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The Advocacy for Africanity as Justice Against Epistemicide
Black Theology, 2019
With continued calls for the Africanisation of the University curricula in South Africa, it has become urgent that the subject of Africanity be placed centrally in this discourse. This suggests that we engage the colonial and apartheid baggage that essentially contributed to African epistemicide. One of the objectives of colonialism was the goal of conquering Africa and relegating her people to the status of being sub-humans. In doing that, it needed to present Africa and her people as "dark" and "backward" respectively. Thus, African Weltanschauungen were dismissed and her peoples deemed to have no culture and no conception of god. Yet, the names of the gods of the African peoples were deliberately translated to refer to the god of western Christianity and this confused the Africans. Western Christian theology no doubt played a pivotal role in ensuring that the goal of total and comprehensive conquest by Western colonialism would be attained. This article argues that any attempt at countering the extent of African epistemicide must be accompanied by a degree of deliberate political will, and must reckon with the fact that the university in Africa, thus far, is but a transmission belt of Western epistemologies, which reaffirm the myth that European existence is qualitatively superior to any other forms of being-human-in-the-world.
You have no past, no history : Philosophy, literature and the re-invention of Africa
International Journal of English and Literature, 2016
Africa has been a victim of misrepresentation since the advent of colonialism. This paper, which is largely based on textual analysis, examines how African philosophy and literature intersect in an attempt to bring about a better understanding of Africa in both the West and Africa itself. The study argues that the intersection of literature and philosophy in African literary discourse we witness is an inevitable consequence of the historical events (including colonialism) that conspired to condemn the continent-as a body-to subjection in the Western world of thought, and the response that this reality solicited from Africans facing the challenges of the Western engineered modernity. The study examines the writing of some of the pioneering modern African writers who have tried to undermine ideas propagated by philosophers such as Hegel-in a typical Eurocentric tradition-to undermine Africa, a continent they hardly understood. The objective is to show that through literature, African writers were able to reveal more about African thought than what has been readily acknowledged.
African Literature Still in the Dock: A Deconstructive Strategy for Eurocentric Hegemony
Studies in Literature and Language, 2015
Some academic circles still harbor the view that European literature remains the best that is written, with all subaltern literary work patronizingly assumed to be awkward, mediocre, or inferior. In particular, Eurocentric charges are levelled against African literature on the grounds that it is oral, mono-thematic, mono-structural, hybrid, and mimetic. This paper provides a vital awareness of the debilitating effects of this kind of Eurocentric hegemonic discourse, thus decolonizing African literature and counteracting European attacks on African literary norms and values. To this effect, the paper argues that a key way for African writers to correct the perpetual lopsided and distorted view of their work is to deconstruct the Western hegemonic discourse and reject the biased criteria, norms, and standards of the so-called great tradition.
Africana Philosophy as a Cultural Resistance
Vernon Press, 2018
My aim in this chapter is to historicise a specific reading of Africana philosophy in terms of cultural repudiation to imposed historical memories and episteme. I use the term “Africana” in broad generality, for an inclusive representation of intellec- tual traditions emerging from Africa and the African Diaspora. From the per- spective of intellectual history, “Africana” is used here to signify a cross fertili- sation of knowledge-experiences between Africa and the African Diaspora, and how these experiences mirror each other.
Three Recent Texts in Africana Philosophy: Overcoming Disciplinary Decadence
Journal of World Philosophies, 2016
The following essay is a review of three recent texts in Africana philosophy. These three texts are united by the overarching theme of the teleological suspension of mainstream philosophy. Lewis Gordon takes a global approach to Africana philosophy and his text engages the issue of the historiography of Africana philosophy; George Yancy's approach is situated within the subtradition of African American philosophy and his text pursues a critical Africana study of the existential reality of whiteness; and Neil Roberts situates his work within the subtradition of Afro-Caribbean philosophy, with the declared goal of tackling the concept of freedom.
