African Philosophy and the African Diaspora

This article intends to explore the philosophical potency in the work of the black writer Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977). Carolina de Jesus is best known for her work Quarto de Despejo, diary of a favelada (1960), our approach, however, focuses specifically on her short story “Socrates Africano”, in which she deals with her experience with her grandfather Benedito and the relationship between her wisdom and that of the Greek philosopher Sócrates (5th century BC). Her reflection starts from the attempt (...) to understand the reason why her grandfather was compared to Socrates and called “African Socrates”. In this sense, we intend to expand the idea of an African Socrates and the origins of one of the African philosophical matrices, the Yoruba tradition, dialoguing with the thought of the Nigerian philosopher Sophie Oluwole (1935-2018) and her approximation between Socrates and Orunmilá, as a motto to think about the philosophical potentialities of Carolina's work and the traits of an Afro-Brazilian philosophy. (shrink)

Ethnophilosophy is widely regarded as a disreputable orientation in African philosophy. For example, critics of ethnophilosophy think of it as a ‘defective philosophy’, a ‘semi-anthropological paraphrase’, a merely ‘implicit philosophy ’, a ‘crazed language’ and so on. Although these negative portrayals were made in the 1980s and 1990s (roughly, 1981–1997), and some of these critics softened their position with time, they persist in the thoughts of some contemporary African philosophers. This is visible in the rather inarticulate unease about ethnophilosophy in (...) many quarters today, witnessed in the characteristic disposition of some African philosophers to distance themselves from the works of Placide Tempels, John S. Mbiti, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Alexis Kagame, and in the talk of a post-ethnophilosophy among some contemporary African philosophers rooted in the belief about the inadequacy of ethnophilosophy. Call those who today still think of ethnophilosophy in this fashion the ethnophilosophy holdouts. The aim of this paper is to give reasons to think that the position of the ethnophilosophy holdouts is not tenable. More positively, I defend a thesis that makes a claim about the positive status of ethnophilosophy as a philosophical orientation. (shrink)

Since Antoine Faivre's emergence and establishment of "Western esotericism" in the late twentieth century, the discourse of globalising esotericism (beyond the West) has been fraught with controversy. As there are several polemical conversations about how such an effort should manifest itself in esoteric scholarship. This comparative, descriptive, and religionist approach to esotericism explores the intricate relationship between sexuality and spirituality by understanding the intersections of these aspects as manifested in Western, Eastern, and African esoteric currents, from Aleister Crowley's magia sexualis (...) to Marie Laveau (The Widow Paris)'s "Gris-Gris". Firstly, this is achieved by bringing said geographical regions into dialogue with one another, determining how esotericism fits into the overall trajectory of the origins of religion. Secondly, delving into the polemics and history of sexuality: from Foucault to Freud. Thirdly, positioning an esoteric spirituality in the digital era. Consequently, through identifying currents in the West, East, and Africa: including Paganism, Thelema, Satanism, New Age, and Theosophy in the West and Egyptian Paganism, Hinduism, and Buddhism in the East, in addition to African Traditional Religion (ATR), Sufi Islam, and Afro-American "Conjure" in Africa. This study, when intersected with philosophical conceptualisations of the self, contributes to a novel understanding of sexuality as sacred post-theistic (self-) spirituality, with esotericism serving as the foundation for such an approach. (shrink)

The target of our paper is to articulate the grounds that legitimize the foundation of an African Traditional Religion as a distinct religious enterprise with its own philosophical fundamentals as well as its own tenets and framework. In this paper, we engage the relevant concepts that are crucial to the success to any paper that attempts to demonstrate the reality of African Traditional Religion (henceforth, ATR): specifically, we will engage the questions of the existence of a Supreme Being, the problem (...) of evil, and the structure of a properly ATR theodicy. (shrink)

