The presence of Indians fundamentally altered the political, social and economic landscape of sugar producing nations. In most cases, race, which was used as an important signifier of difference by the colonising power, left these states with a colonial legacy of division and derision which they continue to endure and navigate in such diverse locations as the Caribbean, the West Indies, Fiji, Mauritius and parts of Africa. In the quest for recognition, equality and political status that allows the girmitiyas to (...) celebrate their past, embrace their present and imagine a future where they are enmeshed in the fabric of a new Fiji entail understanding why the declaration of girmit day on May 15th is such a powerful symbolic gesture on the part of the new coalition government. (shrink)

Though I am not a linguist by trade, writing “of” (rather than “about”) literary philosophy in Maltese with the intent of exploring the interrelationship between the experience of the contingent self, displacement, and the pain of beauty, becomes a linguistic affair. In this paper I explore how doing philosophy in Maltese brings one to engage with disciplines in which one was entirely educated in other languages (in this case, primarily in English and Italian), and how this opens new opportunities that (...) move inwards as well as outwards. This aspect of directional thinking, as it were, also enters those immanent and external spheres by which phenomenology and aesthetics are put in play. This refers to how the “musk” of one’s language (a term whose linguistic use I first encountered in Seamus Heaney’s take on poetry’s indigeneity), is bound to carry one’s aesthetic imaginary onto a wide horizon whose boundaries could only be likened to the porousness of rubble walls. Such rubble walls – these ħitan tas-sejjieħ (in Maltese) – tend to mark territories while facilitating a high degree of fluency between them, to the extent that we could speak of the pattern of bocage as a contingency of meaning just as the pattern of bricolage implies an act of an intentional weaving. This paper reflects on the process of writing in Maltese as a means by which contingency as an approach to living and thinking, remains core to the understanding of how the self is immersed in what we broadly identify with the poetics (and therefore, the making) of the Mediterranean imaginary. (shrink)

Résumé Citoyen allemand qui venait de vivre la deuxième guerre mondiale en Allemagne, Gerhard.A. Rauche émigre en Afrique du Sud dans les années 50 qui correspondent aux premières années de l’Apartheid. Spécialiste de Locke en philosophie et de Grisebach en littérature, il obtint deux doctorats dans ces disciplines. Critique de la philosophie analytique, de l’existentialisme et du Marxisme de l’Ecole de Francfort, il se pencha sur le problème la co-présence des communautés et de leurs relations. Il préconisa, en plein régime (...) d’Apartheid et en guise de critique, la non-absolutisation des positions identitaires pour que la vie authentique et les relations communautaires soient viables. De manière oblique et subtile, il lutta contre l’Apartheid. Sa critique philosophique qui demeure prisonnière des essentialismes et du racialisme, mériterait d’être complétée par une étude minutieuse des notions d’hospitalité et de mutualité. (shrink)

Starting from a conception of dialogue as “fusion of horizons” inspired by Gadamerian hermeneutics this article aims to give a philosophical foundation to the argument for a dialogue of civilisations within a broad set of theoretical debates that have taken place in the fields of philosophy, political theory, and international relations. Such a discussion contributes to the international political theory of dialogue of civilisations as an argument for the construction of a multicultural peaceful international society against the background of our (...) troubled contemporary global politics. (shrink)

Résumé En tant que hotspot de la diversité culturelle et du réchauffement climatique, la Méditerranée apparait particulièrement exposée aux chocs provoqués par l’anthropocène. Sur cette île de la Méditerranée occidentale, l’analyse d’échantillons de discours relatifs à l’imaginaire corse et de mobilisations sociales et d’innovations juridiques relatives à l’écologie peut-elle nous informer quant à l’avènement d’une communauté méditerranéenne susceptible de transformer le rapport des Méditerranéens à la nature et aux vivants humains ou non-humains? Ce travail s’appuie notamment sur les travaux d’Achille (...) Mbembé, Philippe Descola et Bruno Latour. (shrink)

Résumé Pour parler vulgairement l’alcoolique a un problème avec le monde et avec l’altérité en raison de sa double figure : il est familier et étrange, toujours ailleurs. Autrement dit, c’est son problème d’identité ou le fait de « rester soi-même » (ipséité) qui est ici questionné car on ne doute pas qu’il est mais on ne sait plus ce qu’il est lorsqu’il boit. Le problème du soi chez l’alcoolique est un problème central lorsque nous envisageons le boire ou l’alcoolisme. (...) Il sera abordé ici dans sa dimension anthropologique, philosophique et clinique. Nous verrons en chemin que nous serons confrontés à une forme de limite qui interroge la place du soignant et la notion de thérapeute. C’est de notre place de soignant que nous parlons. (shrink)

Résumé Dans son livre Étude sur le bien (1911), Nishida s’inspira de William James, de Gustav Theodor Fechner et d’Ernst Mach pour développer son concept d’expérience pure. Or, il s’avère que ces trois scientifiques professaient ouvertement le panpsychisme, théorie selon laquelle les minéraux, les plantes et les animaux sont vivants et possèdent une nature psychique analogue à celle de l’être humain. Cet article s’attarde surtout aux relations entre Fechner et Nishida, de même qu’à leurs conséquences possibles sur le développement d’un (...) panpsychisme explicite dans l’Étude sur le bien. Dans ses écrits subséquents, Nishida cessa d’accorder l’esprit aux minéraux et aux plantes. Par contraste, il maintint le panpsychisme dans le cas des animaux car, disait-il, l’esprit est la chose la plus répandue dans le règne du vivant. Nishida passa ainsi d’une conception panpsychiste du monde à une conception quasi-panpsychiste. (shrink)

