposal to create a ‘loss and damage’ fund for developing countries that are suffering from climate disasters. However, it remains to be seen how the mechanisms for the implementation of this fund will be worked out. Western developed countries were vocal in their opposition to the fund (...) throughout the summit, and it was only due to relentless pressures by developing countries that they eventually relented. If past events are anything to go by, then it is highly unlikely that the most vulnerable countries will get to have a substantial say in how the climate fund is operated. In fact, the Western developed countries are already trying to use this as an opportunity to drive a wedge between developing countries and China, whose lending and investment policy presents a favourable alternative to ‘strings-attached’ IMF funding. This is precisely one of the hallmarks of ‘climate colonialism’: a concept that refers to the deployment of justifications ostensibly related to the need to bring the causes of anthropogenic climate change under control, but which in fact serve to legitimize the domination of weaker, poorer states in the periphery of the world-system by stronger wealthier states in the core. What this means is that those who are most responsible for the impending catastrophe will get to dictate the terms of the response (even if ineffective) in a manner that would ensure they can externalize the costs to those who are least culpable. It is well known that poorer countries in warmer climates will be the most severely affected as the plant continues to warm. (shrink)

Este artigo visa à mobilização de alguns aspectos da teoria mulherista africana e sua pertinência para a compreensão de experiências políticas de mulheres negras no Brasil. Para tanto, apresentar-se-ão importantes pressupostos que fundam o Mulherismo Africana, bem como algumas de suas filiações teórico-metodológicas; possíveis aproximações e distanciamentos em relação a outras teorias; e, por fim, algumas reflexões acerca das agências políticas femininas negras, especialmente em solo brasileiro.

One of the strongest critiques against Fanon’s work centers on the idea that Fanon leaves black subjects caught in slavish regard of whites. Such a depiction of the black subject does not explain Fanon’s own life and his ability to escape slavish regard of whites and become a formative intellectual. Such slavish regard of whites, in other words, the idea of an inferiority complex has been challenged by notable current black philosophers, including Lucius Outlaw. In autobiographical references within Fanon and (...) Outlaw’s work, the two scholars share similar childhood experiences but draw very different conclusions on the development of an inferiority complex. I argue that this estrangement in slavish regard of whites occurs when reading Fanon’s work only through a dialectic framework. A phenomenological reading of Fanon’s work illuminates the ambiguous possibilities of experience. In a phenomenological reading of experience, admitting inferiority complexes does not necessarily debilitate and trap subjects in perpetuity. (shrink)

Neste artigo eu revisito a minha tese de doutoramento em antropologia social: “Esclavage et Inventions Spirituelles Afro-Brésiliennes: Du Vudum Lebabimibome aux Contes Populaires”, onde tentamos demonstrar um dos impactos marcantes da escravização na história dos povos africanos e afrodescendentes, como este fato marcou a vida espiritual e intelectual das diasporas nas Américas, especialmente da brasileira. Mostramos como estas populações dialogaram entre si, apropriaram-se e transformaram os valores culturais dos povos que as subjugaram. Adaptando-se aos novos quadros-sociais souberam preservar suas memórias (...) espirituais criando assim intermediários sagrados como o do Seja Hundê, Candomblé jeje da Bahia, o vudum Lebabimibome, híbrido do Mensageiro das religiões ancestrais fon e iorubá, Exu-Legbá e de um macaco. Pela adoção desta nova manifestação religiosa, esses povos souberam estrategicamente reciclar ao mesmo tempo uma velha idéia construída pelos colonizadores europeus sobre os africanos e seus descendentes, associando-os a macacos, vendo-os como o elo entre o homen e o animal. Para escapar à escravidão grupos de africanos utilizaram mímicas como meio de comunicação com os estrangeiros. Pelas artimanhas dos macacos dos contos populares, a vida social dos escravizados e dos livres subalternos é também contada e preservada, tranformando-os em verdadeiros arquivos históricos. (shrink)

