The African Renaissance is historically an African revolutionary project aimed at reclaiming and reviving African heritage that was destroyed by European slavery and colonialism. One of the manifestations of the African Renaissance was to do away with European names imposed on African countries, and to replace them with African names. While this was a good move, it was a half-measure because it ignored the gender aspect of colonial naming which saw a European (...) cultural legacy of naming women after their husbands’ surnames remaining intact. Socially, this colonial practice promoted gender inequality by elevating husbands’ family names while relegating wives’ family names to a lower place. Politically, the exercise reduced women into being their husbands’ shadows even when women use double-barrel surnames. This colonial legacy’s suffocating effect on women’s identities was laid bare towards the African National Congress’ (ANC) elective conference in 2017. The Zuma family name was used to frustrate Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s contestation for the ANC’s presidency when her opponents argued that being the ex-wife of Jacob Zuma, the then ANC’s and South Africa’s president, would deter her from acting independently. The central argument here is that for the African Renaissance project to be meaningful and relevant for women, it must reclaim African women’s cultural right to retain their own family names and not adopt their husbands’. (shrink)

Forensic studies have identified fraud as a major factor that hampers Africa’s economic development. This paper first establishes a link between fraud and the ideal of the African Renaissance. It then gives an overview of the extent of fraud in Africa by discussing the findings of a recent forensic survey on fraud in Africa. Against this backdrop it is then argued that what is needed to turn the tide of fraud in Africa is a transvaluation of loyalties to (...) include and cover interests of the modern nation‐state rather than just those of the clan, tribe and race. The paper finally calls for African nations to rise up to new challenges in governance by upholding ethical values and by their determination to detect and prevent all forms of fraud as the only viable way towards the realisation of the ideal of an African Renaissance. (shrink)

In order to conquer and subjugate Africans, at the 1884 Berlin Conference, European countries dismembered Africa by carving her up into pieces and sharing her among themselves. European colonialists also antagonised Africans by setting up one ethnic African community against the other, thus promoting ethnic consciousness to undermine Pan-African consciousness. European powers also imposed their own “ethnic” languages, making them not only “official”, but also “international”. Consequently, as the Kenyan philosopher, Ngũgῖ wa Thiong’o, persuasively argues, through their ethnic (...) languages, European colonialists planted their memory wherever they went, while simultaneously uprooting the memory of the colonised. Cognisant of efforts in some South African institutions of higher learning to promote African languages for the purpose of promoting literacy in African languages, this article argues that while this exercise is commendable, ethnic African languages should be deliberately taught to “re-member” Africa and rediscover Pan-African consciousness. By doing this, African scholarship would be aiding Africans’ perennial and elusive quest for Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance. Keywords: African Renaissance, Ethnic African Languages, Ethnic European Languages, European Colonialism, Pan-African Consciousness, Pan-Africanism. (shrink)

Forensic studies have identified fraud as a major factor that hampers Africa’s economic development. This paper first establishes a link between fraud and the ideal of the African Renaissance. It then gives an overview of the extent of fraud in Africa by discussing the findings of a recent forensic survey on fraud in Africa. Against this backdrop it is then argued that what is needed to turn the tide of fraud in Africa is a transvaluation of loyalties to (...) include and cover interests of the modern nation‐state rather than just those of the clan, tribe and race. The paper finally calls for African nations to rise up to new challenges in governance by upholding ethical values and by their determination to detect and prevent all forms of fraud as the only viable way towards the realisation of the ideal of an African Renaissance. (shrink)

The paper applies insights from Axel Honneth's recent book, The Struggle for Recognition, to the South African situation. Honneth argues that most movements for justice are motivated by individuals' and groups' felt need for recognition. In the larger debate over the relative importance of recognition compared with distribution, a debate framed by Taylor and Fraser, Honneth is presented as the best of both worlds. His tripartite schema of recognition on the levels of love, rights and solidarity, explains how concerns (...) for equality and difference are two separate needs, even though both must be satisfied. Past and ongoing struggles in South Africa can be understood as struggles for recognition. The African Renaissance itself, to be successful, must address economic and recognition issues simultaneously. (shrink)

This article explores the future impact of an African renaissance with a specific emphasis on information ethics to address the needs of the emerging virtual realm. The four main focus areas include the technologi-cal challenges to deploy ICT infrastructure to enable the delivery of information to the people and to allow for new means of communication. The second focus considers the economic obstacles that need to be consi-dered in the quest to empower average citizens to exercise their right (...) to access information. The third focus addresses the linguistic and cultural realities that hinder the adoption of some ICTs. The final focus considers the legal framework that has to be developed and strengthened to establish citizen‘s rights of access and privacy in cyberspace. (shrink)

African philosophy has used the concept of the future in a wide range of ways, but these ways have not been surveyed. This chapter does that by considering five broad types of questions. The first is to ask about what African philosophy has said about the future. This will take us into a discussion of African theories of time, as well as into thinking about the places where African philosophy has contributed something to the question of (...) Africa’s future, particularly in early postindependence in various countries. The second question is about the concepts which necessitate some understanding of the future in African philosophy. These include divination, destiny, immortality, and the environment. The third question has to do with philosophy’s part in some proposals for Africa to move into the future. These include a brief look at Afropessimism, Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism, African Renaissance, and Ubuntu, inasmuch as they assume or advocate for a future. The fourth question has to do with proposals that philosophers have made for African philosophy’s own future as a discipline and as an intellectual component to African life. And finally, the fifth question has to do with how we might think of futurity as an integral component of philosophy itself, as part of “becoming-African.” How might the doing of philosophy be seen as facing the future, and how would that change the way it is engaged? (shrink)

Contrary to the view that Africa is populated by many ethnic groups whose cultures and languages have no relation to one another, scientific research, as opposed to impressionistic arguments, points to the fact that African languages are connected, and by extension, demonstrate African cultural connectivity and unity. By making reference to both African and European scholars, this article demonstrates pan-African linguistic and cultural unity, and echoes pan-Africanist scholars’ call for African linguistic and cultural unity as (...) a basis for pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance. (shrink)

