Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present some recent main evolutions which affected Philosophy in Africa. These evolutions are marked by the decline of ideals which emerged during the Bandung era. Such ideals concerned Liberation and Emancipation, Progress. This supposed the future affirmation of Africa as a strategic pole of power. In this perspective, Philosophy and social sciences had an important role to play. There was a consensus on the fact that philosophy could be an instrument of liberation and emancipation and a major factor of social, cultural and political change.But new paradigms emerged with globalization and its cultural logics known as postmodernism/postcolonialism. For instance, this conducted some thinkers to substitute hermeneutics, interpretation and language to the theories based on the intelligibility of the real and the necessity to transform it. This explains on the one hand the delegitimation of some main categories of modernity such as Reason, History, Nation, State, Emancipation, Progress, etc., and on the other hand, the affirmation of new alternatives on terms of Desire, Fluidity, Hybridism, Diversity, Ethnicity, all crowned by the theory of Empire. In this paper, I try to confront these recent trends in African Philosophy and the earlier trends which emerged from the fight against colonialism and imperialism in Asia, Latin America and Africa.