African Philosophy: Aesthetics

In African speculative fiction, there can be found examples of texts that touch on (neo)colonial displacement, uprootedness, and alienation. Through evoking the familiar Other—the nonhuman animal, the hybrid, or even the monster—these texts both portray an (ongoing) shared trauma and express a quiet refusal of narratives of separation and hierarchy. Here I examine how this “uneasy” kinship is critically embraced and operates in the short story “When the Levees Break” by Edwin Okolo (2022). Second, I explore David Uzochukwu’s “black merfolk” (...) in the photography series Mare Monstrum/Drown in My Magic (2016–ongoing), to illustrate how what I am calling the third position is assumed. The third position can be described as a deliberate, resilient, and persistent process of place-making, creating a home for the displaced with the nonhuman, the human, and the Land itself. Born out of exclusion and dehumanization, the third position then takes on a life of its own, creating a specific, historicized way of coming to what Joan Gordon calls the amborg gaze. Finally, I discuss how both these texts keep the promise of the animal, insisting on expansion, utopian spark, and creating zones of possibilities. (shrink)

'Beauty in African Thought: A Critique of the Western Idea of Development' won the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Year 2023 as mentioned on the Rowman and Littlefield webpage. The book investigates how the concept of beauty in African philosophy and related qualitative social sciences may contribute to a richer intercultural exchange on the idea of development. While working within frameworks created in post-colonial and arguably neo-colonial times, African thinkers have reacted against the mainstream view that restricts the meaning (...) and scope of good development to economic growth and Western-style education. These thinkers have worked toward a critical self-understanding of the potentials inherent in cultural, spiritual, and political traditions since pre-colonial times. Edited by Bolaji Bateye, Mahmoud Masaeli, Louise Müller, and Angela Roothaan, this collection explores branches of thought from wisdom or oral traditions to political thought and philosophy of culture. This book is urgent reading material for any policy maker, scholar, or student wishing to attend to the voices of African(ist) thinkers who search for alternative approaches to global questions of development in a time of climate change and increasing socio-economic inequality. The book was introduced by Louise Müller -as a first author - and Angela Roothaan. (shrink)

Beauty in African Thought: A Critique of the Western Idea of Development investigates how the concept of beauty in African philosophy and related qualitative social sciences may contribute to a richer intercultural exchange on the idea of development. While working within frameworks created in post-colonial and arguably neo-colonial times, African thinkers have reacted against the mainstream view that restricts the meaning and scope of good development to economic growth and western-style education. These thinkers have worked toward a critical self-understanding of (...) the potentials inherent in cultural, spiritual, and political traditions since pre-colonial times. Edited by Bolaji Bateye, Mahmoud Masaeli, Louise Müller, and Angela Roothaan, this collection explores branches of thought from wisdom or oral traditions to political thought and philosophy of culture. This book is urgent reading material for any policy maker, scholar, or student wishing to attend to the voices of African(ist) thinkers who search for alternative approaches to global questions of development in a time of climate change and increasing socio-economic inequality. The first author of this book's introduction is Louise Müller. See: Müller, L and A. Roothaan (2023). ‘Introduction’. In: Well-Being in African Philosophy: Insights for a Global Ethics of Development. Maryland, USA, Lexington Books by Rowman and Littlefield, 1-11. -/- . (shrink)

Whether classical or contemporary, the arts of the African continent have always been defined, often negatively, by Western categories. After identifying the different appellations of the arts in Black Africa, the controversies and misunderstandings in the debates on their semantic connotations and mutations, this article argues that the Western perspective that claims the right to define African art must be reconsidered from the sole point of view of Africa.

To colonise the African continent and later on expand its domination upon the rest of the world, Europe has denied history and by so doing history of art to Africa. This denial has infiltrated into all the fields of Euro-African relations and to some extent all human endeavors along the centuries.Standing from a decolonial point of view, this paper aims at questioning the art historical discourse on Africa so as to show how African art history moved from colonialist discourse to (...) the need for decolonisation. First of all, this scientific work discusses how the discourse on African artistic productions aimed at vilifying the continent in the first centuries of western modernity in order to justify the colonisation. Further, it exemplifies how by heathening Africa, the latter has been dispossessed by organised exportations of her arts for the benefit of western museums. Finally, the paper provides some steps for decolonising African authentic aesthetics. (shrink)