Part I Philosophic Traditions Introduction to Part I 3 1 Philosophy and the Afro-American Experience 7 CORNEL WEST 2 African-American Existential Philosophy 33 LEWIS R. GORDON 3 African-American Philosophy: A Caribbean Perspective 48 PAGET HENRY 4 Modernisms in Black 67 FRANK M. KIRKLAND 5 The Crisis of the Black Intellectual 87 HORTENSE J. SPILLERS Part II The Moral and Political Legacy of Slavery Introduction to Part II 107 6 Kant and Knowledge of Disappearing Expression 110 RONALD A. T. (...) JUDY 7 Social Contract Theory, Slavery, and the Antebellum Courts 125 ANITA L. ALLEN AND THADDEUS POPE 8 The Morality of Reparations II 134 BERNARD R. BOXILL Part III Africa and Diaspora Thought Introduction to Part III 151 9 “Afrocentricity‘: Critical Considerations 155 LUCIUS T. OUTLAW, JR. 10 African Retentions 168 TOMMY L. LOTT 11 African Philosophy at the Turn of the Century 190 ALBERT G. MOSLEY Part IV Gender, Race, and Racism Introduction to Part IV 199 12 Some Group Matters: Intersectionality, Situated Standpoints, and Black Feminist Thought 205 PATRICIA HILL COLLINS 13 Radicalizing Feminisms from “The Movement Era‘ 230 JOY A. JAMES 14 Philosophy and Racial Paradigms 239 NAOMI ZACK 15 Racial Classification and Public Policy 255 DAVID THEO GOLDBERG 16 White Supremacy 269 CHARLES W. MILLS Part V Legal and Social Philosophy Introduction to Part V 285 17 Self-Respect, Fairness, and Living Morally 293 LAURENCE M. THOMAS 18 The Legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson 306 MICHELE MOODY-ADAMS 19 Some Reflections on the Brown Decision and Its Aftermath 313 HOWARD McGARY 20 Contesting the Ambivalence and Hostility to Affirmative Action within the Black Community 324 LUKE C. HARRIS 21 Subsistence Welfare Benefits as Property Interests: Legal Theories and Moral Considerations 333 RUDOLPH V. VANTERPOOL 22 Racism and Health Care: A Medical Ethics Issue 349 ANNETTE DULA 23 Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition 360 ANGELA Y. DAVIS Part VI Aesthetic and Cultural Values Introduction to Part VI 373 24 The Harlem Renaissance and Philosophy 381 LEONARD HARRIS 25 Critical Theory, Aesthetics, and Black Modernity 386 LORENZO C. SIMPSON 26 Black Cinema and Aesthetics 399 CLYDE R. TAYLOR 27 Thanatic Pornography, Interracial Rape, and the Ku Klux Klan 407 T. DENEAN SHARPLEY-WHITING 28 Lynching and Burning Rituals in African-American Literature 413 TRUDIER HARRIS-LOPEZ 29 Rap as Art and Philosophy 419 RICHARD SHUSTERMAN 30 Microphone Commandos: Rap Music and Political Ideology 429 BILL E. LAWSON 31 Sports, Political Philosophy, and the African American 436 GERALD EARLY. (shrink)

This collection demonstrates the strong influence that humanism and freethought had in developing the history and ideals of black intellectualism. Most people are quick to note the profound influence that religion has played in African-American history: consoling the downtrodden slave or inspiring the abolitionists, the underground railroad, and the civil rights movement. But few are aware of the role humanism played in shaping the black experience: developing the thought and motivating the actions of powerful African-American intellectuals. Section One (...) of this book offers biographical sketches of such prominent black humanists as Frederick Douglass, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. DuBois, Hubert H. Harrison, and Richard Wright. Section Two features essays by black humanists: Douglass, DuBois, Charles W. Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Jaffree, Claude McKay, Melvin B. Tolson, and Bruce Wright. Section Three offers the views of contemporary black African humanists: Freda Amakye Ansah, Emmanuel Kofi Mensah, Nkeonye Otakpor, Franz Vanderpuye, and Kwasi Wiredu. Section Four contains interviews conducted by Allen on the subjects of black humanist activism, the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, and the Harlem Renaissance with: Martin G. Bernal, Charles Faulkner, Leonard Harris, Norman Hill, and Alaine Locke. (shrink)

The literary relations between the Harlem Renaissance and the Negritude Movement have, we believe, been sufficiently documented. It has been demonstrated that Senghor, Damas and Césaire avidly perused the pages of Crisis, Opportunity and Garvey's Negro World—Journals in which Langston Hughes, Claude Mckay, Countee Cullen and Jean Tommer—the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, first had their poems published. It is equally literary history now, that some of the poems of the Afro-American writers were reprinted in such Parisian Black-oriented (...) journals and little magazines as Les Continents, La Dépêche Africaine, Le Cri des Nègres, La Revue du Monde Noir and Légitime Défense. In this dissemination of ideas across the Atlantic, Paulette Nardal, Edward A. Jones, Louis T. Achille and Mercer Cook played the important role of literary intermediaries through their translations. (shrink)

In the South African debate about the role of the media in the new South African society, the African moral philosophy ubuntuism is from time to time raised as a framework for African normative media theory. Up till now, the possibility of using ubuntuism as a normative framework can, however, not yet be described as a focused effort to develop a comprehensive theory on the basis of which media performance could be measured from ‘an African (...) perspective’. Rather, the topic of ubuntuism as normative media theory should be seen in the context of the African Renaissance as part of an intellectual quest to rediscover and re-establish idealized values of traditional African culture and communities and to apply it to contemporary phenomena such as the media. However, given South Africa's history of apartheid in which Christian nationalism was misused as a moral philosophy to mobilize a patriotic media in the service of volk and vaderland, it is not too early to ask critical questions about ubuntuism as a possible framework for normative media theory. Such questioning is the purpose of this article. Against the background of a postmodern and a postcolonial perspective on normative theory, questions related to the following are raised: the expediency of ubuntuism in the context of changed African cultural values, the distinctiveness of ubuntuism as an African moral philosophy, the vulnerability of moral philosophy to political misuse, ubuntuism in the context of the future of normative theory in a globalized world and changed media environment, and, the implications of ubuntuism for journalism practice. It is concluded that ubuntuism may pose a threat to freedom of expression. Given the nature of contemporary South African society and its media system, a postmodern emphasis on diversity and pluralism as the cornerstone of future normative theory is supported. (shrink)

Discusses Locke's life and views and their impact on American philosophy, as well as his role in the Harlem Renaissance.