In a speech delivered to the First Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America held in Havana in January 1966, Cabral posed the question: “does history begin only from the moment of the launching of the phenomenon of class, and consequently, of class struggle? Cabral raised this question because he is concerned with the fact that maintaining the thesis that the existence of classes is a necessary condition for the existence of dynamic social processes logically commits (...) one to excluding several peoples from the historical process, provided that one accepts that at least some societies were classless until they came into contact with European imperialists. The latter is an assumption that is shared by Cabral and his interlocutors. Of course, in order to understand what Cabral is asking here we have to understand what is meant by the word ‘history’ in this context. I think that if one takes into account the Marxist polemical context that Cabral is wading into with this speech, and his attempt to develop a version of historical materialism that would be suitable for conditions in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, one would be justified in thinking that Cabral is referring to a process of social development (or even progress). In other words, the question at hand is not whether peoples without classes have a past, they obviously do. The question is whether they have lived in societies that were dynamic, and where such dynamism could lead to qualitative transformations in social relations such that one could describe those societies as having specific developmental trajectories. Cabral wants to argue that they did in fact live in societies that were dynamic, even if such societies did not contain classes. (shrink)

One of the central strengths of Salem's analysis of Nasserism is that she recognizes both its world-historical significance as a progressive nationalist movement, and its severe limitations. In the first section of this paper, I discuss Salem's notion of the "afterlives" of the Nasserist project by drawing attention to one of the most debilitating legacies of that project, namely the transformation of Egyptian politics into petty bourgeois politics. In the second section, I argue that while Salem does not explicitly draw (...) on Hegel's understanding of tragedy in her account of Nasserism, her analysis of Nasserism essentially amounts to depicting it as a Hegelian tragedy. By placing Salem's book in conversation with Hegel (and his philosophy of action), we can make explicit what I take to be one of the central claims made by Salem, namely that when passing judgment on past and present national liberation movements we should remember that innocence is "only non-action, like the mere being of a stone" [nur das Nichttun wie das Sein eines Steines] (Hegel 1986, 346). In the third section of this paper, I raise some critical points about Salem's characterization of the nationalism that was associated with the Nasserist project, as well as about the deployment of the concept of modernity in her analysis. I argue that her account of modernity in the book does not distinguish between the concept of modernity as it refers to a certain kind of normative philosophical discourse, and modernization theory qua theory of development. Finally, I draw on Salem's use of the concept of hegemony in order to pose a question regarding the political significance of the contemporary cultural hegemony of Islamist movements in Egypt. (shrink)

This paper seeks to understand how conceptions of essential differences between “Egypt” and North Africa more broadly on the one hand, and “Sub-Saharan Africa” on the other hand have informed African studies in Egypt. It is commonly claimed that most Egyptians do not think of themselves as Africans; in this paper I aim to explore how this popular self-understanding has both informed African studies in Egypt and has been affected by academic discourses. I discuss the colonial and racial origins of (...) modern African studies in Egypt. I also emphasize the significance of the existence of a counter-hegemonic discourse which is exemplified in the life and work of Helmi Sharawy. Helmi Sharawy is today the head of the Arab African Research Center in Cairo, and he was politically active during the Nasserist period as a liaison between Nasser’s government and the various African liberation movements which established offices in Cairo during that period. What is especially significant about Sharawy’s life and thought is that his critique of Egyptian African studies was developed outside of the academy; it was the product of his autodidactic impulses combined with his immersion in political struggles. I argue that we can identify in the work of Helmi Sharawy, a critique of surviving racial and colonial paradigms in Egyptian African studies. I relate this critique to discussions of racism in Egyptian society. (shrink)

