African Philosophy: Themes

In this article we argue that a discussion on African epistemologies must precede the quest for both the decolonisation of knowledge and curriculum in Africa. Decolonial thought in Africa is significant because it focuses, among other things, on the decolonisation of Western epistemological supremacy within the space where knowledge is produced and transferred. We contend that knowledge acquired through the process of learning must resonate with people’s lived experiences and realities. To meaningfully pursue that involves placing in focus people’s modes (...) of thought and epistemic ideas, in the interpretation of their experiences and the realities around them. This article argues that designing a decolonised curriculum that centres unique African intellectual ideas should be informed by the understanding of African epistemologies, whose principle of epistemic validation is grounded on the idea of interconnectedness in African thought. Considering a decolonial curriculum as an attempt in pursuing ‘centring’ is to align curricula with the modes of knowledge validation in African thought. (shrink)

Our aims are to articulate some core philosophical positions characteristic of Traditional African Religion and to argue that they merit consideration as monotheist rivals to standard interpretations of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. In particular, we address the topics of how God’s nature is conceived, how God’s will is meant to bear on human decision making, where one continues to exist upon the death of one’s body, and how long one is able to exist without a body. For each of these topics, (...) we note how Traditional African Religion posits claims that clash with mainstream Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and that, being prima facie plausible, indicate the need for systematic cross-cultural philosophical debate. (shrink)

Indigenous, Modern and Postcolonial Relations to Naturecontributes to the young field of intercultural philosophy by introducing the perspective of critical and postcolonial thinkers who have focused on systematic racism, power relations and the intersection of cultural identity and political struggle. Angela Roothaan discusses how initiatives to tackle environmental problems cross-nationally are often challenged by economic growth processes in postcolonial nations and further complicated by fights for land rights and self-determination of indigenous peoples. For these peoples, survival requires countering the scramble (...) for resources and clashing with environmental organizations that aim to bring their lands under their own control. The author explores the epistemological and ontological clashes behind these problems. This volume brings more awareness of what structurally obstructs open exchange in philosophy world-wide, and shows that with respect to nature, we should first negotiate what the environment is to us humans, beyond cultural differences. It demonstrates how a globalizing philosophical discourse can fully include epistemological claims of spirit ontologies, while critically investigating the exclusive claim to knowledge of modern science and philosophy. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental philosophy, cultural anthropology, intercultural philosophy and postcolonial and critical theory. e, we should first negotiate what the environment is to us humans, beyond cultural differences. It demonstrates how a globalizing philosophical discourse can fully include epistemological claims of spirit ontologies, while critically investigating the exclusive claim to knowledge of modern science and philosophy. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental philosophy, cultural anthropology, intercultural philosophy and postcolonial and critical theory. (shrink)

Politiek filosofe en kritisch traditionaliste, onderzocht Afrikaanse orale literaire tradities op hun filosofische betekenis. Maakt zich sterk voor een authentieke Afrikaanse filosofie. Sophie Oluwoles ouders waren beiden afkomstig uit de staat Edo in het zuidwesten van Nigeria. Oluwole zelf werd geboren in het dorp Igbara Oke in de naburige staat Ondo, waar zij ook haar lagere en middelbare school doorliep. In 1964 trouwde zij met een eveneens Nigeriaanse wetenschapper. Ze vertrok nog in hetzelfde jaar naar Moskou, waar haar man een (...) baan kreeg aangeboden bij de Verenigde Naties. Vanwege taalproblemen vertrokken beiden na een jaar naar Duitsland, waar zij Duits studeerden aan de Universiteit in Keulen. Kort nadat zij in 1966 verhuisde naar de Verenigde Staten, scheidde Oluwole van haar man omdat deze haar verdere studies dwarsboomde. Oluwole keerde terug naar Nigeria waar zij aan de Universiteit van Lagos een studie filosofie begon. In de periode 1968-1970 doceerde Oluwole op een middelbare school in haar thuisstaat Ondo. Daarna keerde zij terug naar de universiteit van Lagos, waar zij werkzaam was als studentassistente en ondertussen afstudeerde. Oluwole werd als promovenda toegelaten op de universiteit van Ibadan. In 1984 behaalde zij als eerste student in sub-Sahara Afrika een doctorstitel in de filosofie. Hoewel Oluwoles filosofische carrière een aanvang nam met de studie van westerse meta-ethiek, besloot zij zich na het behalen van haar doctorstitel verder te ontwikkelen in de richting van de Afrikaanse filosofie. Zij doceerde filosofie aan de universiteit van Lagos, was decaan van deze universiteit en was voorzitter van de Nigeriaanse Vereniging voor Filosofie. Tegenwoordig is Oluwole actief als directeur van het Centrum voor Afrikaanse Cultuur en Ontwikkeling in Lagos, dat zich onder andere richt op de ontwikkeling van vrouwen in Afrika. (shrink)