When in Africa we speak and dream of and work for, a rebirth of that continent as a full participant in the affairs of the world in the next century, we are deeply conscious of how dependent that is on the mobilisation and strengthening of the continent's resources of learning. Nelson Mandela Address at Harvard University, September, 1998 quoted in East African, September 1-7, 2003 A paradigm can, for that matter, even insulate the community from those socially important problems (...) that are not reducible to the puzzle form, because they cannot be stated in terms of the conceptual and instrumental tools the paradigm supplies. Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions p. 37 Africa suffers from a pessimism of description as well as a pessimism of prescription it has suffered for over 500 years from a condescending and often violent gaze from diagnosis to destiny. The usual Eurocentric style in reflecting about Africa has always had an underlying tone of reproach and even moral condemnation. There is a need to protest and resist against this negative projection. We need to start to converse about Africa's problems and challenges with the inclusion of hope as an ontological need for change. Withoug hope, there will be no possibility to struggle on. Hope is an important variable in the way we wish to think, talk, reason, debate and mount intellectual reflection about Africa Re-thinking African development through innovation, social-invention, systems mental images and the logocentric imagination of the productive Africa-nation, and not through market exchange, Smithian or Ricardian comparative advantage can generate a hopeful departure from received approaches to theorising about Africa. The making of African productive power, building the capital of the mind, organising institutions within the progressive imagination of the Africa-nation is a critical launching pad for a new intellectual and research orientation hihgly needed when Africans want to make their history with the revival of the Pan-African ideal and the African renaissance. The article proposes that the national system of innovation provides the metaphor of hope, the heuristics of what is significant data to investigate, and the criticism of conventional and pessimistic theorising and finally the emancipatory knowledge resources for a post-pessimist turn to bring about the cognitive praxis of a post-colonial liberation of Africa as a whole. (shrink)

When in Africa we speak and dream of and work for, a rebirth of that continent as a full participant in the affairs of the world in the next century, we are deeply conscious of how dependent that is on the mobilisation and strengthening of the continent’s resources of learning. Nelson Mandela Address at Harvard University, September, 1998 quoted in East African, September 1–7, 2003A paradigm can, for that matter, even insulate the community from those socially important problems that (...) are not reducible to the puzzle form, because they cannot be stated in terms of the conceptual and instrumental tools the paradigm supplies. Thomas KuhnThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions p. 37Africa suffers from a pessimism of description as well as a pessimism of prescription it has suffered for over 500 years from a condescending and often violent gaze from diagnosis to destiny. The usual Eurocentric style in reflecting about Africa has always had an underlying tone of reproach and even moral condemnation. There is a need to protest and resist against this negative projection. We need to start to converse about Africa’s problems and challenges with the inclusion of hope as an ontological need for change. Withoug hope, there will be no possibility to struggle on. Hope is an important variable in the way we wish to think, talk, reason, debate and mount intellectual reflection about Africa Re‐thinking African development through innovation, social‐invention, systems mental images and the logocentric imagination of the productive Africa‐nation, and not through market exchange, Smithian or Ricardian comparative advantage can generate a hopeful departure from received approaches to theorising about Africa. The making of African productive power, building the capital of the mind, organising institutions within the progressive imagination of the Africa‐nation is a critical launching pad for a new intellectual and research orientation hihgly needed when Africans want to make their history with the revival of the Pan‐African ideal and the African renaissance. The article proposes that the national system of innovation provides the metaphor of hope, the heuristics of what is significant data to investigate, and the criticism of conventional and pessimistic theorising and finally the emancipatory knowledge resources for a post‐pessimist turn to bring about the cognitive praxis of a post‐colonial liberation of Africa as a whole. (shrink)

Indigenous spiritualities among Africans, both in Africa and in the diaspora, are flourishing. In Lagos, Nigeria, for example, shrines compete with churches and mosques in adherents and positions. Beyond Africa, the rise of African spiritualities has become conspicuous. Reasons range from Afrocentrism to anti-religious tendencies to the popular religions, from racial animosity to politico-economic ideologies, yet insufficient attention is being paid to this new Afro-spiritualities. Can this renaissance in African spirituality bring forth or support a renaissance (...) in Africa? Africa arguably domesticates the future of humanity. From ecological perspectives to the productivity of offspring, from economic potentials to viable youths for the future, Africa must become progressively discursive in the global platform. A good way to indulge in this would be to understand the spirit of Africa, in the traditional spiritualities that constructed orientations and worldviews of the people. Understanding and addressing African spiritualities constitute an important key in understanding the African identity. (shrink)