Notion of "African" as a strategic ideological epistemic position in African philosophy
Phronimon
This article argues that the racial essentialism implicit in the geographic criteria of the meaning of "African" in African philosophy (as black, ethnic and sub-Saharan) limits the development of African philosophy as a disciplined methodological inquiry into the question of African − and the African question in philosophy. It articulates instead a strategic ideological notion of "African" in African philosophy; defined by a commitment to the ethics of social justice for the historical injustice of racial dehumanisation of Africans, to transcend the racial essentialism implicit in the above geographic criteria of the meaning of "African" in African philosophy.
Discourses and Disciplines: African Literary Criticism, North Africa and the Politics of Exclusion
While it goes without saying that creative literature inscribes human experience through the manipulations of verbal and rhetorical resources, it also stands to reason that literary deployments are epistemic and discursive, thus necessarily biased. To locate realism as a signifier of an irrefutable truth, as suggested by certain schools of thought, becomes highly problematic in literature since it is a linguistic system whose possibilities of meaning are 'always in a process' and therefore 'never concluded'. This paper examines the claims of realism in literature, exploring its history and metamorphosis in time and space, and advancing that its foregrounding by a number of ideo-aesthetic interests as constituting the core of their discourses is, at best, an exercise in 'idealism.' This argument subtly branches into a recognition of how postcolonial literatures have inscribed their difference from the Western Master Text within the realistic discourse. It proffers a poststructuralist resolution of identifying a multiplicity of identities in any project exploring the realistic in imaginative literature.
People cannot ‘see’ states the same way that they can watch the sunrise in the morning or catch a glimpse of a butterfly floating above a petunia. From this perspective states are not a rigid, tangible form of reality but rather abstract, arbitrary lines drawn by human beings. The concept of a ‘state’, one could argue, is the biggest game of ‘imaginary friend’ (or foe) known to man. Searle (1995:2) gives another perfect example: ‘without the attribution of value, and the existence of financial institutions, a dollar bill or euro note would be nothing more than a piece of paper. As already suggested, sovereignty or the borders dividing states exist only by virtue of human agreement. It is human design and intent that shapes the material object into one with a specific meaning and use within a context.’ The frightening thing, however, is that sometimes these ‘designs’ are presented in such a way that they are adopted by others. In this way, ideas are legitimised through their parallels in history. As stated by Bush (2015: internet),“history can be a tool of influence – a tool of long-term psychological warfare even – used to manipulate the here-and-now, to give added emotional resonance.” A case in point being that one way that colonialism was legitimised in many societies was through the repetition of certain narratives, narratives that interlinked with concepts that originated in the olden days of slavery. As stated by David (2011: internet) “One of the chief justifications for the so-called 'scramble for Africa' was a desire to stamp out slavery once and for all.” The aim of this essay is thus to look at contemporary debates within African philosophy, specifically: Where is Africa? Who is African? How can and does Africa relate to the West, to other philosophical, cultural and religious traditions? Is reason culturally specific? How are reason and language related? What is fundamental reality, in an African context? And finally, how should political, social and ethical life be imagined in Africa? The conclusion will pull all the main points made in the essay together. The sources used to substantiate the arguments made in this paper were books, journals and the internet.
African philosophy In search of identity
ABSTRACT The renowned Kenyan philosopher, Prof. D.A. Masolo, currently teaching at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A., is much more than a historian of African philosophy: he is also a rigorous critic of current trends in the field. In chapter 1 of his book, African philosophy in search of identity (1994) he tells us that African philosophy is still searching for its identity because some western scholars have given African philosophy a negative representation claimed to be based on logical analysis of African Ethno cultures and Environmental Observation. Masolo considers the responses and reactions of various African scholars and views these as Emotional responses based on a strong sense of Ethnocentrism and Afrocentrism. This he captures in his select topic for chapter 1, Logocentrism and Emotivism: Two systems in struggle for control of identity. In this chapter, Masolo tries to answer the question; what is the western discourse about African Philosophy and how have African philosophers responded to such discourses? In answering an answer to this question Masolo becomes a philosopher of history and he goes ahead to give us a historical background of the many issues and problems discussed in African philosophy debate.