African/Africana Philosophy

This article examines Oyowe’s highly distinctive socio-ontological account of ancestral existence. According to Oyowe, ancestors are intentional objects. Ancestors thus constitute a social kind and are ontologically distinct from natural kinds. The article critiques and rejects Oyowe’s distinction between social and natural kinds. The article then goes on to outline a possible alternative approach that draws on quasi-materialist and pan-psychic metaphysics to argue that ancestors exist as a natural kind—more specifically, ancestral existence consists in the this-worldly survival of the mentalistic (...) aspects of a human person’s biological death. Throughout, the article is concerned with the rationality of belief in ancestral existence rather than with their de facto existence as such. (shrink)

In this article, Oritsegbubemi Oyowe responds to seven critics of Menkiti’s Moral Man on a range of issues and questions and, along the way, clarifies further some of the ideas and proposals in the book. Some of these issues and questions concern what it means to interrogate other cultures, what social recognition really entails, whether persons are social kinds, and, by extension, whether Oyowe’s appeal to a special social ontology is superfluous, whether Oyowe’s account of the existence and persistence of (...) ancestral persons is plausible, and finally, whether and to what extent the terms of these engagements exemplify exogenous discourse. (shrink)

This article reacts to Oyowe’s understanding of the personal existence of ancestral persons as real mind-dependent entities. The article’s author’s contention is that Oyowe has not managed to rule out the alternative that the author is sympathetic to, namely, that ancestral persons are real mind-independent entities that continue to exist even when, through forgetfulness, they cease to exist in the memory of humans. This article calls Oyowe’s mind-dependent alternative the “safe” one, as it appears easier to defend than the “unsafe,” (...) mind-independent alternative, which the article’s author has yet to develop convincing reasons for. (shrink)

In Menkiti’s Moral Man, Oyowe argues that Menkiti’s persons are “soft persons.” They are different in kind from human beings in that they find their existence in a social ontology, whereas humans find theirs in a natural ontology, but this does not make them any less real. This understanding, Oyowe contends, is consistent with Menkiti’s texts and allows for a satisfying explanation of a possibly problematic relationship between human being and person. He acknowledges that their placement in social ontology makes (...) them (at least partly) conventional entities and so opens Menkiti’s account to some of the threats that face conventionalism, but he goes on to argue that these can be overcome. This article argues against Oyowe that Menkiti’s persons are resistant to the interpretation as soft entities. Though Menkiti continually stresses the importance of the community to personhood, much of what he has to say suggests he ascribes neither to the distinction between social and natural ontology that is central to Oyowe’s interpretation nor to the conventionalism that comes with it. This article argues that the soft-person reading does not solve problems of conventionalism as neatly as Oyowe hopes but that Menkiti’s view is not vulnerable to those problems. (shrink)

This article examines two issues raised and addressed by Oyowe in his book, Menkiti’s Moral Man. The first involves two of Oyowe’s criticisms of Menkiti: One criticism is that his conception of personhood is unfairly gendered; the other is that Menkiti’s view involves the priority of the community over individuals. The second issue involves Oyowe’s criticisms of Ikuenobe’s analysis of some aspects of Menkiti’s view in the context of the above criticisms. Oyowe indicates that, although he is “a repentant critic” (...) of Menkiti, he does “not deny the merits of these criticisms.” On page 15, He indicates that he is “convinced that there are resources in Menkiti’s general account for tackling them [criticisms].” This article highlights how his criticisms of Ikuenobe indicate his failure to appreciate fully the relevant robust resources in Menkiti for addressing these criticisms that Ikuenobe’s analysis highlights. (shrink)

The subject of personhood has received substantial discussion in contemporary African philosophy where communitarianism happens to be the dominant approach. In his new book Menkiti’s Moral Man, Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe enters this discussion as a repentant critic of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s version of communitarianism, the plausibility of which he attempts to defend with compelling arguments and interpretations. In this book, especially in chapter 4, Oyowe addresses the subject of women’s social recognition and inclusion in the African community. In view of this, (...) this article extends the discussion of the subject of social recognition and inclusion to the LGBTQ+ people. Therefore, this article critically engages the place of LGBTQ+ people in the contemporary African community and argues for their inclusive recognition. The article contends that the nonrecognition and exclusion of LGBTQ+ people within the African community constitute a social and epistemic injustice. The article also argues that, since, like other recognized community members, LGBTQ+ people duly discharge familial and communal obligations, display good conduct in the community, and share in the responsibility to respect nonpersons, humans, and nonhumans alike, they deserve social recognition. (shrink)