Increasingly, innovation in artificial intelligence technologies portends the re-conceptualization of human existentiality along the paradigm of posthumanism. An exposition of this through a critical culturo-historical methodology uncloaks the Eurocentric genitive basis of the philosophical anthropology that underpins this technological posthumanism, as well as its dystopian possibilities. As a contribution to obviating the latter, an Africanist civilizational humanism proclaimed by Pixley ka Isaka Seme is proffered as a plausible alternative paradigm for humanity’s technological advancement. Seme, a pan-Africanist thinker of the early (...) twentieth century, proclaimed humanistic-spirituality as the indispensable gift African Civilisation-in-its-renaissance is yet to offer global humanity. His postulation is being provided as a contribution to the archive on cross-cultural ethics of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance by Reggie L. WilliamsCourtney H. DavisBonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance Reggie L. Williams waco, tx: baylor university press, 2014. 196 pp. $39.95.In a year when nine people were killed in a historic black church and a litany of African American lives have been extinguished by police brutality, to (...) say this book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and racialized interpretations of Jesus is timely is an understatement.Bonhoeffer was in search of a meaningful Christian theology through an authentic encounter with Jesus. Reggie Williams argues that Bonhoeffer, while [End Page 205] communing with people of color in 1930 Harlem at the height of its literary movement, found that meaning in the “black Christ” tradition otherwise unfamiliar to the young scholar. Bonhoeffer carried the identity of the black Christ to Germany, where he actively resisted Nazi atrocities and was executed in 1945. How is it that his ethic of resistance could be so singular, given that he was formed in much the same way as his “fundamentally oblivious” German peers (2)? Williams credits the difference to Harlem, where Bonhoeffer was schooled in hermeneutics and empathy; he further contends that Bonhoeffer’s practical experience in New York as well as the South and Cuba informed and motivated his attempts to actively eradicate the “lethal assumptions” of his peers in the German academy about God and humanity (3).On the undeniable influence of a hermeneutic, Williams states that a community of believers must have one; not only that, its hermeneutic must be connected to justice that extends concern beyond the confines of “self and kind” (3). Here Williams introduces the concept of empathy, which he describes as an ability to enter into the context of another’s suffering. Quite unintentionally, he informs the Rachel Dolezal controversy in noting that one does so without “losing grasp of one’s own separate identity” (3). Williams posits that Bonhoeffer must have experienced a “healthy and appropriate” empathy evidenced by his transformation from a theology that sanctioned racism prior to Harlem, to a willingness to share vicariously in the daily toll of racism in the black community, to resistance of racism upon returning to Germany (4). Bonhoeffer was not hamstrung by his social identity; he did not let being a white German scholar impede his ability to enter into the black American community and learn from it, “as though he had never been an outsider at all” (78).Williams argues that Bonhoeffer’s German peers did not possess such empathy because they had not shared in his Harlem experience. But there were in fact others in Germany who did not allow German nationalism to supersede Christ-centered resistance, even without the benefit of such an encounter. Although Williams does not address this fact in his argument, the historical documentation assembled in this book makes it plain that Harlem, the black literary movement, and Adam Clayton Powell Sr.’s ecclesiology did indeed have a profound effect on Bonhoeffer and his radical ethic of resistance.In addition to the exploration of Bonhoeffer’s time in Harlem, this book raises important considerations about scholarship and pedagogy that would benefit a broad audience. Williams, using Bonhoeffer’s own words, emphasizes that his early theology had been a demonstration of intellect rather than an expression of faith. Although he had written two dissertations, he was “not yet a Christian” when he set off for New York (109). When he returned, he lamented the German academy’s “guardians of purity” in Bonn who policed the borders of tradition—what was and was not taught in the classroom or preached on [End Page 206] Sunday (111). Has the academy continued this tradition of policing, and what is the rationale for the discipline of theology: intellectual religion or active faith? Williams makes the answers clear.Courtney H. DavisSt. Bernard’s School of Theology and MinistryCopyright © 2016 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Explanations of former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s public and private views on the aetiology of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country remain partial at best without the recognition that the latter presuppose and imply a postmodernist/postcolonialist philosophy of science that erases the line separating the political from the scientific. Evidence from Mbeki’s public speeches, interviews, and private and anonymous writings suggests that it was postmodernist/postcolonialist theory that inspired him to doubt the “Western” scientific consensus on HIV/AIDS and to (...) implement a public health policy that dragged its feet on full roll-out of antiretroviral therapy, causing thousands of avoidable deaths. A weak reductio ad absurdum allows us to conclude from this premise that postmodernist/postcolonial critique of “Western” science ought to be shunned. A comparative argument from consequences further suggests that in a situation where a misguided health policy has lead to a humanitarian catastrophe, and where postmodernist/postcolonialist critique of science can and has been used to justify this policy, an alternative theory ought to be preferred on which such justification would not be possible. The paper closes with a call for a non-relativist alternative to postmodernist/postcolonialist philosophy of science, and evaluates the potential of recent developments in ‘Studies of Expertise” to yield such. (shrink)

This article examines and analyses Biko’s contribution to the liberation struggle in South Africa from the perspective of politics and religion. Through his leading participation in Black Consciousness Movement and Black Theology Project, Biko has not only influenced the direction of the liberation agenda, but he has also left a legacy that if the liberated and democratic South Africa were to follow, this country would be a much better place for all to live in. In fact, the continent as a (...) whole through its endeavours in the African Union underpinned by the African Renaissance philosophy would go a long way in forging unity among the continent’s nation states. Biko’s legacy covers among other things identity, human dignity, education, research, health and job creation. This article will have far reaching implications for the relations between the democratic state and the church in South Africa, more so that there has been such a lack of the church’s prophecy for the past 25 years. (shrink)

The year 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of the passin g of Wangari Maathai, an environmentalist, women’s rights’ activist, Pan-Africanist, African Renaissance advocate and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Throughout her life – as a girlchild in primary school, a professional in higher education, a married woman and a politician – Maathai was confronted by and, in turn, confronted patriarchal practices in Kenya. An examination of Maathai’s life can easily mislead an observer into thinking that since American education certainly (...) gave her a break from a suffocating patriarchal Kenyan environment, the prevailing patriarchy in Kenya is inherently an African cultural practice. Yet, based on Maathai’s own reflections, ethical and justice- orientated Kikuyu culture was a driving factor in her quest for women’s liberation from patriarchy, and her commitment to environmentalism. Cognisant of the foregoing, I argue that prior to colonialism, traditional Kikuyu education in particular, and traditional African education in general, placed an emphasis on the veneration of women. Therefore, in pursuit of continuing struggles for women’s freedom from patriarchy in Africa, I propose that Afrocentric education, from foundation phase to higher education, should be advanced to reclaim women-affirming and venerating African cultures. (shrink)

This essay asks why modernist art history has been unable to account for the career of the African American painter Rose Piper. One of the most gifted painters of her generation, Piper was also amo...