Marx’s polemic against exploitation focuses centrally on the idea that capitalism not only betrays the inviolability of the human individual, but also prevents the realization of man’s true nature as “species-being” and the realization of the kind of community appropriate to this nature, thus preventing the freeing of human potential from the structural force of capital. I examine this polemic with reference to the views of African philosophers (Hountondji and others) on Africa’s exposure to neo-colonial exploitation, extracting from it a (...) view of morality as a plea for a “humanly human life”. I advance some considerations for acceptance of this plea as a basis for dealing with European domination. (shrink)

This paper examines the long dialogue between Africana phenomenology and Africana feminism. In particular, it examines the exchanges between WEB Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Lewis Gordon and Sylvia Wynter on the one hand, and a number of black feminists on the other, including bell hooks, Natasha Barnes, Farrah Griffin, and Joy James. The primary outcome of the survey of these exchanges is that the pro-feminist spaces created by black male phenomenologists have all been insufficient for the full representation of the (...) black female voice. In the words of Sylvia Wynter, such a full representation can only come through "a feminism in its own name". (shrink)

This article traces the emergence of East African Asian writings and their struggle with questions of national belonging and diaspora. It argues that although this emergence was part and parcel of the literary developments that were taking place in the East Africa region in the 1960s, these writings would later distinguish themselves as texts that are not only framed by the ambivalent and diasporic histories of Indians in imperial and postcolonial East Africa but also as writings that consciously construct ambivalent (...) diasporic subjectivities as the basis of new forms of East African Indian identities. I argue that this ambivalence reveals itself in the way these texts disavow dominant, nationalistic, even binary accounts of colonial relationships and create, instead, narratives that skirt the borderlines of both colonial and nationalist discourses. (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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

In the paper, we will study Olavo de Carvalho’s thought, focusing on his position regarding Brazilian and American Black movement in its struggle for reparation in terms of colonialism-slavery-racism. We will argue that his refusal of any reparatory praxis to political-cultural minorities and his position of a non-place for Black-African traditions in the context of Western culture/civilization, as with respect to his defense of the inferiority of Black-African culture-civilization when compared to Jewish-Christian, Greek-Latin and Medieval-Renaissance tradition, is pervaded by a (...) dualist metaphysics with a highly anti-modern and anti-modernizing character, in which the dynamic of streamlining of “human drama about universe and eternity” is constituted by the struggle between natural necessity and individual consciousness, that can only be won by the correlation of divine grace given by Jesus Christ and personal direct and immediate interiorization and intuition by each individual with God; by the refusal of politics, history and intersubjective action as basically materialism and, in this sense, as the sphere of totalitarian political ideologies ; and, finally, by the centrality of spiritualism, of intimate and direct relation between God and man, mediated by Revelation, which points to the non-existence, in the Olavo de Carvalho’ thought, of objective parameters to rational discussion, interaction and justification – that is the reason of his delegitimation of science, politics, history and macro-structural institutional action, and his appeal to methodological, intuitionist and spiritualist individualism. (shrink)

Identity Re-creation in Global African Encounters explores race, racial politics, and racial transformation in the context of Africa’s encounters with non-African communities through various perspectives including oppression, racialization of ethnic difference, and identity deconstruction. While the contributors recognize that ethnicity has long been a staple analytical category of engagements between African and non-African communities, they present a holistic view of the continent and its diaspora through race outside of both colonial and neocolonial binaries, allowing for a more nuanced study of (...) Africa and its diaspora. (shrink)

The time has come for a new school of transnational conversation. It is the only way to keep up with the constantly evolving concept of the African Diaspora.