There has been a recent increase in interest in the place of race in the writings of modern canonical European philosophers (e.g., in Locke, Hume, Kant, and Hegel). However, while it is undoubtedly necessary to undertake such investigations, we should also not stop there, insofar as stopping there does not, in fact, overturn the charge of Eurocentrism or parochialism which has often been leveled against academic philosophy. Because the circle of interlocutors is not being expanded in such an approach, it (...) results in merely asking different questions about the same people (primarily male white European thinkers). Hence the importance of taking into consideration and critically evaluating the response of African philosophers and scientists such as James Africanus Beale Horton (1835 – 1883). (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)

Este artigo visa à mobilização de alguns aspectos da teoria mulherista africana e sua pertinência para a compreensão de experiências políticas de mulheres negras no Brasil. Para tanto, apresentar-se-ão importantes pressupostos que fundam o Mulherismo Africana, bem como algumas de suas filiações teórico-metodológicas; possíveis aproximações e distanciamentos em relação a outras teorias; e, por fim, algumas reflexões acerca das agências políticas femininas negras, especialmente em solo brasileiro.

Neste artigo eu revisito a minha tese de doutoramento em antropologia social: “Esclavage et Inventions Spirituelles Afro-Brésiliennes: Du Vudum Lebabimibome aux Contes Populaires”, onde tentamos demonstrar um dos impactos marcantes da escravização na história dos povos africanos e afrodescendentes, como este fato marcou a vida espiritual e intelectual das diasporas nas Américas, especialmente da brasileira. Mostramos como estas populações dialogaram entre si, apropriaram-se e transformaram os valores culturais dos povos que as subjugaram. Adaptando-se aos novos quadros-sociais souberam preservar suas memórias (...) espirituais criando assim intermediários sagrados como o do Seja Hundê, Candomblé jeje da Bahia, o vudum Lebabimibome, híbrido do Mensageiro das religiões ancestrais fon e iorubá, Exu-Legbá e de um macaco. Pela adoção desta nova manifestação religiosa, esses povos souberam estrategicamente reciclar ao mesmo tempo uma velha idéia construída pelos colonizadores europeus sobre os africanos e seus descendentes, associando-os a macacos, vendo-os como o elo entre o homen e o animal. Para escapar à escravidão grupos de africanos utilizaram mímicas como meio de comunicação com os estrangeiros. Pelas artimanhas dos macacos dos contos populares, a vida social dos escravizados e dos livres subalternos é também contada e preservada, tranformando-os em verdadeiros arquivos históricos. (shrink)

In the paper, we will study Olavo de Carvalho’s thought, focusing on his position regarding Brazilian and American Black movement in its struggle for reparation in terms of colonialism-slavery-racism. We will argue that his refusal of any reparatory praxis to political-cultural minorities and his position of a non-place for Black-African traditions in the context of Western culture/civilization, as with respect to his defense of the inferiority of Black-African culture-civilization when compared to Jewish-Christian, Greek-Latin and Medieval-Renaissance tradition, is pervaded by a (...) dualist metaphysics with a highly anti-modern and anti-modernizing character, in which the dynamic of streamlining of “human drama about universe and eternity” is constituted by the struggle between natural necessity and individual consciousness, that can only be won by the correlation of divine grace given by Jesus Christ and personal direct and immediate interiorization and intuition by each individual with God; by the refusal of politics, history and intersubjective action as basically materialism and, in this sense, as the sphere of totalitarian political ideologies ; and, finally, by the centrality of spiritualism, of intimate and direct relation between God and man, mediated by Revelation, which points to the non-existence, in the Olavo de Carvalho’ thought, of objective parameters to rational discussion, interaction and justification – that is the reason of his delegitimation of science, politics, history and macro-structural institutional action, and his appeal to methodological, intuitionist and spiritualist individualism. (shrink)