This essay interweaves the narratives of Josephine Baker and Nora Holt in an exploration of African American women’s performance lives in jazz-age Paris. Baker landed in Paris by way of Harlem and...

One of the most prominent African American intellectuals of the twentieth century, W. E. B. Du Bois continues to influence the understanding of race relations in the United States. In this deeply personal introduction to the man and his ideas, esteemed scholar Carl A. Grant reflects on how Du Bois's work has illuminated his own life practices as a Black student, teacher, assistant principal, and professor. Sharing the story of a brilliant man's life contribution to teaching about race and (...) the ideologies and methodologies of racism in education and social and political thought, Grant begins his narrative with a broad overview of Du Bois's life and scholarship, before turning more specifically to Du Bois's theory of an educational system. The book concludes with an examination of Du Bois's curriculum model, predicated upon the work of the NAACP, the Harlem Renaissance, and Du Bois's own writings, as well as a discussion of the lasting legacy of Du Bois's educational and social theory in the present day. Ideal for graduate-level courses in curriculum theory, educational foundations, and education history, Du Bois and Education provides an in-depth examination of Du Bois's scholarship, social criticism, and political thought as they relate to his educational theory. (shrink)

Here I argue that aspects of Nietzsche's thought may be productively compared with the role played by the concept of ubuntu in talk of cultural renaissance in South Africa. I show that Nietzsche respects and writes for humanity conceived of in a vital sense, thereby imagining a sense of authenticity that may prove significant to talk of cultural renaissance in South Africa. I question the view that Nietzsche is an individualist, drawing on debate between Conway (1990) and Gooding-Williams (...) (2001), concerning the interpretation of ‘The Dance-Song' in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as well as on the notion of reciprocity intrinsic to the concept of ubuntu (Shutte, 1993). South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 26 (1) 2007: pp. 85-97. (shrink)

Ian Hacking defines a “style of scientific thinking” loosely as a “way to find things out about the world” characterised by five hallmark features of a number of scientific template styles. Most prominently, these are autonomy and “self-authentication”: a scientific style of thinking, according to Hacking, is not good because it helps us find out the truth in some domain, it itself defines the criteria for truth-telling in its domain. I argue that Renaissance medicine, Mediaeval “demonology”, and magical thinking (...) pass muster as scientific according to Hacking's criteria. However, application of these thought styles to the entities they introduce generates statements that logically imply a set of “ordinary” statements—or what Bernard Williams calls “plain truths”—which, contra the claims of autonomy and self-authentication, allows styles to be assessed from a style- independent perspective. Using Williams’ notion of plain truth, I show that Renaissance medicine, demonology, and magical thinking, in reality issue in many plain falsehoods. This confronts us with what I call Hacking's dilemma: either define stricter necessary conditions on being a style of scientific thinking, or concede that some styles albeit scientific are not as good at finding things out about the world as others. I make three suggestions to deal with the dilemma. (shrink)