The essay offers a decolonial reading of the thought of Ọ̀rúnmìlà, the ancient legendary Yorùbá African messenger and interpreter of the spiritual tradition of Ifá with the aim to address the problem of hegemonic languages (such as English and French) and epistemic bias that have affected the Yorùbá intellectual tradition. The essay argues that reflection on the deep history of Yorùbá and the applied philosophy of Ọ̀rúnmìlà can better clarify the problem of language and epistemic injustices that European modernity has (...) generated in modern Africa. The essay therefore explores what could be described as the interaction of nature-culture in the Yorùbá African intellectual tradition that continues to be silenced and distorted by imposed hegemonic languages and cultures. Through a new reading of the thought of Ọ̀rúnmìlà within the context of Ifá, the essay highlights how the problem of language and epistemic injustices disrupts the continuity of inherited African philosophical and historical traditions in modern times. Ultimately, such reading aims at revealing the contribution of the Yorùbá intellectual tradition to the global philosophical and historical discourse. (shrink)

Résumé Le théâtre contemporain voit se détacher progressivement la représentation théâtrale du texte dramatique et se tourner vers les multiples incarnations d’un « théâtre du langage ». Jean-Luc Lagarce est un des meilleurs représentants de ce genre de théâtre en France à la fin du XXème siècle. Le dialogue théâtral – l’ensemble des répliques qu’échangent les personnages – tend à être de plus en plus brouillé, rompu, allant jusqu’à franchir les frontières qui séparent traditionnellement d’autres formes discursives, comme le monologue (...) ou la didascalie. Le dialogue présent au sein de la dramaturgie de Lagarce est habité par son négatif, par une sorte de démon qui provoque la perte de l’évidence du langage et fait naître une étrangeté forte dans les mots simples de tous les jours. Il questionne ainsi la capacité communicative du langage comme un outil humain inné et met en évidence l’échec des échanges langagiers entre les hommes mettant ainsi au jour l’inconnu du langage et l’inconnu de la société. Nous proposons ainsi que l’échec communicatif est un concept constructif de la dramaturgie française contemporaine et surtout de la création dramatique de Jean-Luc Lagarce qui englobe et fait naître l’intrigue, qui dirige l’action décentralisée vers l’acte de parole et qui crée véritablement les personnages dont un habitat naturel est la parole « en faillite », en question. (shrink)

Especially since the beginning of this century, the significance and value of comparative philosophy as a general way of doing philosophy through cross-tradition engagement toward world philosophy has been recognized and strengthened through both theoretic exploration and reflective practice. The purpose of this essay is to explain how, from a holistic vantage point, cross-tradition philosophical engagement as a methodological approach can contribute to those truth-concern-sensitive (or critical-engagement-sensitive) studies in cross-cultural dialogue with enhanced “constructive-engagement” resources. For this purpose, with a further (...) refined characterization of eligibility of methodological perspectives, I explain a further expanded meta-methodological framework for how to adequately look at the relation between distinct eligible perspectives on an object of study. (shrink)

This essay examines how conceptions of “woman-husband” and “male-daughter” are supported and practiced in Igbo traditional thought. The essay argues from a feminist perspective that the practice not only promotes patriarchy but also solicits the aid and involvement of women to develop a female subjectivity that fits in with a society that privileges the male. The practice deepens the problem it tries to solve by causing existential predicament, discrimination and stigmatization to women victims and their offspring. The practice also alienates (...) women from their natural inclination by doubling their gender roles. This essay combines analysis and phenomenology to subsequently develop a feminist critical interpretation of the issues at stake. (shrink)

This essay argues that diversity needs to be practised. Drawing insights from two thinkers who saw themselves as educators, Dōgen and bell hooks, I single out three steps towards practising diversity in a learning community. I make two concrete recommendations for each step. Step One involves trying to understand the other in their own terms, by becoming informed about the frameworks that play a role in their experience. Step Two guides us to listen to every unique other and receive their (...) story, in such a way as to put them, instead of ourselves, in the centre of our attention. In Step Three, we engage in dialogues that do not consist in a series of monologues but of calls and responses, in which we practise to respond to each other in an attuned way, and to take responsibility for co-transforming each other and our shared world. (shrink)

Migration and diversity are important factors in education of teachers around the globe. From an intercultural perspective, we shall analyse how metaphysical and religious assumptions overlap and enable teachers to motivate pupils from different religious-cultural backgrounds to understand in greater detail the facets of (minimal) universalism, relativism and other concepts that obtain in more or less open societies. We argue for a concept of Intercultural Human Rights Education that uses different texts in philosophy classes, includes controversial positions from different cultures, (...) and is methodologically versatile. According to this concept, we think that a) human dignity (as a typically Western concept) and human rights and b) one tradition of interpreting the Qur’an (renunciation of force and the Indian concept of ahimsā (nonviolence)), can motivate teachers to discuss the efforts and also the limits of an overlapping consensus about the intercultural perspective. Finally, we provide the outlines of a teaching unit plan in accordance with our theoretical insights. (shrink)