O artigo apresenta uma discussão acerca da percepção do imaginário da cultura africana e afro-brasileira e da construção da identidade étnico-racial no enredo escolar. A investigação foi realizada a fim de: 1- analisar os tipos de suportes e referenciais culturais que a escola fornece para a construção da identidade étnico-racial; 2- identificar as consequências do tipo de representação do negro construída e percebida na escola para o desenvolvimento da identidade étnico-racial dos alunos do Ensino Fundamental I. Para tanto, utilizou-se a (...) abordagem de pesquisa qualitativa, empregando o uso da modalidade pesquisa-participante e análise documental do Plano Municipal de Educação de Corrente-PI, município onde a pesquisa foi desenvolvida, Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais e a Base Nacional Comum Curricular. A participação direta ocorreu por meio da realização de uma oficina de leitura realizada em uma turma do 2º ano do ensino fundamental, contemplando a literatura fornecida pelo PNBE, que versa sobre a construção da identidade étnico-racial. Diante da problemática e da dificuldade de implementação das leis que regem o ensino da temática, a pesquisa torna-se relevante, pois, longe de se esgotar a uma conclusão final, este estudo reforça a necessidade do constante debate e a busca por efetivação de práticas educativas que formem cidadãos emancipados e forneçam subsídios para os negros se autoafirmarem e para a valorização da cultura de matriz africana. Assim como a necessidade da busca por adequação, implementação, monitoramento e avaliação constante das leis que regem o ensino de história e cultura africana e afro-brasileira. (shrink)

O objetivo desse texto é abordar as influências do mito na sociedade atual. Os desafios contemporâneos são inúmeros, no meio de toda essa cacofonia de informações e problemas a mente humana se vê desolada, sem rumo e fustigada por inúmeras patologias sociais. Porém existe um guia ancestral que pode vir em socorro, o mito. Apesar de já permeado na sociedade, o mito ainda é para muitos um sinônimo de mentira e de uma explicação provisória da realidade, no entanto ele é (...) o receptáculo da sabedoria de incontáveis gerações de seres humanos e ajudou a edificar grandiosas civilizações. A própria história do mito é a história da forma de pensar refletida nas nossas relações com o sobrenatural. Reconhecer a importância do mito é fundamental, suas múltiplas facetas fornecem um amplo campo de estudo e reflexão no qual é possível se debruçar para buscar entender como a sociedade e a mentalidade contemporânea foram estruturadas. Para isso, utilizando-se de leituras sobre o tema buscou-se a construção de um panorama sobre o conceito de mito, suas relações com o humano ao longo da história e suas influências hoje. (shrink)

This essay proposes that Marta Moreno Vega’s 2004 memoir, When the Spirits Dance Mambo, is a Latina feminist narrative that foregrounds African diaspora worldviews, thought, forms, and practices as resources for cultivating a path toward decoloniality. In this memoir, Abuela’s spiritual leadership and her introduction of the young Cotito into the practice of Espiritismo become a central prism through which Cotito innovatively apprehends the links between sacred and secular realms in the burgeoning mambo and salsa music scene of New York. (...) Even more importantly, her engagement with this diasporan worldview allows Cotito to critically apprehend prevailing gender norms and their limitations. This essay, therefore, argues that an Afro-Latina feminism emerges in this memoir from the practice of embodied spirituality that also has sonic, aesthetic, and social dimensions in everyday life. (shrink)

Identity Re-creation in Global African Encounters explores race, racial politics, and racial transformation in the context of Africa’s encounters with non-African communities through various perspectives including oppression, racialization of ethnic difference, and identity deconstruction. While the contributors recognize that ethnicity has long been a staple analytical category of engagements between African and non-African communities, they present a holistic view of the continent and its diaspora through race outside of both colonial and neocolonial binaries, allowing for a more nuanced study of (...) Africa and its diaspora. (shrink)

In this article, I read Chester Himes' Blind Man With a Pistol as the work of an African- American writer who takes Harlem to be a colonial space, and who attempts to think through the ways that are available for him to contribute to some degree of liberation for its black residents. I suggest that there are strong parallels between Himes' position and that of African philosophers, and that Himes' self critique is instructive. I read this against Derrida's thoughts on (...) monolingualism and philosophy as a community of the question, asking what learning the language that is not one's own and what induction into the community of the question entail for the marginal, those who I describe as being from neither Athens nor Jerusalem. I conclude by offering my response to what I take to be our inescapable colonial lot: poetry and laughter. (shrink)