Those who know anything about black history and culture probably know that aesthetics has long been a central concern for black thinkers and activists. The Harlem Renaissance, the Negritude movement, the Black Arts Movement, and the discipline of Black British cultural studies all attest to the intimate connection between black politics and questions of style, beauty, expression, and art. And the participants in these and other movements have made art and offered analyses that wrestle with clearly philosophical issues. In (...) _A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics_, I propose to identify and explore the most significant philosophical issues that emerge from the aesthetic dimensions of black life. The book will consist of eight short chapters, each of which will discuss a complex of related themes and phenomena. Every chapter will begin with one or two illustrative real-world examples, and then use the complexities of these opening cases to introduce the relevant issues. Many people in several fields have explored various bits of the terrain that I’ll cover. But none has surveyed the entire terrain in the name of aesthetics, and none has conducted this survey from an explicitly philosophical perspective. Setting up the project in this way means that its main conclusions will come in two forms. One kind of conclusion will emerge from the way I frame the issues. The two most important points here are that the field of aesthetics ought to cover more than the study of western fine art, and that the field of black aesthetics allows and requires the sort of comprehensive and philosophical analysis that I’ll offer. Another set of conclusions will emerge from my treatment of the specific issues in each chapter. In each case the aim will be to defend, albeit briefly, some position on the major issues raised in each chapter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethnophilosophy, Comparative Philosophy, Pragmatism:Toward a Philosophy of EthnoscapesThorsten Botz-Bornstein, Associate ResearcherIn this essay I would like to reflect on the place of philosophy within a "globalized" world and reconsider its status as a phenomenon that is potentially linked to a "local" culture. Whenever we question the authority of "general" truths and we look for ways of integrating "local discourses" into the overall construction called "global philosophy," we come across (...) the old idea of "ethnophilosophy." Far from suggesting ethnophilosophy as a model for the philosophy of the future, I intend to rethink certain themes of ethnophilosophy and contrast them with disciplines such as "comparative philosophy" and pragmatism. I will sketch an approach that I believe to be appropriate for the development of philosophy in times of globalization.One of the negative undertones of the term "globalization" is that it is seen as a uniformizing and flattening power that eliminates existing cultural differences. On the other hand, there is an important side effect of globalization represented by those movements acting against it, stressing the importance of "localization" or "regionalization." Ethnophilosophy, in spite of its outdated origin and its potential dangers, remains interesting as an intellectual model as long as it is not formulated in a radical fashion. When it is formulated in a radical fashion it has to face the reproach of relativism and of enclosing itself in a cultural sphere that it declares to be inaccessible to others.Ethnophilosophy: A Renaissance?Ethnophilosophy was developed in Africa in the 1960s, although its origin can be traced back to a book on Bantu philosophy by the Belgian missionary Placide Tempels. In this book, published in 1946, Tempels tried to conclude with the view that primitive peoples have neither ontology nor logic and are unable to recognize the nature of being or even of reality as such. Tempels was looking for an ontology colored by "local" cultural components but also by language,1 and he made a serious attempt to build a philosophical system based on Bantu thought.What followed were endless controversies about the nature of African philosophy that made of "ethnophilosophy" a stream of thought much richer than its name might allow one to suppose. A part of its stimulating power can perhaps be traced to the ambiguity of Tempels' approach: on the one hand it could easily be dismissed as paternalism or the attempt to force African philosophy into the straightjacket of European concepts, while on the other hand the expressed desire to give "ethnic" [End Page 153] philosophy a new role within the international hierarchy of the philosophies was immensely attractive. Be that as it may, Tempels' book became the real manifest of "ethnophilosophy."Another point at issue that spurned internal ethnophilosophical discussions was the question whether African philosophy is advanced by an entire people (that is, by a collective) or by individual philosophers. This question (which does not arise in Tempels' book) was first taken up by the Beninese philosopher Paulin Hountondji,2 who claimed that ethnophilosophy is no philosophy at all because it remains indifferent toward individually critical, that is, typically philosophical, approaches. Related debates touch upon fundamental questions concerning the meaning of "collective thinking" or the nature of philosophy as such.3However subtle the points may be that emerge from these discussions, for the outside observer ethnophilosophy appears to be a kind of anthropology (whose premises it continues to share) with an incorporated interest in metaphysical questions. Its opposite is "conventional" Western philosophy, which persistently explores truth with the help of a single, individual mind, aiming at the crystallization of a truth relevant for everybody. What matters for ethnophilosophy is the truth brought forward by a certain way of life of a group of people that can be found on the "inside" of a culture and that can exist independently of any considerations of those things that exist on the outside. Ethnophilosophy is radical in the sense that it not only aims to reestablish, through its opposition to the all-intruding "international" philosophy, its own philosophy within the borders of a certain nation; going much further than many of today's opponents of globalization would dare to go, ethnophilosophy thinks of philosophy... (shrink)

In a compelling chronicle of her search to understand Beauvoir's philosophy in The Second Sex, Margaret A. Simons offers a unique perspective on Beauvoir's wide-ranging contribution to twentieth-century thought. She details the discovery of the origins of Beauvoir's existential philosophy in her handwritten diary from 1927; uncovers evidence of the sexist exclusion of Beauvoir from the philosophical canon; reveals evidence that the African-American writer Richard Wright provided Beauvoir with the theoretical model of oppression that she used in The Second (...) Sex; shows the influence of The Second Sex in transforming Sartre's philosophy and in laying the theoretical foundations of radical feminism; and addresses feminist issues of racism, motherhood, and lesbian identity. Simons also draws on her experience as a Women's Liberation organizer as she witnessed how women used The Second Sex in defining the foundations of radical feminism. Bringing together her work as both activist and scholar, Simons offers a highly original contribution to the renaissance of Beauvoir scholarship. (shrink)

L'Afrique se propose de lutter de façon efficace pour la réduction de la pauvreté. La pauvreté en Afrique est certainement matérielle, mais elle est aussi spirituelle. Autant elle est dépourvue des moyens de vivre à la mesure de sa population, autant elle semble manquer de ressort spirituel capable de lui permettre d'assumer de façon responsable son destin. La réduction de la pauvreté matérielle passe par la réduction de la pauvreté spirituelle. Et cette dernière passe par la redécouverte des richesses de (...) l'esprit et de la manière dont ces richesses ont aidé dans le passé et peuvent encore aider dans le présent à prendre en charge le devenir de l'Afrique. Les auteurs voudraient instaurer et explorer un de fondements essentiels de la Renaissance africaine : l'histoire des idées dans l'Afrique traditionnelle. Aussi le présent ouvrage se fixe-t-il pour tâche de présenter les principes, les démarches et une application de cette discipline à la fois ancienne et, dans le contexte de l'Afrique traditionnelle, inédite. (shrink)

Examines an ethic of sexuality rooted in black queerness, including ethnographic interviews that help to trace the development of black queer ethics and sexual ethics.

The definitive biography of Alain Locke, the first African American Rhodes Scholar and Harvard PhD in philosophy, Howard University philosophy scholar, and architect of the Harlem Renaissance, who mentored a generation of artists including Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Nurston and promoted the work of African Americans as the quintessential creators of American modernism. This biography explores his professional and private life, including his relationships with white patrons and his lifelong search for love as a gay man.

Dans ses efforts pour la renaissance et la reconnaissance de l'Afrique, Léopold Sédar Senghor a élaboré une philosophie de l'art fondée sur l'identification des paradigmes inhérents au style afro-diasporique : le génie du rythme et l'hégémonie du mouvement, source d'un négro-orphisme où l'émotion apparaît consubstantielle de la commotion. S'inscrivant dans la continuité de la pensée senghorienne, le présent ouvrage met en place la théorie d'une esthétique kinésique et tente de l'appliquer à l'étude des pratiques oratoires, musicales, sportives, chorégraphiques afro-diasporiques. (...) Il montre comment l'idiosyncrasie africaine a servi de matrice à de nouveaux langages plastiques et musicaux tant en Europe qu'aux Amériques. Il en est ainsi de la geste jazzistique de Wynton Marsalis, examinée ici en lien avec la statuaire oraculaire nkisi nkondi du Congo, les polyphonies des peuples "pygmées", le bwiti et le mvet, culte et art verbal d'Afrique centrale. L'esthétique du jazz, du basket-ball, du hip-hop, des cultes religieux et des musiques diasporiques se rattache essentiellement à l'Afrique noire par la virtuosité expressive, la vitalité kinesthésique et la démocratisation du rythme. Libératrice, jouissive, délice dionysiaque, elle traduit le goût, la passion d'exister ainsi que la faculté de résistance d'une sensibilité culturelle qui a su surmonter les tragédies de l'Histoire avant de trouver de nouvelles voies de régénération et de dissémination dans le corps et l'âme des sociétés postmodernes. (shrink)

