Africana Philosophy

An exploration of the philosophical and mystical potential of the art of Victor Ekpuk and the Nsibidi symbolism of the Ekpe esoteric order of South-South and South-East Nigeria and South-West Cameroon which inspires his work, in the
context of Africana and global esotericism.

Cette recension propose une lecture en deux volets des cinq essais qui constituent l'ouvrage de Mbembe, correspondant grossièrement à deux champs de contributions (économie politique et philosophie politique) qu'ils entendent combler.  Cette proposition de lecture est ponctuée d'une critique interne et formelle de cet ouvrage original dont la prémisse principale, novatrice, repose sur l'hypothèse de l'éviction de l'homme noir hors et contre l'univers de signifiants qui instituent l’hypothèse de l'identité occidentale.

For the United States of America, the Declaration of Independence marked the most significant public communication of the Nation’s moral political philosophy. In fact, this one document alone would set the ideological tone to shape the philosophies of American political theorists for centuries to come. Along with other ideological political documents, the Declaration informed American values on concepts of freedom, justice, and equality. Despite its conceptual genius however, the Declaration’s stated moral principles would be marred by the Nation’s cruel and inhumane treatment of its African Americans citizens. Consequently, America’s political ideals related to concepts of equality and truth are often met with skepticism when perceived through the lens of the lived experiences of many African Americans.

Political morality can be defined in terms of traditional philosophy and analyzed based on its application in individual and communal contexts. American moral thought is advanced around the globe as the standard of a model communal political morality. Even so, imposing its documented principles of morality has not consistently guided America’s treatment of its own African Americans citizens. Ultimately, this chapter explores the philosophical development of American cultural perspectives on political morality as demonstrated through early American writings, and examines the degree to which moral behavior involving practices of truth-telling, apology and forgiveness might legitimately be applied to governments and then, imposed on citizens.

This article uses a newly developed theoretical concept – the 'uncommodified blackness' image, to accentuate the discursive methods in which the humanness of Africans is denied in subtle and commonplace ways in Australia. In other words, the concept of uncommodified blackness is used in this study to theorise both the racist infrahumanisation and the blatant racist dehumanisation that Africans are subjected to in Australia. An analysis of semi-structured interviews with 11 research participants suggests that, through the image of uncommodified blackness, the participants are viewed by mainstream Australia as dysfunctional and dirty Others who ought to be avoided in public transport. Participants' lived experiences imply that mainstream Australia regards them as outsiders and perpetual refugees who are failing at 'integration'.

Mediating Black religious studies, spirituality studies, and liberation theology, Philip Butler explores what might happen if Black people in the United States merged technology and spirituality in their fight towards materializing liberating realities.

The discussions shaping what it means for humans to exist with technology and as part of technology are already underway: transhumanism suggests that any use of technology to augment intellectual, psychological, or physical capability makes one transhuman. In an attempt to encourage Black people in the United States to become technological progenitors as a spiritual act, Butler asks whether anyone has ever been 'just' human? Butler then explores the implications of this question and its link to viewing the body as technology.

Re-imagining incarnation as a relationship between vitality, biochemistry, and genetics, the book also takes a critical scientific approach to understanding the biological embodiment of Black spiritual practices. It shows how current and emerging technologies might align with the generative biological states of Black spiritualities in order to concretely disrupt and dismantle oppressive societal structures.
Table of contents
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments

Introduction and Overview
1. Thinking of Black Transhumanism: Non-Humanity, Moving Away From Transhumanism's Roots
2. Foundations of a Black Transhumanism: Blackness as the Biotechnologically Mediated Experience of Black Vitality
3. The Neurophysiology of Spiritual Experience
4. Black Transhuman Liberation Theology
5. Black Transhumanism as Revolt Spirituality

Glossary of Terms
Notes
References
Index

This article probes the possibility of the reasons of reason by interrogating the deconstruction of the subject – the Black man subject as policeman, and the Black man subject as miner – upon the grounds set out by the killing of miners at Marikana, called “The Marikana massacre”, by the South African press who reported that not since the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 had such force and brutality been witnessed than August 16th 2012. Killed, murdered, brutalised, massacred, for no reason other than to assert the authority of the right to kill when wearing a South African police uniform and guided by the murder tactics handed over by White policemen, the Black policemen shot Black men,  one after the other, resulting in a massacre – one, I call, a theatre of cruelty, which informs my point of departure for a philosophy born of massacres. This article addresses the salient features of what marks this relationship between the Black man who considers himself a product of postmodernity and post-apartheid, and the Black man who considers himself the miner.