This article critiques Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe’s “Ontology, Realism and the Persistence of Ancestral Persons” response to Katrina Flikschuh’s “The Arc of Personhood” argument on the theoretical grounding of ancestors in Ifeanyi Menkiti’s work. Flikschuh argues that ancestors are uncertain and redundant such that one can only account for them practically. Contrastingly, Oyowe defends Menkiti’s concept of ancestors as social kinds in his innovative attempt to theoretically ground them. The article argues that the dialogue between these thinkers reflects an exogenous reading (...) of African experiential reality, effectively lending itself to epistemic erasure. In the end, the existence of ancestors is ambiguous at best in both their accounts. The article first questions Flikschuh’s view and suggests that it is paradigmatic of white solipsism. Thereafter, the article contends that while Oyowe’s social ontology injunction challenges Western realism, he fails to account for mind-independent ancestral persons. In the end, he only partially captures African experiential reality, thereby reflecting Western ways of being. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on an important problem in the intellectual history of the Global South, namely the relationship between modern scientific knowledge and colonialism. This problem was of concern to theorists from the Global South, such as Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral, who were active during the high tide of decolonization in the middle of the twentieth century, and it continues to be of relevance today. This chapter shows how this problem has deep historical roots in the Global South, beginning (...) from at least the late eighteenth century and continuing into the nineteenth century. This chapter focuses on two intellectuals, Rifaʿa al-Tahtawi (1801–1873) from Egypt, and James Africanus Beale Horton (1835–1883) from Sierra Leone. Tahtawi and Horton, despite coming from societies with different histories, found themselves confronting similar problems having to do with their encounter with modern European societies. The main problem that they faced was how to make use of the elements of modern European societies that they admired, especially in relation to the social organization of knowledge production about nature, while rejecting European justifications for colonization. Both Horton and Tahtawi sought to de-associate modern scientific knowledge, which they obviously admired, from claims of racial superiority and justifications of despotic colonial rule. (shrink)

In this paper I show that James Africanus Beale Horton launched an internal critique of race science as it developed in the hands of Robert Knox, Carl Vogt, and James Hunt. The latter three held an inductivist Baconian conception of science. Horton shows that their practices as scientists and natural philosophers contradict their own conception of what one must do in order to do good science. Horton’s critique of race science has important implications for philosophical anthropology as it took shape (...) over the course of the nineteenth century and for our understanding of the history of African philosophy in its global context. (shrink)

In The Problematics of Enlightenment: Human Reason, North African Philosophy, and the Global South , Mourad Wahba explores the relevance of the philosophy of the Enlightenment to contemporary issues in Egypt and the Global South more generally. Wahba provides a historical account of the reception of Enlightenment philosophical discourse in the Arabic-speaking world through the study of the work of Rifaʿa al-Tahtawi, Muhammed Abdu, Farah Antun, Abbas Mahmoud al-ʿAqqad, and Louis Awad. Wahba argues that the claim that human reason is (...) the ultimate source of justification—trumping the authority of inherited social institutions and the claims of historical revelation—is a universalizable principle whose actualization would make progress possible in Egypt and elsewhere. This book, translated by Zeyad el Nabolsy, provides Anglophone readers access to a philosophy from the Global South that does not take the alleged Eurocentrism of Enlightenment philosophies as its central problematic. Moreover, Wahba is concerned with situating the problems that emerge in the context of contemporary Arabophone North African philosophy in the larger context of African philosophy, including engagement with the work of Senghor and Nkrumah. (shrink)

Matolino's book critically analyses consensual democracy, a political system often hailed as a natural fit for African societies. Through this, Matolino questions the viability of consensus amidst modernity and examines its potential shortfalls. By comparing consensus to majoritarian democracy, Matolino highlights the challenges associated with each of the aforementioned systems. The book also explores the historical roots of consensus in African societies and its compatibility—or lack thereof—with contemporary majoritarian democratic principles as advocated in the West. Ultimately, Matolino suggests that while (...) consensus may have certain merits, it is not a panacea for Africa's current political problems. I highlight the main arguments in the book and show that it calls for a more nuanced approach that will incorporate elements of both consensual and majoritarian democracy to ensure effective governance and representation in contemporary Africa. (shrink)

Caleb Ward interviews Black feminist writer, poet, educator, organizer, and scholar Alexis Pauline Gumbs about Audre Lorde’s spirituality, her ecological political praxis, her pedagogy, and the cross-generational scale of social change.