This study aims to reveal the impact and response to the apartheid system in shaping the collective trauma of African society through symbolic representations of suffering and social performativity through political action in “Amnesty” short story by Nadine Gordimer. This study used the cultural trauma theory by Jeffrey Alexander with descriptive qualitative method. The results of this research found that social suffering is symbolically represented with a humanist and theocentric images. Even so, the two seemingly different treatments are essentially the (...) same suffering, disguised by social and cultural symbols. Then, as a response to this suffering, there was social performativy through the political actions of social agents carried out by the Labor Union. These actions occur after going through of socio-cultural processes such as gathering, organizing, rioting, speeches, demonstrations, and accommodating or representing pain as well as distributing social awareness to arrive at the point where the apartheid system is the cause of all forms of suffering they experience. (shrink)

I argue that while recognition is important for Middle Eastern and North African philosophers in academia and society, recognition alone should not define the anti-colonial movement. BDS provides a better model of engagement because it constructs identities in order to bring about material changes in the academy and beyond. In the first part of the essay, I catalog how MENA thought traditions have been and continue to be suppressed within the academy and philosophy in particular. I then sketch one possible (...) path to better representation in philosophy by reading Fayez Sayegh’s analyses of Zionist colonialism and Palestinian non-being. In the second half of the essay, I argue that BDS is among the premier anti-colonial movements on American campuses today because it is a materialist anti-racist movement. Insofar as that movement is often shunned and prohibited, an anti-colonial society offers a membership in exile. (shrink)

This paper considers Achebe's No Longer at Ease in terms of its modest canonical fortunes and its peculiar formal construction. The paper argues that the novel's urban setting is produced through an emergent and local noir style, that this setting indexes the increasing centrality of the city in late colonial African life, and that it formally responds to the success of Achebe's rural Things Fall Apart and its problematic status as a paradigmatic African text. The paper suggests that No Longer (...) at Ease 's foreign and local horizons of interpretation, as symptoms of an ongoing imperial world-system, are internalized and symbolically resolved by the novel's instantiation of Lagos as chronotope. The paper's methodological intervention offers a hermeneutics of literary setting through which to elaborate the relationships between form, literary institutions, and material conditions in the postcolony. (shrink)

This essay explores the relationship between the social sciences and biology with respect to race. I begin by giving an overview of the disparate origins of racial classification and the population history of South Africa, noting the peculiarity of their roots. I move from there to sketch how knowledge from the social sciences can improve the quality of hypotheses about population history and, conversely, how the biological sciences can be informative to the social sciences. I end by discussing the relationship (...) between race, biology, and social scientific questions in the context of the land debate in South Africa. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore the temporal experience of decolonization/decoloniality through Furio Jesi's phenomenology of revolt, using the Puerto Rico summer protests of 2019 as a case study, to suggest that decolonization inhibits the functionality of the mythological machine because in the context of coloniality, revolt is the product of a biological exigency. In addition, I argue that decolonization should not be understood as an inevitable end point, or end goal, known a priori, but rather it is an anti-teleological process (...) and subjectivity that at once fuses the time of revolt and revolution; an impossible task in Jesi's framework. (shrink)

O artigo apresenta uma discussão acerca da percepção do imaginário da cultura africana e afro-brasileira e da construção da identidade étnico-racial no enredo escolar. A investigação foi realizada a fim de: 1- analisar os tipos de suportes e referenciais culturais que a escola fornece para a construção da identidade étnico-racial; 2- identificar as consequências do tipo de representação do negro construída e percebida na escola para o desenvolvimento da identidade étnico-racial dos alunos do Ensino Fundamental I. Para tanto, utilizou-se a (...) abordagem de pesquisa qualitativa, empregando o uso da modalidade pesquisa-participante e análise documental do Plano Municipal de Educação de Corrente-PI, município onde a pesquisa foi desenvolvida, Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais e a Base Nacional Comum Curricular. A participação direta ocorreu por meio da realização de uma oficina de leitura realizada em uma turma do 2º ano do ensino fundamental, contemplando a literatura fornecida pelo PNBE, que versa sobre a construção da identidade étnico-racial. Diante da problemática e da dificuldade de implementação das leis que regem o ensino da temática, a pesquisa torna-se relevante, pois, longe de se esgotar a uma conclusão final, este estudo reforça a necessidade do constante debate e a busca por efetivação de práticas educativas que formem cidadãos emancipados e forneçam subsídios para os negros se autoafirmarem e para a valorização da cultura de matriz africana. Assim como a necessidade da busca por adequação, implementação, monitoramento e avaliação constante das leis que regem o ensino de história e cultura africana e afro-brasileira. (shrink)