In recent years the seventeenth century Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob has been championed as a modern rationalist philosopher and forerunner of human rights, whose work uniquely preempted concepts traditionally attributed to European Enlightenment figures such as Locke, Descartes, Hume, and Kant. This interpretation of Yacob has proved particularly useful to scholars arguing for the recognition of Ethiopia's indigenous philosophical tradition in reaction to historical Eurocentrism. In contrast, Belayneh Girma (2017), argues that Yacob's reputation as an Enlightenment rationalist has no credible basis, a provocative dissent which does not appear to have been engaged in the literature. This article examines scholarly claims for both Yacob's apparently unique philosophical contributions and his relationship to the Enlightenment, using both an original assessment of Yacob's work, and application of Belayneh's critique. It concludes that despite being an innovator in his own environment, and despite his intellectual independence from the European philosophical tradition, Yacob was neither a precursor to, nor a participant in, the distinctively rationalist continuum of Enlightenment thought.

Can humanism be post-colonial? What is Africana Philosophy? Who is Lewis Gordon? This paper presents some typical elements of the Jamaican philosopher Lewis Gordon's thought and relates it to the field of Africana Philosophy. For this purpose, it seeks to delineate its theoretical influences and the usage of concepts, such as theodicy, bad faith and reason to understand anti-black racism. In this sense, the following argument pivots on Lewis Gordon's singular contribution to different areas of study, especially political philosophy, social sciences and the humanities.

In “Between Africa and America: Alexander Crummell’s Moral
and Political Philosophy,” Ruwe offers a spirited defense of
Alexander Crummell’s moral and political philosophy. Ruwe
wants to correct the anachronist reading of Crummell offer
by Anthony Appiah. Ruwe maintains that Crummell created
a Black counter-discourse that argued the supposed racial
superiority of whites, particularly the Anglo-Saxon race,
and the supposed inferiority of Africans was rooted in
imperialism and conquest. As such, Crummell’s philosophy
of race showed that Africans and their civilization could
civilize the Anglo-Saxon race by challenging the imperial
logic of enslaving Africans as laborers for white civilization

Although the concept of natural liberty played an essential role in the abolitionist movement, black abolitionist appropriations of the concept are generally reduced to Enlightenment categories of political theory. Through an analysis of Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, I argue that the abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano developed a novel conception of natural liberty through a process of creolization. Rather than a wholesale adoption of European political thought, Cugoano reinterpreted categories of natural rights philosophy by blending natural liberty with West African social practice and the experiences of the enslaved. His primary theoretical innovation was to divorce natural liberty from freedom as self-ownership and to reorient the concept away from a focus on self-possession, private property, and individual rights toward transnational obligations to end the slave trade. Cugoano is both representative and originator of a distinct tradition of black transnational thought that exceeds the limitations of European political traditions.