In the period from January 1920 to December 1921 a cooperation between Jessie Fauset, Augustus Dill and W.E.B. Du Bois resulted in the publication of a periodical called “The Brownies’ Book” the first publication for North American black, and not white children and young people. The creation of “The Brownies' Book” was a pioneering event in African American literature in general and, more specifically, in the field of African American children's literature, as it was the first periodical composed (...) and published by African Americans for black children who, until then, searched in vain for material that included a perspective on their experience and history. This article argues that the TBBs were one of the harbingers of the movement called the Harlem Renaissance, constituting a children's literary materialization of the path towards the emergence of what the philosopher Alain Locke called the New Negro. What was being formulated was both the deconstruction of stereotypes associated with blacks and the active projection/creation of a positive identification with their local and ancestral community. This paper seeks to identify the post-WWI discursive strategies and practices of de-racialization proposed for “the children of the sun”, as W.E.B. Du Bois called them, in order to stop seeing themselves “through the eyes of others”. (shrink)

The article depicts the traditional fishing, the outdoor drying of Stockfish, and its cultural and culinary uses in a historic context and today. The fishing of the North East Arctic cod (Gadus morhua) is a sustainable coastal fishery for millennia in the North of Norway, but climate change challenges the outdoor drying of stockfish. The article follows the stockfish history during the hanseatic office in Bergen until the present trade. The early commercial production of stockfish was due to urban expansion, (...) fasting rules and the need to provide nutritious food to the poor in Northern Europe and beyond. The article follows the traces of stockfish expansion as a staple food, first to Northern Europe, later to central Europe and the Mediterranean countries, before ending up as an important food supply to West-African countries in the nineteenth century. The article explains the early Greek and Renaissance concerns for eating fish and for stockfish in particular due to dietetic and medical beliefs. Then the cultural impact of stockfish is explained by showing some examples of both living and disappearing culinary traditions. The use of lye for soaking stockfish is not only a Scandinavian tradition but a little known shared European craft and culinary practice. Battering the stockfish with a wooden hammer, the use of lye for durability and water for softening the hard fish texture was practiced for preparing stockfish. Finally, the article touches upon rules, regulations and organisations that can help strengthening and preserve the traditional craft and culinary uses of stockfish today. (shrink)

Since literary historian Robert Bone published his seminal essay ‘Richard Wright and the Chicago Renaissance’ in 1986, scholars have created new cartographies of previously unexplored terrain in American cultural history. The earliest studies focused on literature, but more recently attention has turned to other disciplines, including visual arts. Recent publication of The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932–1950 (2011) by Robert Bone and Richard A. Courage promises to decisively broaden scholarly understandings of the scope (...) and significance of Chicago-centred cultural production during the Great Depression and post-war years. Of particular relevance to contemporary studies of new media art is the manner in which then-emergent ideas and practices – centring on racialized subject matter, elite and mass audiences, traditional and new mediums of expression, private vs public sponsorship, and passive vs active reception of art objects – converged to create new paradigms and possibilities for visual artists to reshape consciousness in a period of institutional collapse and change. Chicago’s New Negro artists of the 1930s and 1940s, like their counterparts in 1920s Harlem, sought to reframe perceptions of African American life, to re-present the black subject as something other than an object of contempt or amusement beneath the privileged gaze of the white viewer. Just as these artists sought to revise perceptions of racial reality, examination of the wide range of actual images they created and the mediums and styles they explored revises reductive notions about creative expression in this period, which often portray a mere subordination of art to propaganda and an embrace of representational aesthetics and simplistic narratives in a fruitless detour in the evolution from modernism to postmodernism. On the contrary, Andrew Hemingway notes the range of stylistic experiment and characterizes so-called ‘social art’ as ‘a hybrid and unstable mode [which] had to carry the imperative to be an art equal in formal achievement to both the great art of the past and the modern tradition … [and] to suggest a political orientation without becoming overt revolutionary propaganda’ (2002).New media theorist Oliver Grau observes thatIn many quarters, virtual reality is viewed as a totally new phenomenon… but it did not make its first appearance with the technical invention of computer-aided virtual realities. On the contrary, virtual reality forms part of the core of the relationship of humans to images… grounded in art traditions that have receivedscant attention up to now.(2004)In the midst of another period of change, of transformed and transforming ideas and practices in the arts, we have much to learn from the attempts of Chicago’s New (Media) Negro artists to create ‘art for the people’, to immerse broad audiences in such accessible media as mural painting, photography and graphic arts. (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Imagining the Moor in Medieval PortugalJosiah Blackmore (bio)For medieval Portugal, Africa was familiar and strange, a known place across the modest parcel of the Mediterranean between the Algarve and Ceuta, and, farther south, an unknown expanse of land that glimmered black under the equatorial sun. And for Portugal, like for Spain, Africa was part of the demographics and history of Iberian culture in the figure of the Moor, at (...) once an “other” and a closer, more intimate presence. Jeffrey J. Cohen reminds us of the “cultural work” of the Saracen (one of the medieval terminological possibilities for “Moor”), “whose dark skin and diabolical physiognomy were the western Middle Ages’ most familiar, most exorbitant embodiment of racial alterity” [189]. Cohen argues, therefore, that the Saracen (grosso modo) existed in a network of literary and ideological productions of western Europe; in the case of Iberia, the Moor was sometimes but not always a Saracen and was both a figure of alterity and of familiarity and sameness, less an aprioristic other and more of a figure that could be variously othered as a marker of boundaries including “race,” spirituality, and sexuality. While this essay does not take on the idea of racial alterity per se, it does assume the notion that in the literary culture of Portugal blackness, in some manner, informed constructions of the Moor. My purpose here is to delineate an understanding of the Moor in medieval Portugal as a construct that resists easy categorizations as an undifferentiated figure of otherness, a consideration that culminates with the work of Gomes Eanes de Zurara (1410?–1474?), the first chronicler of Portuguese exploration into (west) Africa. To this end, I will briefly consider the Moor in representative examples from the livros de linhagens (genealogical books) and the cantigas d’escarnho e de mal dizer (poetry of mockery and insult, hereafter abbreviated CEM), not so much in order to trace a direct influence between these texts and the work of Zurara but to provide an idea of how the Moor was variously fashioned in earlier texts. The analysis here is not exhaustive nor conclusive but suggestive, and is meant to indicate how the Moor—and the idea of the Moor—in Portugal can add to critical conversations on the imaginative and ideological constructions of the Moor and of Africa and its inhabitants.The formulations of national and cultural identities in European texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance1 that in some way engage Africa and the African have increasingly [End Page 27] and understandably become an object of interest among literary and cultural theorists. One of the advances in recent years of this critical work is the freeing of the Moor from the strictures of the “self/other” binary that permeated earlier scholarly work on Europeans and their others, especially in the field of imperial/colonial studies or in the study of the conflictive representations of Moors and Europeans in genres such as medieval epic.2 In the medieval field, Cohen’s work on the Saracen is one good example of this more theoretically suggestive approach, since Cohen explores the work of representation as it dovetails with the universalizing claims of psychoanalysis. Suzanne Conklin Akbari’s essay usefully reminds us that the medieval world considered itself as existing in three parts, thus making problematic modern applications of binaries as supposedly informing a medieval perception of “Asian Orient and European Occident” [20]. Other studies, though concerned with postmedieval literatures and histories, also explore the cultural work of the Moor. Such, for instance, is the case with Emily C. Bartels’s articles on the Moor in Shakespeare. Bartels charts the flexibilities and inconsistencies of the term “Moor” in Renaissance England [“Making More” 434], noting especially its “racial” claims. In analyzing the place of postcolonialism as it might inform critical work on Africa in the Renaissance, Bartels questions the model that postcolonial studies assumes as underlying its own practice by arguing that “[postcolonial critiques] continue … to recreate the history of silenced voices through only one model of cultural exchange: one in which European domination is both the motivating force and the inevitable outcome” [“Othello and Africa” 46].These representative studies of the Moor tag... (shrink)