I am interested in looking at Krumpin’ through what I am calling the “politics of submergence.” If my world is chaotic, if my Blackness is my murderer, can I be expected to create beauty? Can my art be transformative? My paper argues that Krumpin’ is in fact transformative, not to the extent that it perpetuates hope, but maintains its social pessimism. In accepting both the conditions that have sustained the racial marginalization of African descended people, and the impotence of this (...) marginalized group to change the systemic social structures that continue racial subordination in the United States, Krumpin’ announces a reflective mode of racial identity and cultural existence that attends to the suffering of African-descended people in American ghettos. (shrink)

In this article, I read Chester Himes' Blind Man With a Pistol as the work of an African- American writer who takes Harlem to be a colonial space, and who attempts to think through the ways that are available for him to contribute to some degree of liberation for its black residents. I suggest that there are strong parallels between Himes' position and that of African philosophers, and that Himes' self critique is instructive. I read this against Derrida's thoughts on (...) monolingualism and philosophy as a community of the question, asking what learning the language that is not one's own and what induction into the community of the question entail for the marginal, those who I describe as being from neither Athens nor Jerusalem. I conclude by offering my response to what I take to be our inescapable colonial lot: poetry and laughter. (shrink)

That African philosophy began with frustration and not with wonder as it is in Western tradition is a radical statement with far-reaching implications. Implications that are, as challenging as they are intellectually refreshing thus reinvigorating interest in the African discourse. As the discipline of African philosophy vitiated in the post debate disillusionment met with a new generation critical fire; methodic, technical and theoretic demands and issues unresolved in the old order surface. Old questions re-emerge with new and daunting toga while (...) new questions present fresh challenges for thought. With a carefully selected pool of emerging, original, African thinkers, the editor brought a creatively fascinating illumination upon the African episteme to herald the new era of African thought. The essays in this collection remark a sort of radical break from a long standing convention that requires serious critical reconstruction. Presenting a paradigm of creative individual philosophizing, the history, dating, criteria, logic and periodization imbroglio in African philosophy were resolved to give shape and direction to a hitherto formless discipline. Fundamental questions in ontology, epistemology, ethics and political thought gave birth to stunning metanarratives to inaugurate the conversational orientation in African philosophy. It provides a systematization that has been missing for almost a century and upon it defines an intellectually exciting future for the discipline. Whoever that wants to do African philosophy and understand it and make input must read this corpus. Carefully articulated and written, the essays in this collection constitute dependable research resources for students and researchers in all areas of African philosophy and studies. (shrink)

This study takes issue with the notion of cultural relativism, a notion which translates into the proposition that all known (or knowable) cultures are co-equally worthy, valid in their own right, and need therefore to be addressed on their own terms so as to be genuinely appreciated. Accredited by the liberal school of Western cultural anthropology, the proposition is basically a moral concession, nay, a compulsion to redistributive egalitarianism within the cultural kaleidoscope that our planet has grown to be. But (...) beyond its unctuously moral appeal, cultural relativism becomes an intellectual humbug. For it conceals the starkly conflictual dynamic to the very comparison of cultures or peoples in the first place. The dynamic is no other than the order of modernity, an order that has levered into relief, over the past four centuries, the inequality among cultures. It is mainly to help combat the propagation of said faith among Africans that I have contributed the "Agonistic Imperative". The last is a category for distinguishing among the culture complexes that make up the field of modernity. Underlying it is the idea of self-transcending, unrelenting struggle as a property of the human mind, an idea that finds expression in the survivalist potentials of given cultures. (shrink)

This book uncovers the problems that Western education poses for people of African descent. It re-establishes the importance of African scholarship, defines the nature of the present war on African Studies programs in academia, and identifies the champions of African civilization. A powerful collection of essays that goes beyond the current debate on multiculturalism in our nation's universities and encourages black readers to rediscover their heritage, ideas, and spirituality.