This research critiques the philosophies of education in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Zimbabwe, and proposes a relevant African philosophy of education. Since the research assumption that there is philosophy in Africa is itself in question, the research could not proceed without addressing the African philosophy question, that is, whether there is an African philosophy in the first place. There is no question that the African philosophy question has dominated the formative years of African philosophy. However, African scholars hold different views on the status of the African philosophy question today. Some think the question of definition of African philosophy is a waste of time (Makinde, 2007) and urge African philosophers not to waste time on endless talks and just do African philosophy. Some think the question should now be abandoned because it has been exhaustively answered (Etuk, 2002). Yet others consider the African philosophy question to be a perverse debate (Chimakonam, 2015; Uduma, 2014; Vest, 2009). The scholarly reservations and suspicions about the origins, nature and intention of the African philosophy question are founded on Africa’s colonial history. The systematic negative conclusions by early anthropologists and ethnographers that the African intellectual capacity is primitive, irrational, and illogical (Bodunrin, 1981) – which were also used to justify the discriminatory colonial policies – provide some basis for these suspicions about the sincerity of the African philosophy question. This research acknowledges the colonial import in the African philosophy question but stresses on the central value of this metaphilosophical question in African philosophy. The research maintains that the efforts to undermine the value of this metaphilosophical question are detrimental to the development of African philosophy.
The African philosophy question, which challenges the African philosopher to clarify and justify African philosophy, is a critical component in developing a relevant African philosophy of education. The question, put differently, challenges the African philosopher to identify the unique features of African philosophy that qualifies it as a distinct discipline of study. However, there is no straightforward answer to this question due to another complicating factor – the African colonial predicament . An answer to this question requires a careful navigation out of the complexities of colonisation. This research answers the African philosophy question within the context of the African colonial predicament. The research critiques the three common responses (the conservative, the liberal, and the cosmopolitan responses) to the African predicament and argues for a fourth response – the critical reflexive response – as an encouraging philosophical paradigm. Critical reflexivity is a brainchild of the post-war critical tradition that questions the underlying assumptions in our views and that of others in an endeavour to transform the human condition or promote humanity. Door (2014) describes critical reflexivity as “bi-directional critical awareness” because of its capacity to both self-question (critique our own ideas and assumptions of those ideas) and other-question (critique ideas the world imposes on us and assumptions of those ideas). This research argues that a relevant African philosophy of education is one that maintains the tension between particularism (centripetal force – moving towards the centre) and universalism (centrifugal force – moving away from the centre). A relevant African philosophy of education informed by the critical reflexivity paradigm takes the values of Africanisation, critical theory, dialogue, and African humanism seriously. An African philosophy of education questions the dogmatic exclusionism of the modernist universalism, secures the identity and dignity of African knowledge and values, recognises alterity, and prioritises dialogue.

This paper (delivered October 24, 2014 at the conference "Philosophical Theologies and Philosophy of Religion in Africana Tradition, at the City University of New York Graduate Center, discusses "salvation" as the sine qua non of religious experience, but expands the meaning of "salvation" beyond typical theological definitions and beyond the borders of "religion" generally construed. It sketches a typology that includes The Mono-Salvific, the Teleo-Salvific, the Mystico-Salvific, the Quotidio-Salvific, and the Aesthetico-Salvific. It ends by briefly contrasting the ubiquitous search for salvation, through both religion, various forms of high naturalism, and aesthetics, with the prevalent conception of "liberation" as concerning oppressive political, economic, and social formations only.

In The Color of Money, Baradaran argues that the defining feature of America’s racial divide is the wealth gap which is where the seeds of historic anti-Black injustice and the present economic sufferings of African Americans were sown. While exploring the philosophical thoughts of W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr., this essay grapples with such roots of anti-Black economic injustice by highlighting how the American capitalist economy was designed to, ultimately, destroy Black families through the exclusion of Black males from the system of wealth creation. I argue that insights from the structural, socio-political and economic critiques of W. E. B Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr. reveal how America operated a “political economy of niggerdom”—a system that utilizes various modes of anti-Black misandry, and the stereotype of criminalization as the basis for racial and economic discrimination against Black males.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021934719834828

As an African American writer who was part of the Black Arts Movement, William Melvin Kelley became an ardent defender of Black identity/-ies and the Black Aesthetics. This article aims to revisit his narratives through the scopes of African Existential Philosophy and a phenomenological approach in order to understand how he perceived and constructed Black identities in the context of segregation. At the cross-road between imagination and lived experience, his stories interrogate what constitutes the self as an existing Black body filled with individual and community essence.