Jeanne-Marie Jackson’s The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing provides an analytic framework for understanding the novel as a form of philosophical expression in African intellectual history. More specifically, she uses individualism as a tool for tracking the expression of abstract “philosophical thinking” in a selection of African novels. For Jackson, it is the fictional individual in the novel who is the primary bearer of philosophical thought. Jackson situates this interpretative heuristic vis-à-vis the (...) debates about ethnophilosophy which dominated African philosophy in third quarter of the twentieth century. Like Paulin Hountondji, perhaps the most well-known critic of ethnophilosophy, Jackson emphasizes that philosophical practice, at a bare minimum, requires a second-order reflexivity toward conventional hegemonic beliefs in a given society, and this second order discourse takes the form of an argumentative stance toward those beliefs. Her general suggestion is that the best place to look for philosophical thought in the aforementioned sense is to examine individual thinkers, whether real or fictional. (shrink)

Marlene van Niekerk's 1994 Triomf is a plaasroman, or farm novel, without the farm; it formally resembles a nostalgic pastoral genre initiated by the collapse of Southern African agricultural economy around the time of the Great Depression, but removes even the symbol of the farm as aesthetic compensation for material loss. In the process, van Niekerk composes a post-apartheid tragicomedy of a lumpenproletariat white supremacist family coming into long-belated class consciousness, an epiphany which, surprisingly, survives the novel's translations from Afrikaans (...) to South African English to 'international' English. Crucially, this understanding is mediated by a critical tendency to appraise Triomf in the context of Faulkner and the Southern Gothic, a generic comparison which gets a lot wrong but is ultimately very revealing, less about Triomf than about the imperial world-system through which it circulates and is consecrated. Consequently, the novel stages globally what seems at first to be a parochial question: how is one supposed to imagine democratic reconciliation and integration after apartheid, when one of the classes to be reconciled lacks historical self-consciousness and has no obvious place in either the apartheid regime or the post-apartheid dispensation? By analyzing van Niekerk's novel and the institutions which consecrate it, the paper fleshes out critiques of world-literary hermeneutics, specifically for its naive handling of genre and context, and of post-apartheid 'reconciliation' under capital. (shrink)

Beauty in African Thought: A Critique of the Western Idea of Development investigates how the concept of beauty in African philosophy and related qualitative social sciences may contribute to a richer intercultural exchange on the idea of development. While working within frameworks created in post-colonial and arguably neo-colonial times, African thinkers have reacted against the mainstream view that restricts the meaning and scope of good development to economic growth and western-style education. These thinkers have worked toward a critical self-understanding of (...) the potentials inherent in cultural, spiritual, and political traditions since pre-colonial times. Edited by Bolaji Bateye, Mahmoud Masaeli, Louise Müller, and Angela Roothaan, this collection explores branches of thought from wisdom or oral traditions to political thought and philosophy of culture. This book is urgent reading material for any policy maker, scholar, or student wishing to attend to the voices of African(ist) thinkers who search for alternative approaches to global questions of development in a time of climate change and increasing socio-economic inequality. (shrink)

This paper delves into the intersection of Kantian aesthetics and African social order, highlighting the intriguing tension between these two seemingly distinct philosophical realms. Immanuel Kant's aesthetic theory, primarily articulated in his “Critique of Judgment”, has long been regarded as a cornerstone of Western philosophical thought, emphasizing the universality of aesthetic judgments and the autonomy of the individual. Conversely, African social order is deeply rooted in communalism, emphasizing the interconnectedness of individuals within a community and the importance of shared values (...) and traditions. This paper adopts critical and analytical methods of philosophical inquiry to explore the fundamental differences between Kantian aesthetics and African social order, challenging the applicability of Kant's aesthetic framework within the context of African societies. It questions whether Kant's emphasis on individual autonomy and subjective aesthetic judgments can coexist harmoniously with African social order that prioritize communal harmony, collectivism, and the preservation of cultural heritage. Through an examination of specific aesthetic concepts such as beautiful, handsome, ugly, dirty, clean, etc., this study elucidates instances where Kantian aesthetics may clash with African social order. It probes into the potential ramifications of prioritizing individual aesthetic autonomy over communal values, particularly within the context of African societies, where collective well-being often takes precedence. It further considers the importance of intercultural dialogue and the possibility of adapting Kantian aesthetic principles to align more closely with African social order, fostering a more inclusive and culturally sensitive approach to aesthetics. The paper concludes by shedding more light on the thought-provoking clash between Kantian aesthetics and African social order. It underscores the importance of recognizing and respecting diverse cultural perspectives in philosophical discourse, offering a compelling opportunity to enrich our understanding of aesthetics and ethics in a global context. (shrink)

