The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy

863 Pages·2017·12.32 MB·English

by  Adeshina Afolayan

THE PALGRAVE HANDBOOK
OF AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY
Edited by
Adeshina Afolayan and Toyin Falola
The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy
Adeshina Afolayan · Toyin Falola
Editors
The Palgrave
Handbook of African
Philosophy
Editors
Adeshina Afolayan Toyin Falola
University of Ibadan The University of Texas at Austin
Ibadan, Nigeria Austin, TX, USA
ISBN 978-1-137-59290-3 ISBN 978-1-137-59291-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59291-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939108
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To
the African philosophical enterprise
and those who instigated committed philosophizing
for the benefits of Africa:
Kwasi Wiredu
Paulin Hountondji
Valentin Mudimbe
Claude Sumner
Léopold Sédar Senghor
Peter Bodunrin
John Mbiti
Henry Odera Oruka
Ngugi wa Thong’o
Kwame Antony Appiah
Achille Mbembe
P
reface
It has been close to four decades now since African philosophy came into its
own as a disciplinary force in the ideological battle for the survival of the Afri-
can continent. In those years, it survived the Hegelian deliberate sidelining of
Africa from the universal context of history and the rejection of its mandate as
a cultural enterprise. It generated debates and controversies on the conditions
of its own possibility as well as numerous and often contradictory methodolo-
gies to guide its sustenance and its interventions on behalf of Africa. African
philosophers have evolved over the long period since the traumatic unfolding
of their discipline within the cauldron of the decolonization process on the
continent. There have been books written, anthologies collected, conferences
organized, and essays published on substantive and methodological issues
around the ideas of the self-identity and development of Africa.
When Kwasi Wiredu published A Companion to African Philosophy in
2004, he brought together a significant ensemble of African philosophers
on what has been achieved within the field so far. In his introduction to that
anthology, Wiredu brought us up to date about the state of African philos-
ophy “in our time.” However, a lot has happened since then to Africa, to
African scholarship, and to the world to challenge philosophizing on the
continent. Between that time and now, there have been several incidences
and issues—new additions to the problems of existence on the continent—
unleashed especially by the globalization process that requires new philo-
sophical reflections. Africans top the list of refugees fleeing the continent
for political and economic reasons. Democratic governance remains essen-
tially bedevilled by corruption and bad leadership, climate change is now
more than critical, religious fundamentalism now has the face of terror, eco-
nomic paradigms are getting challenged, sexuality and identity are under
serious siege, citizenship is weathering the ethnic storm, gender is taking a
serious and renewed stand against patriarchal politics, African writings of all
hues have evolved to confront both the African predicament and the human
vii
viii PrEFACE
condition, nationalism seems tenacious in the face of cosmopolitanism, Nol-
lywood has fully come of age, the Afropolitans have arrived, and African phi-
losophy must take stock of these issues and reassess its disciplinary capacities
and relevance. Old arguments must be reexamined, and new ones must be
created. It is time for the African philosophical enterprise to crank up its intel-
lectual engines and make a move forward.
The Handbook of African Philosophy takes on the challenge of rethinking
the intellectual, professional and curricular boundaries of African philoso-
phy by provoking reflections on a whole range of issues which African phi-
losophers have hitherto engaged, those that are confronting them, and those
they have been silent about until now. The Handbook of African Philosophy is
therefore distinctive for three reasons:
a. It offers a comprehensive survey of the field of African philosophy, espe-
cially with regards to new events and issues that are significant for philo-
sophical practice in Africa. It therefore seeks to generate fresh insights
into new discourses and intellectual development in African philoso-
phy occasioned by new directions in feminism and gender issues, new
arguments in development studies, terrorism, the nature of philosophy
itself, globalization, and some other critical issues raised by the dias-
pora. For instance, the chapter on “Philosophy in Portuguese-Speaking
Africa” will provide a much-needed enlightenment on a much-neglected
Lusophone African philosophy that does not feature in the African
philosophical literature, while the chapter on “African Philosophy at
the African Cinema” launches African philosophy into an area that has
received little or no attention from African philosophers. The chapter
titled “African Philosophy, Afropolitanism, and ‘Africa’”, as well as other
chapters, attempts to further draw the discipline into a deep interroga-
tion of, and intellectual relationship with, African literature and other
disciplines involved in the collective efforts at interrogating the African
postcolonial condition. “An African Philosophy for Children,” “African
Philosophy and Education,” “African Philosophy as a Multidisciplinary
Discourse,” and “Teaching African Philosophy and a Postmodern Dis-
position” all present nouveau intellectual pathways which rarely feature
in the discourse on African philosophy. “Africa and the Philosophy of
Sexuality” recognizes the growing import of sexuality arguments on
the continent in the wake of human rights debate and the draconian
legislations and outcries against homosexuality. And “Yorùbá Concep-
tion of Peace” attempts to launch a critical interrogation of conflicts
on the continent through a conception of peace that is not only indig-
enous to Africa but has the potentials for global applications. In “ritual
Archives,” we have a unique inclusion in the Handbook that represents
an African historian’s philosophical interrogation of the epistemologies
of Africa and the limitations of the Western understanding of archives.
PrEFACE ix
b. The Handbook of African Philosophy provides an opportunity for new
and established scholars of African Philosophy to reengage their own
and other philosophers’ ideas, arguments, and thoughts about Africa
and her predicament in a global world where issues of knowledge, tech-
nologies, pedagogy, sexuality, hybridity, gender, neoliberalism, and ter-
rorism have become major intellectual challenges.
c. Finally, the Handbook of African Philosophy will also serve a pedagogic
purpose that will provide researchers, students, and teachers of African
philosophy with a handy volume about the past, current states, and
future possibilities of the discipline.
Ibadan, Nigeria Adeshina Afolayan
Austin, USA Toyin Falola
2016
a
cknowledgements
This volume is established on the foundation of intellectual indebtedness.
Edited works of this type are significant because they contain a solicitation
around critical themes and issues from the very best scholars that specific dis-
ciplines have produced. It is therefore a culmination of very hard work, task-
ing correspondences, and infinite patience on the side of both the editors and
the contributors. Our gratitude therefore goes, first, to the erudite contribu-
tors most of whom had to bear the brunt of countless, and hence distract-
ing and irritating, reminders to get the work done on time. The work is now
done!
We are also very grateful to Palgrave Macmillan whose Handbook series
provides the best platform from which to launch a critical rethinking of the
philosophical enterprise in Africa. We are especially grateful to our editor
Alexis Nelson who patiently guided the project from the beginning, and Amy
Invernizzi who took it through its final editorial stages. We are equally grate-
ful to all who made the eventual publication of this volume a reality.
2016 Adeshina Afolayan
Toyin Falola
xi
c
ontents
1 Introduction: Rethinking African Philosophy
in the Age of Globalization 1
Adeshina Afolayan and Toyin Falola
Part I Preliminaries and Reappraisals
2 African Philosophy: Appraisal of a Recurrent Problematic 19
Godfrey Tangwa
3 Archaeologies of African Thought in a Global Age 35
Sanya Osha
4 A Philosophical Re-reading of Fanon, Nkrumah, and Cabral
in the Age of Globalization and Postmodernity 49
Teodros Kiros
5 Africanizing Philosophy: Wiredu, Hountondji, and Mudimbe 61
D.A. Masolo
6 Oruka and Sage Philosophy: New Insights in Sagacious
Reasoning 75
Gail M. Presbey
7 Rethinking the History of African Philosophy 97
Safro Kwame
xiii