O objetivo desse texto é abordar as influências do mito na sociedade atual. Os desafios contemporâneos são inúmeros, no meio de toda essa cacofonia de informações e problemas a mente humana se vê desolada, sem rumo e fustigada por inúmeras patologias sociais. Porém existe um guia ancestral que pode vir em socorro, o mito. Apesar de já permeado na sociedade, o mito ainda é para muitos um sinônimo de mentira e de uma explicação provisória da realidade, no entanto ele é (...) o receptáculo da sabedoria de incontáveis gerações de seres humanos e ajudou a edificar grandiosas civilizações. A própria história do mito é a história da forma de pensar refletida nas nossas relações com o sobrenatural. Reconhecer a importância do mito é fundamental, suas múltiplas facetas fornecem um amplo campo de estudo e reflexão no qual é possível se debruçar para buscar entender como a sociedade e a mentalidade contemporânea foram estruturadas. Para isso, utilizando-se de leituras sobre o tema buscou-se a construção de um panorama sobre o conceito de mito, suas relações com o humano ao longo da história e suas influências hoje. (shrink)

This essay proposes that Marta Moreno Vega’s 2004 memoir, When the Spirits Dance Mambo, is a Latina feminist narrative that foregrounds African diaspora worldviews, thought, forms, and practices as resources for cultivating a path toward decoloniality. In this memoir, Abuela’s spiritual leadership and her introduction of the young Cotito into the practice of Espiritismo become a central prism through which Cotito innovatively apprehends the links between sacred and secular realms in the burgeoning mambo and salsa music scene of New York. (...) Even more importantly, her engagement with this diasporan worldview allows Cotito to critically apprehend prevailing gender norms and their limitations. This essay, therefore, argues that an Afro-Latina feminism emerges in this memoir from the practice of embodied spirituality that also has sonic, aesthetic, and social dimensions in everyday life. (shrink)

This essay has two aims. The first is to show that the editors of Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings and some of the writers who contributed to it (especially Ismail Ezzedine, Anar Rzayev, Tawfick Zeyad, Abdel Aziz El-Ahwani, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Alex La Guma, Adonis, Salah Dehni, Luis Bernardo Honwana, Ghassan Kanafany, and Tozaburo Ono) attempted to reconceive of nationalism in a way that would make international solidarity constitutive of the new national projects. It is argued that this is quite different from thinking (...) of the contributors to Lotus as abandoning nationalism in favor of a supranationalist project. The second aim is to show that at least some of the contributors to Lotus thought of themselves as being the vanguard of modernity, and not as the creators of “alternative modernities”. This essay shows that some of the aforementioned contributors to Lotus implicitly drew on standpoint epistemology in order to argue that, due to their struggles against colonialism, racial discrimination, etc., they had a privileged epistemic vantage point from which to criticize modernity in its European form for not being modern enough. (shrink)

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 21, Issue 4, Page 211-226, December 2021.