This article traces the emergence of East African Asian writings and their struggle with questions of national belonging and diaspora. It argues that although this emergence was part and parcel of the literary developments that were taking place in the East Africa region in the 1960s, these writings would later distinguish themselves as texts that are not only framed by the ambivalent and diasporic histories of Indians in imperial and postcolonial East Africa but also as writings that consciously construct ambivalent (...) diasporic subjectivities as the basis of new forms of East African Indian identities. I argue that this ambivalence reveals itself in the way these texts disavow dominant, nationalistic, even binary accounts of colonial relationships and create, instead, narratives that skirt the borderlines of both colonial and nationalist discourses. (shrink)

ASHÉ: Ritual Poetics in African Diasporic is a collection of interdisciplinary essays contributed by international scholars and practitioners. Having distinguished themselves across such disciplines as Anthropology, Art, Music, Literature, Dance, Philosophy, Religion, and Theology and conjoined to construct a defining approach to the study of Aesthetics throughout the African Diaspora with the Humanities at the core, this collection of essays will break new ground in the study of Black Aesthetics. This book will be of great interest to scholars, practitioners, and (...) students interested in tracing African heritage identities throughout the African Diaspora through close examination of a variety of discourses directly connected to expressive elements of cultural production and religious rituals. (shrink)

ASHÉ: Ritual Poetics in African Diasporic is a collection of interdisciplinary essays contributed by international scholars and practitioners. Having distinguished themselves across such disciplines as Anthropology, Art, Music, Literature, Dance, Philosophy, Religion, and Theology and conjoined to construct a defining approach to the study of Aesthetics throughout the African Diaspora with the Humanities at the core, this collection of essays will break new ground in the study of Black Aesthetics. This book will be of great interest to scholars, practitioners, and (...) students interested in tracing African heritage identities throughout the African Diaspora through close examination of a variety of discourses directly connected to expressive elements of cultural production and religious rituals. (shrink)

An analysis of punk in light of the theme of existential maturity through discussions of Simone de Beauvoir, Devon Johnson, and the relationship between nihilism, seriousness, and revolt.

This e-book is a collection of orally transmitted folktales about animals, currently circulating among the Ewe and Akan people of Ghana. Many of the stories in this bundle provide an explanation for the appearance of the most remarkable Ghanaian animals. For example, why does the parrot have such beautiful feathers? And why does the Pin-tailed Whydah have such a long tail? For sure, Ghanaian storytellers know the answer. They shared their animal wisdom stories, including those of the famous spider Anansi, (...) with Dr. Kofi Dorvlo. He wrote the stories down for us in English and translated them into Ewe and standard Akan/Twi with the help of his Ghanaian team members Dr. Kwaku Ofori and his students (Twi) and Mr. Kenneth Adevu (Ewe). The e-book contains twenty Ghanaian folktales and includes an introduction by Dr. Louise Müller, who also interpreted the stories. The 22 beautiful collages were made by the visual artist Josee Tesser. Editorial thanks are due to Greg Suffanti for proofreading the stories in English and Ir. Joke Koppius for her editorial help and graphic design. -/- Trilingual edition in Ewe, standard Akan/Twi and English. (shrink)

Recent studies on colonial discourse have demonstrated that the speeches of freedom activists in colonial Africa served as sites of resistance. One key text type that has, however, been neglected in the critical literature on the discourse of emancipation is the national anthem of colonised states. To fill this gap, the present study examines the discursive enactment of resistance in the anthems of former British colonies in Africa, focusing on the transitivity framework in systemic functional linguistics. Semantic and structural parallelisms (...) across the anthems are identified as evidence of a collective memory, a cultural trauma reconfigured and reconstituted to reclaim a positive identity and project a desirable postcolonial future. They also foreground the motif of freedom and legitimise the African as the owner of the reclaimed territory. These procedures articulate an anti-imperialist and anti-establishment stance that provides hope, strength and encouragement to an oppressed group. This paper extends the scholarship on the discursive enactment of resistance by focusing attention on a context underexplored in the literature. It also illustrates the (re)construction of relevant ideologies in national anthems to stimulate desirable, progressive attitudes among citizenry in African states. The paper is furthermore significant to decolonial research and highlights the role of language in political decolonisation processes. (shrink)