This dissertation applied and developed Molefi Asante's concept of Afrocentricity. Still in its infancy, Afrocentricity, like Eurocentricity, must not only be recognized as an appropriate methodology and/or theoretical concept, it must also be employed by both Black and white scholars when analyzing African rhetors. As the decades of the 70's and 80's have attempted to rid scholarship of sexist language, the decade of the 90's must continue to rid scholarship of not only sexist language but racist language and ideas. This (...) study was an attempt to eliminate the proliferation of "racist" language and ideas particularly in the approach to understanding Marcus M. Garvey and his significance, not just in the history of African people, but world history as well. ;The method of Afrocentricity was developed to determine Garvey's persuasive appeal in the African Community focusing specifically on his Convention Speeches from the Black community's perspective. To do this the history and culture of the people were examined through their own value system, as opposed to a value system that is external to that community. Two sets of values were applied. Based on the research by Alphonso Pinkney in Red, Black and Green, four values representative of the Garvey Movement were used. They included the values of territoriality, culture, religion and economics. The need also existed to utilize a contemporary value system as determined and practiced by the African Community. As a result, the researcher employed Maulana Karenga's Seven Principles of the Nguzo Saba, a Black Value System, which is at the root of the celebration of Kwanzaa, the only African American holiday that is non-heroic and non-religious that is celebrated by Black people in America. The seven values were unity, self-determination, cooperative economics, collective work and responsibility, purpose, creativity and faith. These Seven Values were compared and contrasted with the four values to show the significance of the historical and contemporary interrelationship between the two sets of values. These two sets of values were used to analyze Garvey's opening addresses at the UNIA Conventions. ;Recognizing the conditions/circumstances of African people in America during Garvey's time, Garvey did, however, try to fulfill the four criteria of Afrocentricism: unity of the occasion, elimination of chaos, making peace among disparate views and the creation of an opportunity for harmony and balance. (shrink)

This dissertation is a critical study of technopolitical issues in the history of African American people. Langdon Winner's theory of technopolitics was used to facilitate the analysis of large scale technologies and their compatibility with various political ends. I contextualized the central technopolitical issues within the major epochs of African American political history: the Atlantic slave trade, the African artisans of antebellum America, and the American Industrial Age. Throughout this study I have sought to correct negative stereotypes and to show (...) how "technological gauges" were employed to belittle people of African descent. This research also has shown that the mainstream notion that Africans had no part in the history of technology is false. This study identifies and analyses specific technologies that played a major role in the political affairs of Africans and African Americans. Those technologies included nautical devices, fort construction, and automatic guns in Africa, and hoes, plows, tractors, cotton gins, and the mechanical cotton pickers in America. The findings of this study suggested that African Americans have been disengaged and victimized by western technologies. This dissertation proposes how to overcome the oppressive uses of technology. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the extent to which it is feasible to talk of a black Brazilian literary tradition that is somehow cohesive, conscious of itself and self-reflective. In looking at works by black fiction writers during the second half of the twentieth century, such as Romeu Crusoé, Oswaldo de Camargo, Cuti, Geni Guimarães, Marilene Felinto and Muniz Sodré, it suggests that writers of African descent who self-identify as black Brazilians are to a large extent bound by identification with region as (...) much as they are with skin colour, in a similar way to other ‘ethnic’ writers in Brazil. (shrink)

This paper proposes an Afroepistemological reading of the Ifá system. The policies of Western academic epistemology have disdained the traditiona African knowledge. Ifá has not been an exception. However, through this method a great deal of the socio-cultural and epistemological codes of Yorùbá society. So, Ifá becomes more important than a divination rite, because it represents socio-political and epistemological cohesion of a great proportion of the peoples of West Africa. This work vindicates this role and try to show epistemological complexity (...) of the system. (shrink)

The text consists of essays that revolve around the question of the nature and meaning of philosophy, even as it demonstrates philosophy's significance and relevance to some fundamental human problems and issues. The essays present diverse views of what philosophy might be and might aspire to be, with contributors being influenced by a wide range of philosophical approaches and traditions. The conversations also cut across disciplinary boundaries to interrogate and utilize ideas taken from ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, literary studies, cultural studies, (...) and the sociology of science. Traversing regional boundaries, the essays show philosophical analysis at work in exploring some issues pertinent to African, Caribbean, European, and American experiences, even while not ignoring Asian traditions. The collection presents interesting and intriguing views on how philosophical inquiry can illuminate various pressing problems: development, conflict, the discriminating preservation of worthwhile traditions, and the prevalence of apathy. It also reflects the vitality and multifaceted nature of philosophical discourse in grappling with live issues. The edited text is a comprehensive, balanced, and unique anthology of readings capturing the diversity of philosophical investigation. (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)

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)

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)

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 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)

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)

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)

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.