Appealing to African values associated with ubuntu such as communion and reconciliation, elsewhere I have argued that they require compensating those who have been wronged in ways that are likely to improve their lives. In the context of land reform, I further contended that this principle probably entails not transferring unjustly acquired land en masse and immediately to dispossessed populations since doing so would foreseeably lead to such things as capital flight and food shortages, which would harm them and the (...) broader society. Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe has recently argued against my claim that land reform should be enacted in a way expected to benefit victims of colonialism while not greatly burdening innocent third parties, instead supporting the return of land to its rightful owners regardless of how the manner in which it were done would affect people’s quality of life. Here I expound Oyowe’s argumentation and respond to it in defence of my initial position, appealing to examples from southern Africa to illustrate. (shrink)

This article argues that Amílcar Cabral adhered to some of the essential elements of the philosophical discourse of modernity. This commitment led Cabral to endorse an anti-essentialist, historicized conception of culture, and this in turn led him to conceive of cultural liberation in terms of cultural autonomy as opposed to the preservation of indigenous culture(s). Cabral’s attitude towards languages is employed as a case study in order to demonstrate how emphasis on Cabral’s commitment to the philosophical discourse of modernity can (...) help explain why he could denounce ‘colonialist culture’, while also defending the PAIGC’s (Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde / African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) use of Portuguese as an official language. This essay argues that Cabral makes a significant distinction between foreign influences and foreign domination in the realm of culture. Cabral conceived of the anti-colonial struggle in the realm of culture as a struggle against the latter rather than the former. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer has consistently advocated the idea of understanding as a form of “fusion of horizons” that implies the important and active role of each part of a cross-cultural encounter. This paper proposes philosophical hermeneutics as an alternative way of reading of postcolonial literature. E.M. Foster’s A Passage to India and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, are postcolonial literary examples of diversity and otherness which are analyzed in the light of the hermeneutical concept of “fusion of horizons”. (...) These texts include a range of contexts and circumstances in which communication is challenged by the characters’ different cultural backgrounds, and understanding is only to be achieved through the process of “fusion” of horizons which helps rework prejudices in order to reach a clearer vision. In this context, the hermeneutical “fusion of horizons” represents an alternative to traditional ways of “knowing” and understanding. (shrink)

The epistemic Eurocentric boarders, expand towards the global south, they dehumanise and obliterate existing forms of thinking through colonialism and coloniality. In doing so, the global south has lost the sense of being self, Africans have become non-thinking objects. This has led to a series of ceaseless conflicts, poor leadership, and developmental crisis and provides fertile ground for Eurocentric superiority. This book Phenomenology of Decolonizing the University: Essays in the Contemporary Thoughts of Afrikology is a diagnosis of the problems of (...) the mind in the global south and provides solutions in the decolonisatiom of the mind such as humanising the university, the rewriting of African stories and facilitates an epistemic rebellion. (shrink)

A history of the French reception of African art, especially wooden masks and figures, in the first four decades of the twentieth century, and how that reception led to the creation of the broader aesthetic category Westerners now know as "primitive art.

This article seeks to articulate an interpretation of Fanon’s engagement with G.W.F. Hegel that does not either assume that Fanon rejects Hegel’s normative conclusions or that Fanon’s engagement is incidental to his larger philosophical projects. I argue that Fanon’s take on the master-slave dialectic allows us to better understand the normative claims that undergird Fanon’s calls for violence and revolution in Black Skin, The Wretched of the Earth, and A Dying Colonialism.

In this chapter I aim to provide a moral-philosophical grounding for much of Nelson Rolihlaha Mandela’s life. I spell out a principled interpretation of ubuntu that focuses on its moral import, and then apply it to salient facets of Mandela’s 50+ struggle years, contending that they exemplify it in many ways. Specifically, I first address Mandela’s decisions to fight apartheid in the 1940s, to use violence in response to it in the 1950s and ‘60s, and to refuse to renounce the (...) use of violence during the 1970s and ‘80s. Then I consider his attempts to negotiate with the apartheid regime in the mid to late 1980s and his support for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the 1990s. Along the way, I address some suggestions that elements of Mandela’s life failed to exhibit ubuntu, such as his alleged ‘neglect’ of his family and ‘betrayal’ of the black majority regarding economic justice. My conclusion is that one can make good sense of many of Mandela’s most important decisions, including the hard choices, during the fight against apartheid by appeal to a theoretical ethic of ubuntu. (shrink)

Reprint of an article that initially appeared in the South African Journal of Philosophy (2016).