RESUMO: Desde a publicação dos trabalhos do polímata senegalês Cheikh A. Diop e do filósofo e linguista congolês Théophile Obenga, estudiosas e estudiosos ao redor do globo lançaram-se em esforço coletivo para discutir a participação e a contribuição dos povos africanos para o estabelecimento da sociedade tal como conhecemos e com isso ampliar a historiografia humana. O presente artigo apresentará a definição de filosofia desenvolvida pelos povos do Egito Antigo, em vigor desde o quarto milênio antes da Era Comum, reportada por Obenga e pelo filósofo afro-brasileiro Renato Noguera. Em seguida ampliar o debate apontando uma das aplicações desse conceito na obra do escriba e Vizir da 6ª Dinastia faraônica, Ptah-Hotep. Palavras-Chave: Filosofia. Filosofia Antiga. Filosofia Africana. Kemet. Ética. ABSTRACT: Since the publication of both the Senegalese polymath Cheikh A. Diop and the Congolese philosopher and linguist Théophile Obenga's works, several scholars around the globe have been gathered on a collective effort to discuss both the participation and contribution of African peoples in the establishment of society as we know it and thereby expand human historiography. Our aim in this paper is to present the definition of philosophy developed by Ancient Egyptian people ever since the fourth millennium B.C.E., reported by Obenga and the Afro-Brazilian philosopher Renato Noguera. Then stretch the debate by pointing out one application of this concept in the work of Ptah-Hotep, 6th Pharaonic Dynasty scribe and Vizir.

Abstract
In this paper I describe and discuss the philosophy behind the Eight Bowl, Ceremony of Life ritual developed and introduced into the Black community in the USA over 40 years ago by members of the House of Umoja. The House of Umoja was Black Nationalist political and cultural activist organization modeled after the Secret Societies of traditional Africa.  This organization, also known as the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) Black Panther Party of Northern California was one of several Black Panther Party organizations to precede the better known Black Panther Party for Self Defense founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.  The Eight Bowl ceremony of the House is closely related to similar ceremonies based on African traditions that are maintained by religious and cultural groups in modern Africa as described by Robert E. Hooks. The meaning and performance of the ritual was handed down by word of mouth to initiates into the House of Umoja and over the past three decades hundreds of naming ceremonies, weddings, initiations funerals and other significant life passages have been highlighted by the observance of this ritual.

There are established ethical principles to protect human participants in biomedical research from undue exploitation by researchers. However, in the " Tuskegee Study " in the US, these principles were grossly violated. The task of this paper is to critically examine the ethical implications of that study on future practices in biomedical research, and to suggest ways of ensuring that such practices comply with appropriate ethical values.

Do planetary ethics require us to reappraise the concept of racism? And what does philosophical attention to racism illuminate about the planetary?

The apparent neutrality of the planet can be used to cloak, perpetuate, and even deepen racism. At its worst, those who are racialized as non-white are conceived as problems for planetary flourishing. Examples abound: from spectacular eco-fascism to prevalent eugenicist discourses around climate migration and overpopulation, to the common belief that the issues raised by environmental and climate justice effectively delay and distract from the real and urgent work of dealing with climate change. Yet, racism is best understood as an inter-species, inter-elemental affair, a mode of relationality, and a hierarchical organization of the living and the non-living, bound up with planetary processes and formations, and, indeed, with the concept and study of the planet itself. In short, it is no distraction.

In celebration of the fortieth anniversary of CODESRIA, an institution from the Global South devoted to taking responsibility for the production of social science knowledge, this article explores what it means to pursue such a task under the threat of colonial imposition at methodological and disciplinary levels, which, the author argues, carries dangers of disciplinary decadence marked by the fetishisation of method. The author offers alternatives through what he calls ‘a teleological suspension of disciplinarity, and raises the question not only of the decolonisation of knowledge but also norms.

El artículo plantea el origen de la figura de Anansi y algunas funciones que cumple dentro de la literatura oral de los afrodescendientes, tanto míticas como ideológicas, ilustrando con ejemplos de África, el Pacífico Colombiano y Centroamérica, a lo largo del proceso de secuestro, esclavización y lucha por la libertad.

السِّرَاجَ الْوِهَاجَ فِي خَبْرِ الْإِسْرَاءِ وَالْمِعْرَاجِ

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ وَالصَّلاةُ وَالسَّلامُ مِنَ اللهِ عَلَى سَيِّدَنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ أَجْمَعِيْنَ.