That African philosophy began with frustration and not with wonder as it is in Western tradition is a radical statement with far-reaching implications. Implications that are, as challenging as they are intellectually refreshing thus reinvigorating interest in the African discourse. As the discipline of African philosophy vitiated in the post debate disillusionment met with a new generation critical fire; methodic, technical and theoretic demands and issues unresolved in the old order surface. Old questions re-emerge with new and daunting toga while (...) new questions present fresh challenges for thought. With a carefully selected pool of emerging, original, African thinkers, the editor brought a creatively fascinating illumination upon the African episteme to herald the new era of African thought. The essays in this collection remark a sort of radical break from a long standing convention that requires serious critical reconstruction. Presenting a paradigm of creative individual philosophizing, the history, dating, criteria, logic and periodization imbroglio in African philosophy were resolved to give shape and direction to a hitherto formless discipline. Fundamental questions in ontology, epistemology, ethics and political thought gave birth to stunning metanarratives to inaugurate the conversational orientation in African philosophy. It provides a systematization that has been missing for almost a century and upon it defines an intellectually exciting future for the discipline. Whoever that wants to do African philosophy and understand it and make input must read this corpus. Carefully articulated and written, the essays in this collection constitute dependable research resources for students and researchers in all areas of African philosophy and studies. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the extent to which it is feasible to talk of a black Brazilian literary tradition that is somehow cohesive, conscious of itself and self-reflective. In looking at works by black fiction writers during the second half of the twentieth century, such as Romeu Crusoé, Oswaldo de Camargo, Cuti, Geni Guimarães, Marilene Felinto and Muniz Sodré, it suggests that writers of African descent who self-identify as black Brazilians are to a large extent bound by identification with region as (...) much as they are with skin colour, in a similar way to other ‘ethnic’ writers in Brazil. (shrink)

This paper proposes an Afroepistemological reading of the Ifá system. The policies of Western academic epistemology have disdained the traditiona African knowledge. Ifá has not been an exception. However, through this method a great deal of the socio-cultural and epistemological codes of Yorùbá society. So, Ifá becomes more important than a divination rite, because it represents socio-political and epistemological cohesion of a great proportion of the peoples of West Africa. This work vindicates this role and try to show epistemological complexity (...) of the system. (shrink)

The time has come for a new school of transnational conversation. It is the only way to keep up with the constantly evolving concept of the African Diaspora.

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)

The text consists of essays that revolve around the question of the nature and meaning of philosophy, even as it demonstrates philosophy's significance and relevance to some fundamental human problems and issues. The essays present diverse views of what philosophy might be and might aspire to be, with contributors being influenced by a wide range of philosophical approaches and traditions. The conversations also cut across disciplinary boundaries to interrogate and utilize ideas taken from ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, literary studies, cultural studies, (...) and the sociology of science. Traversing regional boundaries, the essays show philosophical analysis at work in exploring some issues pertinent to African, Caribbean, European, and American experiences, even while not ignoring Asian traditions. The collection presents interesting and intriguing views on how philosophical inquiry can illuminate various pressing problems: development, conflict, the discriminating preservation of worthwhile traditions, and the prevalence of apathy. It also reflects the vitality and multifaceted nature of philosophical discourse in grappling with live issues. The edited text is a comprehensive, balanced, and unique anthology of readings capturing the diversity of philosophical investigation. (shrink)

This book uncovers the problems that Western education poses for people of African descent. It re-establishes the importance of African scholarship, defines the nature of the present war on African Studies programs in academia, and identifies the champions of African civilization. A powerful collection of essays that goes beyond the current debate on multiculturalism in our nation's universities and encourages black readers to rediscover their heritage, ideas, and spirituality.