The Assemblies of God (AOG) celebrates its centenary in 2017. The paper aims to show the historical development of theological education and ministerial training and formation in this denomination. It starts by showing how internationally AOG embraced the Bible Institute movement as a way of evangelism, church planting and growth from the early decades of the 20th century after the birth of the Pentecostal Movement. Then there is a South African scenario, lamenting the de-emphasis of the importance of theological (...) education, though there was emphasis on evangelism and missional endeavours on the grassroots. The research unfolds the development of institutions from 1949 to the present. All in all, 10 institutions are identified and briefly explained, some of them with their demise. The article concludes by historical reflections on what was taught and identifies the gaps by suggesting that the Pentecostal curriculum should be relevant to the context of Africa by embracing inclusivity: Hidden Curriculum, Gender Studies, Inculturation and Liberation ideals and renaissance of pneumatology. (shrink)

In this paper we examine Ɔbenfo Mario H. Beatty’s chapter, ‘Maat the Cultural and Intellectual Allegiance of a Concept’ in terms of its articulation of MꜢꜤt ‘Maat’. This examination sets out to delineate how a return to the principles inherent in MꜢꜤt ‘Maat’ can serve to bring about the Wḥm Mswt ‘Rebirth/Renaissance’ of Kmt ‘Land of Black People’ and Kmt ‘Black People’ economically and politically. This research is significant in that it points us away from the semantically vacuous and (...) etymologically opaque terms “Africa” and “Africans” to terminology, principles and practices that restore our original identity as Kmt ‘Black People’. (shrink)

This research work examines Heidegger's (1889-1976) contention that phenomenology can inspire, illuminate, motivate, reinforce and guide (human) individual's actions. It achieves this by adapting Heidegger's phenomenological approach to analyze and interpret representative everyday factical experiences of nepotism, selfishness and mass mentality in the (Nigerian) society. Doing this helps to ascertain whether these experiences have any phenomenological link with inauthenticity. Also, it provides a close reading and interpretation of Heidegger's treatment of authentic existence, and explores the possibility of complimenting it with (...) the phenomenology of Commensality, as a mode of care and a way to authenticity. In this manner, it strategically explores possible ways of inspiring individual Daseins to authenticity, and with it engendering a positive transformation of the (Nigerian) society. Presenting and elaborating the phenomenology of Commensality, the work highlights the relationship and the differences between the phenomenology of Commensality and the ontical or sociological understanding of commensality as obtained in African traditional societies. Phenomenology of Commensality argues for the 'renaissance' of Commensality, concretely expressed as Onyenkeanyi, and not just for its 'revival'. The research work further develops the phenomenology of education for Commensality, discussing the possible content and focus of its curriculum, while differentiating it from ethics. The proper implementation of phenomenology of education for Commensality could inspire and illuminate individual Daseins to authenticity, and thereby becomes an improvement strategy for the positive transformation of the (Nigerian) society. As a phenomenology, it is appropriate that the people and places analyzed take on a definite character, which is why the Nigerian society is used. However, it is expected that the implications of the findings presented here will be general and accurate enough to allow application to any number of similar situations. (shrink)