قَالَ أَفْقَرُ الْعِبَادِ الْمُضْطَرُّ لِرَحْمَةِ رَبِّهِ الْمَجِيْدِ أَبُو اَلْفَا عُمَرَ مُحَمَّدٌ شَرِيفٌ بْنُ فَرِيدٍ تَغَمَّدُه اللهُ بِرَحْمَتِهِ آمِين:

اَلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ اَلَّذِي أَرْسَلَ مُحَمَّدًا رَحْمَةً لِلْعَالَمِينَ وَأَفْضَلُ الصَّلاةِ وَأَتَمُّ التَّسْلِيمِ عَلَى خَاتِمِ النَّبِيئِيْنَ سَيِّدِ الْمُرْسَلِينَ أَفْضَلُ الْخَلْقِ أَجْمَعِينَ سَيِّدِنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَأَهْلِهِ الطَّاهِرِينَ وَأَصْحَابِهِ الْفَائِزِينَ،

وَرَضِيَ اللهُ تَعَالَى عَنْ سَاداتِ التِّابِعِينَ وَالْعُلَمَاءِ الْعَامِلِينَ وَالأَئِمَةِ الأَرْبَعِ الْمُجْتَهِدِينَ وَأَوْتَادِ الأَوْلِياَءِ الْمُقَرِّبِينَ وَمُقَلِّدِيهِمْ فِي الإِحْسَانِ إِلَى يَوْمِ الدِّيْنِ:

أَمَّا بَعْدُ، فَقَدْ سَأَلَنِي رَفِيقِي كَمَثَلِ شَقِيْقِي الإِمَامُ أَبُو مَلِكَةَ مُحَمَّدٌ بْنُ عَبْدُ اللهِ ثَبَتَهُ اللهُ عَلَى صِرَاطِهِ الْمُسْتَقِيمِ، أَنْ أُبَيَّنَ لَهُ صِحَّةَ قِصَّةِ الإِسْرَاءِ وَالْمِعْرَاجِ وَأَن أُبَيَّنَ لَهُ عَنِ اللَّيْلَةِ اَلَّتِي وَقَعَ الإِسْرَاءُ فِيْهَا وَأَن أُبَيَّنَ لَهُ مَا قَرَأَ النَّبِيُّ صلى الله عليه وسلم إِذَا صَلَّى أَمَامَ المُرْسَلِيْنَ والنَّبِيئِيْنَ، أَى بَعْدَ نُزُولِهِ مِنْ عَنْدِ اللهِ بَفُرُوْضِ الصَّلَواَتِ الْخَمْسَةِ، فَأَجَبْتُهُ بَعْدَ الْإِسْتِخَارَةِ وَاللَّهُ الْمُسْتَعَانُ،
4_____________________________مقدمة: أصل الإسراء والمعراج
المقصود __________________________________________5
آيات الإسراء والمعراج  _________________________________5
تفسبر آيات الإسراء والمعراج _____________________________5
فضيلة الإسناد ______________________________________9
فضل الرِّوَايَةِ من جهة أهل البيت __________________________9
فضل الرّواية من الأجداد الصالحين ________________________10
سند رواية حديث الإسراء والمعراج من الشريف الشيخ محمد اليعقوبي ____11
سند رواية حديث الإسراء والمعراج من الشيخ محمد الأمين بن آدم الفلاني _12
نصّ الحديث في الإسراء والمعراج  _________________________12
حكم الإسراء والمعراج  _________________________________13
فرضت الصلاة في الإسراء والمعراج ________________________14
الصلاة أكبر علامة الإيمان _____________________________14
الصلاة تدفع أعمال السيئات_____________________________15
الصلاة محل المناجات ________________________________16
الصلاة معراج المؤمن ________________________________16
الصلاة أعظم المواطن لتجلي الإِلهية ______________________17

This article outlines the concept of blackness as that which resists completeness and therefore is the paradoxical exemplification of thought at meta-levels--that is, thought about thought.  Distinguishing reason from rationality, where the former is broader than the latter, the author argues that this is a central feature of Africana and black (treated as paradoxical and oxymoronic) thought.  This course requires articulating how disciplinary decadence has affected thinking and how teleological suspensions (going beyond decadence) invigorates practices of thought and possibilities for new forms of life.