The recognition of Africa's contribution to American culture involves accepting an inheritance that is both part of the national heritage and part of the identity and cultural profile of each of our societies. By encouraging its complete assimilation into our history, this recognition also involves the study and dissemination of the culture, which in turn will enable the millions of Afro-Americans spread across the continent to participate in the process of building the future. Once properly recognized, this cultural heritage will (...) produce a rich form of métissage and generate pluralism. (shrink)

This study takes issue with the notion of cultural relativism, a notion which translates into the proposition that all known (or knowable) cultures are co-equally worthy, valid in their own right, and need therefore to be addressed on their own terms so as to be genuinely appreciated. Accredited by the liberal school of Western cultural anthropology, the proposition is basically a moral concession, nay, a compulsion to redistributive egalitarianism within the cultural kaleidoscope that our planet has grown to be. But (...) beyond its unctuously moral appeal, cultural relativism becomes an intellectual humbug. For it conceals the starkly conflictual dynamic to the very comparison of cultures or peoples in the first place. The dynamic is no other than the order of modernity, an order that has levered into relief, over the past four centuries, the inequality among cultures. It is mainly to help combat the propagation of said faith among Africans that I have contributed the "Agonistic Imperative". The last is a category for distinguishing among the culture complexes that make up the field of modernity. Underlying it is the idea of self-transcending, unrelenting struggle as a property of the human mind, an idea that finds expression in the survivalist potentials of given cultures. (shrink)

This dissertation applied and developed Molefi Asante's concept of Afrocentricity. Still in its infancy, Afrocentricity, like Eurocentricity, must not only be recognized as an appropriate methodology and/or theoretical concept, it must also be employed by both Black and white scholars when analyzing African rhetors. As the decades of the 70's and 80's have attempted to rid scholarship of sexist language, the decade of the 90's must continue to rid scholarship of not only sexist language but racist language and ideas. This (...) study was an attempt to eliminate the proliferation of "racist" language and ideas particularly in the approach to understanding Marcus M. Garvey and his significance, not just in the history of African people, but world history as well. ;The method of Afrocentricity was developed to determine Garvey's persuasive appeal in the African Community focusing specifically on his Convention Speeches from the Black community's perspective. To do this the history and culture of the people were examined through their own value system, as opposed to a value system that is external to that community. Two sets of values were applied. Based on the research by Alphonso Pinkney in Red, Black and Green, four values representative of the Garvey Movement were used. They included the values of territoriality, culture, religion and economics. The need also existed to utilize a contemporary value system as determined and practiced by the African Community. As a result, the researcher employed Maulana Karenga's Seven Principles of the Nguzo Saba, a Black Value System, which is at the root of the celebration of Kwanzaa, the only African American holiday that is non-heroic and non-religious that is celebrated by Black people in America. The seven values were unity, self-determination, cooperative economics, collective work and responsibility, purpose, creativity and faith. These Seven Values were compared and contrasted with the four values to show the significance of the historical and contemporary interrelationship between the two sets of values. These two sets of values were used to analyze Garvey's opening addresses at the UNIA Conventions. ;Recognizing the conditions/circumstances of African people in America during Garvey's time, Garvey did, however, try to fulfill the four criteria of Afrocentricism: unity of the occasion, elimination of chaos, making peace among disparate views and the creation of an opportunity for harmony and balance. (shrink)

This dissertation is a critical study of technopolitical issues in the history of African American people. Langdon Winner's theory of technopolitics was used to facilitate the analysis of large scale technologies and their compatibility with various political ends. I contextualized the central technopolitical issues within the major epochs of African American political history: the Atlantic slave trade, the African artisans of antebellum America, and the American Industrial Age. Throughout this study I have sought to correct negative stereotypes and to show (...) how "technological gauges" were employed to belittle people of African descent. This research also has shown that the mainstream notion that Africans had no part in the history of technology is false. This study identifies and analyses specific technologies that played a major role in the political affairs of Africans and African Americans. Those technologies included nautical devices, fort construction, and automatic guns in Africa, and hoes, plows, tractors, cotton gins, and the mechanical cotton pickers in America. The findings of this study suggested that African Americans have been disengaged and victimized by western technologies. This dissertation proposes how to overcome the oppressive uses of technology. (shrink)