For Husserl, the _homeworld_ is the tacit, taken-for-granted sphere of experiences, understanding, and situations marking out a world that is comfortable, usual, and “the way things are and should be.” Always, according to Husserl, the homeworld is in some mode of lived mutuality with an _alienworld_—a world as seen as a realm of difference, atypicality, and otherness. In this article, I draw on British-African novelist Doris Lessing’s 1969 novel, _The Four-Gated City_, to consider the shifting homeworld of protagonist Martha Quest, (...) a young white African woman emigrating to battle-scarred London immediately after World War II. Throughout the novel, Quest finds herself in unfamiliar or challenging situations where the world she takes for granted is called into question. Lessing draws on these life-testing experiences to portray Quest’s shifting understandings of other individuals’ homeworlds that at first she sees as atypical, abnormal, or unreal. (shrink)

The chapter challenges the aesthetic imprints of Vlisco, a Dutch firm, whose representation of Africa’s image in its textile products and fabrics exported to Africa over many decades left much to be desired. The artistic contents of the products, mainly an amalgam of Javanese, Indian, Chinese, Arab and European cultural imageries, are branded as “African prints”. The chapter considered several arguments for and against Vlisco’s “African prints,” as well as the objection for a global understanding of textile and their aesthetic (...) dynamics that make them “Afropolitan” rather than indigenous. To be “Afropolitan” simply denotes a fabric or print as an all-comer art content which gives it the capacity for adaptability, and elevates it to global acceptability. The chapter rejects both Vlisco’s “African prints” and the argument for an Afropolitan prints because such designs sideline African traditional expressions. Consequently, the author suggests that some African industrialists should be encouraged to join the global textile trade and make designs with the purpose of projecting African aesthetics and imagery on fabrics. (shrink)

This book argues for a radical new approach to thinking about art and creativity in Africa, challenging outdated normative discourses about Africa's creative heritage. Africanism, which is driven by a traumatic response to colonialism in Africa, has an almost unshakable stranglehold on the content, stylistics, and meaning of art in Africa. Post-African aesthetics insists on the need to move beyond this counter-colonial self-consciousness and considerably change, re-work and enlarge the ground, principles and mission of artistic imagination and creativity in Africa. (...) This book critiques and dismantles the tropes of Africanism and Afrocentrism, providing the criteria and methodology for a Post-African art theory or Post-African aesthetics. Grounded initially in essays by Denis Ekpo, the father of Post-Africanism, the book then explores a range of applications and interpretations of Post-African theory to the art forms and creative practices in Africa. With particular reference to South Africa, this book will be of interest to researchers across the disciplines of Art, Literature, Media Studies, Cultural Anthropology, and African Studies. (shrink)

There is a contention on whether African architecture actually exists especially in relation to possessing a distinct identity. Also, African architecture is rarely discussed within mainstream contemporary theoretical debates in Architecture except with respect to influences on arts, artists and architecture in the developed world and generally speaking architecture of the past. This chapter reviews the different perspectives and conceptualisations on African architecture and its global influences. Furthermore the sources of and obstacles to identity formation in African architecture were reviewed (...) to surmise approaches to creating identity in African architecture. The chapter rekindles the debate on the formation of identity in African architecture and how African architecture can take its rightful place in global architecture discourse. (shrink)

This book investigates how African authors and artists have explored themes of the future and technology within their works. Afrofuturism was coined in the 1990s as a means of exploring the intersection of African diaspora culture with technology, science and science fiction. However, this book argues that literature and other arts within Africa has always reflected on themes of futurism, across diverse forms of speculative writing, images, spirituality, myth, magical realism, the supernatural, performance and other forms of oral resources. This (...) book reflects on themes of African futurism across a range of literary and artistic works, also investigating how problems such as racism, sexism, social injustice and postcolonialism are reflected in these narratives. Chapters cover authors, artists, movements, and performers such Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Elechi Amadi, Mazisi Kunene, Nnedi Okorafor, Lauren Beukes, Leslie Nneka Arimah, and the New African Movement. The book also includes a range of original interviews with prominent authors and artists, including Tanure Ojaide, Lauren Beukes, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Benjamin Kwakye, Ntongela Masilela and Bruce Onobrakpeya. Interdisciplinary in its approach, this book will be an important resource for researchers across the fields of African literature, philosophy, culture and politics. (shrink)

The discussions on the relation between philosophy and movies are not quite popular because of the generally believed idea that they front different methods in their presentation of reality. While the movies present ideas in the form of appearance and actions, philosophy presents ideas through a method of reflective analysis and debate. Notwithstanding the differences in method, this paper takes the view that movies often present, in the most distinct and clearer ways, a people's culture and philosophy, even to the (...) untrained mind. In a more specific way, this work focuses on the African movies as true instances of clear presentation and representation of African culture and philosophy. Properly presented movies of African descent, in the view of this paper, have strong footing in the African culture where African philosophy in its strictest sense takes root. The paper therefore is of the position that African philosophy, can in its purest and simplest form, be presented through African movies. Introduction The mention of philosophy and movies elicits in most people a temptation to question the relation between the two as they are. (shrink)

A history of the French reception of African art, especially wooden masks and figures, in the first four decades of the twentieth century, and how that reception led to the creation of the broader aesthetic category Westerners now know as "primitive art.

