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 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. 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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