Research on Black men's experience in liberal arts graduate programs such as philosophy are practically non-existent. The emphasis liberal arts disciplines place on theory often allows negative stereotypes and pathological assertions about Black men to remain unchallenged. Drawing from an analysis of Black men depicted by the Moynihan Report as well as contemporary educational literature, this article argues that Black males experience institutional and inter-personal forms of misandric aggression. The effect of these dehumanizing caricatures towards Black men results in negative physiological and psychological outcomes. The author advises Black men to recognize the anti-Black misandry of liberal arts disciplines and consider global job markets more open to exploring the experiences of Black men.

Du penseur politique et psychiatre martiniquais Frantz Fanon, on connaît en général l'engagement anticolonial en Afrique, notamment dans l'Algérie, la Tunisie et le Ghana des années 1950 et du début des années 1960, ainsi que les travaux sur l'aliénation raciste. Ce texte vise à mettre en lumière une autre dimension, transversale à l'ensemble de son oeuvre, à savoir son élaboration continue d'une théorie critique de la culture, concomitante à une évaluation du rôle structurant des médias dans l'imposition de référents culturels.

“One finger does not kill a louse”
- African Proverb

In my recent research efforts I have been pushing two separate but related theories in the hope that sooner than later these will become popular in contemporary African Philosophy. These two theories are “Afroxiology” and “Conceptual Mandelanization” respectively. I postulate Afroxiology as a distinctive value-oriented theory in African philosophy which concerns itself with the philosophical study of African value – system, as well as the conflict between African and non-African value-systems. Conceptual mandelanization on the other hand is promoted as a project in contemporary African philosophy which compels the abstraction of the thoughts, lifestyle and values of Nelson Mandela and the application of same to the interpretation of relevant concepts and themes in the African social condition.  This application involves the systematic, logical, critical and analytic tools of thought of the contemporary African philosopher in reflection on the total experience of the African in the Africa we know, in shaping the Africa of the future and her relationship in a world which hitherto structurally marginalised Africa and her contributions. This essay seeks to through this medium launch these theories into the African philosophical intellectual space and beyond and of course defend and justify both. It is thus intended to be dialogical, as reactions are expected. This is in the spirit of the conversational order developed by J. O. Chimakonam and which has become one of the trends in this New Era or contemporary period of African philosophy. In the final analysis the paper contends that in the fullness of time Afroxiology as I have conceived it has the potential to evolve into a distinctive branch or compartment of African philosophy. It is also submitted that this project of conceptual mandelanization purveys the methodological preconditions for the development of a new African social philosophical system based on the humanist principles of Nelson Mandela. I shall designate that system as “Mandelanism”Afroxiology, Conceptual Mandelanization and Mandelanism are presented as African philosophical and intellectual response to the development crisis in contemporary Africa. The method adopted is conversationalism developed by Chimakonam and now adopted by the Calabar School of Philosophy (CSP).

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This book is an in-depth, comparative study of two of the most popular and influential intellectual and spiritual traditions of West Africa: Tijani Sufism and Ifa. Employing a unique methodological approach that thinks with and from—rather than merely about—these traditions, Oludamini Ogunnaike argues that they contain sophisticated epistemologies that provide practitioners with a comprehensive worldview and a way of crafting a meaningful life.

Using theories belonging to the traditions themselves as well as contemporary oral and textual sources, Ogunnaike examines how both Sufism and Ifa answer the questions of what knowledge is, how it is acquired, and how it is verified. Or, more simply: What do you know? How did you come to know it? How do you know that you know? After analyzing Ifa and Sufism separately and on their own terms, the book compares them to each other and to certain features of academic theories of knowledge. By analyzing Sufism from the perspective of Ifa, Ifa from the perspective of Sufism, and the contemporary academy from the perspective of both, this book invites scholars to inhabit these seemingly “foreign” intellectual traditions as valid and viable perspectives on knowledge, metaphysics, psychology, and ritual practice.