I articulate an African view of personhood that combines beauty and goodness–aesthetic and moral features. I discuss the idea of communalism, which provides the social and moral values and belief system that give meaning to this view of personhood. I use ideas from some African ethnic traditions, or some people’s account of these traditions, as examples to illustrate this view. The similarities in these examples from different ethnic traditions indicate that it is reasonable to characterize this view as a common (...) theme that may plausibly represent many African cultures. This essay does not seek to provide an anthropological descriptive view, but a plausible philosophical stance on how we ought to understand the idea of personhood in African cultures. I do not suggest that all African cultures or traditions have exactly the same view or that they hold this view in the same way, extent or degree. Obviously, there may be minor differences that do not alter the essence of the view. Many of the authors quoted in this paper who have written on African philosophy use the phrase, ‘African culture’, ‘African tradition’, ‘African view’ or ‘African society’. Thus, it has become commonplace in African philosophical circles that when the prefix ‘African’ is used in the literature on African philosophy, it does not imply that Africa is a monolith or that its traditions are static. There is a recognition that some traditions have changed or are changing. The use of ‘African tradition’ usually indicates a generalizing theoretical abstraction about some enduring and dominant similar themes or ideas in many African traditions. It is also meant to contrast ‘African’ with ‘Western’ traditions, and to also respond to Western critiques of Africa as a group. It is used in a similar way in which the prefix ‘Western’ is used in the literature. This notion of ‘Western’, which is replete in the literature, does not suggest the West is a monolith, but rather, a reference to some similar dominant themes in Western thought. (shrink)

This book demonstrates how the indigenous wisdom contained in African proverbs and folktales can be used to enhance modern life. The timeless wisdom enriches the understanding of self-development and positive influence, contributing towards the much-needed, cross-cultural dialogue among individuals, organizations, and societies in this increasingly diversified world.

This essay offers a novel approach for understanding the poetry of negritude and its role in the struggle for black liberation by appealing to Giambattista Vico’s insights on the historical, cultural, and myth-making function of poetry and of the mythopoetic imagination. The essay begins with a discussion of Vico’s aesthetic historicism and of his ideas regarding the role of imagination, poetry, and myth-making and then brings these ideas to bear on the discussion of the function of negritude poetry, focusing primarily (...) on the writings of Aimé Césaire and on Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay, Black Orpheus. (shrink)

Le;opold Se;dar Senghor (1906–2001) was a Senegalese poet and philosopher who in 1960 also became the first president of the Republic of Senegal. In African Art as Philosophy , Souleymane Bachir Diagne takes a unique approach to reading Senghor’s influential works, taking as the starting point for his analysis Henri Bergson’s idea that in order to understand philosophers one must find the initial intuition from which every aspect of their work develops. In the case of Senghor, Diagne argues that his (...) primordial intuition is that African art is a philosophy. _ To further this point, Diagne looks at what Senghor called the “1889 Revolution,” and the influential writers and publications of that time—specifically, Nietzsche and Rimbaud, as well as Bergson’s Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. The 1889 Revolution, Senghor claims, is what led him to the understanding of the “Vitalism” at the core of African religions and beliefs that found expression in the arts. _ This book offers a distinct, incisive look at an important figure in African literature and politics that will be welcomed by scholars in African Studies and philosophy. (shrink)

Following in the footsteps of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the tenor of the postcolonial African culture has been justifiably anti-imperialist. In the 21st century, however, there has been a gradual but certain shift away from the “write-back” discourse paradigm, towards more integrative, globally inflected cultural interpretive models in Africa. This book celebrates the emergence of new interpretive paradigms such as in African philosophy, gender studies and literature.

I am interested in looking at Krumpin’ through what I am calling the “politics of submergence.” If my world is chaotic, if my Blackness is my murderer, can I be expected to create beauty? Can my art be transformative? My paper argues that Krumpin’ is in fact transformative, not to the extent that it perpetuates hope, but maintains its social pessimism. In accepting both the conditions that have sustained the racial marginalization of African descended people, and the impotence of this (...) marginalized group to change the systemic social structures that continue racial subordination in the United States, Krumpin’ announces a reflective mode of racial identity and cultural existence that attends to the suffering of African-descended people in American ghettos. (shrink)