This essay returns to John Brown’s so-called Raid on Harpers Ferry and his plan to build a mountain guerilla wing of the Underground Railroad through the Appalachian Mountains in order to theorize a concept of sabotage. Learning from the Haitians and other militant and enslaved rebellions, Brown seems to have interpreted American chattel slavery infrastructurally, which meant the key to abolition was the militant sabotage of the infrastructural racism and oppression.

This paper draws on C. L. R. James’s theory of a colonial education and W. E. B. DuBois’s theory of double consciousness to analyse the contradictory implications of an anglicised model of prep school education in Ireland. In particular, it pays close attention to two features of this education. First is its inflating and over-valuing of just about all things British with the corresponding de-valuing of things from the colonised territory, in this case Ireland. Second is the importance of sports (...) or games in this approach to education. More specifically, it was the relation between sports and character building that the model emphasised. Therefore this paper examines closely the experiences of students attending Headfort School, a prep school in Ireland in the light of James’s account of his experiences as a student at Queen’s Royal College in Trinidad and Tobago. (shrink)

The UWI system of universities celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2023 and as part of reflecting on this milestone the following study will examine the role of Caribbean traditional music in the UWI system and explore traditional Caribbean methods of teaching and learning music as well as the ways in which Caribbean traditional music and its associated culture have connected UWI students with local communities in Jamaica and Trinidad. Finally, through an analysis of the proliferation and teaching of traditional Caribbean (...) music ensembles at UWI’s historic campus locales in Trinidad and Jamaica, this study will offer best practices for UWI’s recently added Five Islands campus in Antigua (established in 2019) as it looks to integrate the study of traditional and contemporary music into its curriculum and campus life in an academically rigorous and culturally relevant fashion. (shrink)

With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Anthropocene, we are faced with “humanizing AI before it dehumanizes us.” Before the advent of the “posthuman,” will our technologies help develop a better world, or enable us to more efficiently destroy it? This essay is an appeal to Black philosophers to contribute to the critique and value theory of AI. OpenAI’s GPT-4 has opened new ethical questions. This examination of AI’s history, and the possibility of “thinking machines,” concludes that emerging (...) technologies have disproportionately adverse effects on Black and brown people. To counter this, as a sentient tool, AI ought not be an instrument enabling excess capital accumulation, increased cognitive class division, surveillance for the authoritarian state, and pernicious anti-Black racism. Because of this, a new value theory for this technology should be based on participatory socialist principles of access to resources, environmentalism, and redistribution of the global commons. Informed by broader perspectives, as a more useful tool in bridging power differentials, AI should be the people’s tool. (shrink)

In the conclusion to Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon seemingly rejects the role that the past can play in the creation of decolonized futurities, famously writing: “I am not a prisoner of History (l’Histoire). I must not look for the meaning of my destiny in that direction.” On this basis, Fanon’s thought has often been read as opposed to the more prophetic vision of the past offered by Édouard Glissant, which emphasizes the contrapuntal potentialities that inhere in Black vernacular (...) cultures and histories. In contrast to such readings, this paper contends that Fanon and Glissant similarly uphold a dual conception of the past as encompassing both History (l’Histoire), or the racialized fantasy of chronological linearity that was invented by Western modernity, and histories, a subterranean and mobile network of memories that always remains fugitive to the colonial machinations of History. Tracing this more ambivalent conception of the past through Black Skin, White Masks, Wretched of the Earth, and the writings that Fanon penned during his time as a psychiatrist in Algeria, I argue that Fanon’s thought on the past, far from being opposed to Glissant’s, in fact similarly upholds the prophetic value that the past qua histories can play in unleashing decolonized futurities. (shrink)