Philosophical Foundations of the African Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives

Philosophical Foundations of the African Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004392947
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Philosophical Foundations of the African Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives critiques recent claims that the humanities, especially in public universities in poor countries, have lost their significance, defining missions, methods and standards due to the pressure to justify their existence. The predominant responses to these claims have been that the humanities are relevant for creating a “world culture” to address the world’s problems. This book argues that behind such arguments lies a false neutrality constructed to deny the values intrinsic to marginalized cultures and peoples and to justify their perceived inferiority. These essays by scholars in postcolonial studies critique these false claims about the humanities through critical analyses of alterity, difference, and how the Other is perceived, defined and subdued. Contributors: Gordon S.K. Adika, Kofi N. Awoonor, E. John Collins, Kari Dako, Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, James Gibbs, Helen Lauer, Bernth Lindfors, J.H. Kwabena Nketia, Abena Oduro, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Olúfémi Táíwò, Alexis B. Tengan, Kwasi Wiredu, Francis Nii-Yartey

Philosophical Foundations of the African Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives

Philosophical Foundations of the African Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004392947
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
Philosophical Foundations of the African Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives critiques recent claims that the humanities, especially in public universities in poor countries, have lost their significance, defining missions, methods and standards due to the pressure to justify their existence. The predominant responses to these claims have been that the humanities are relevant for creating a “world culture” to address the world’s problems. This book argues that behind such arguments lies a false neutrality constructed to deny the values intrinsic to marginalized cultures and peoples and to justify their perceived inferiority. These essays by scholars in postcolonial studies critique these false claims about the humanities through critical analyses of alterity, difference, and how the Other is perceived, defined and subdued. Contributors: Gordon S.K. Adika, Kofi N. Awoonor, E. John Collins, Kari Dako, Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, James Gibbs, Helen Lauer, Bernth Lindfors, J.H. Kwabena Nketia, Abena Oduro, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Olúfémi Táíwò, Alexis B. Tengan, Kwasi Wiredu, Francis Nii-Yartey

Menkiti on Community and Becoming a Person

Menkiti on Community and Becoming a Person PDF Author: Edwin Etieyibo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498583660
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Ifeanyi Menkiti’s articulation of an African conception of personhood—especially in “Person and Community in African Traditional Thought” —has become very influential in African philosophy. Menkiti on Community and Becoming a Person contributes to the debate in African philosophy on personhood by engaging with various aspects of Menkiti’s account of person and community. The contributors examine this account in relation to themes such as individualism, communalism, rights, individual liberty, moral agency, communal ethics, education, state and nation building, elderhood and ancestorhood. Through these themes, this book, edited by Edwin Etieyibo and Polycarp Ikuenobe, shows that Menkiti’s account of personhood in the context of community is both fundamental and foundational to epistemological, metaphysical, logical, ethical, legal, social and political issues in African thought systems.

Deciding in Unison: Themes in Consensual Democracy in Africa

Deciding in Unison: Themes in Consensual Democracy in Africa PDF Author: Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 162273923X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
'Deciding in Unison: Themes in Consensual Democracy in Africa' is an edited volume that both scholars and students of African philosophy and politics will find interesting. The chapters trace the current state of the debate as well as the idea that the advancement of consensus democracy as unanimity democracy is no longer valid, and a democracy of compromise is suggested as an alternative for advancing consensus democracy. The collection also contains chapters dealing with Wiredu’s consensual proposal for the building of resistance movements as well as his views about the relativity of truth and the way we should handle it. However, there are also chapters that explore the non-party system Wiredu proposes as not applicable in practice. Furthermore, the issues related to transferring consensus-supporting values like communism into the contemporary Africa setting are also examined. Also discussed in the book is how current presentations of African epistemology cannot pass for epistemology, and how we could begin to think of fashioning an African epistemology from deliberation aimed at consensus.

Reading Wiredu

Reading Wiredu PDF Author: Barry Hallen
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253057035
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Reading Wiredu is the first comprehensive overview of the philosophical thought of Kwasi Wiredu. Born in Ghana in 1931, Wiredu, an important observer and critic of philosophy generally, remains an original and penetrating African thinker. Interrelating Wiredu's philosophical writings from across decades, Barry Hallen sets forth the basic tenets and the defining features of his philosophy. Wiredu's thought is divided into five distinct but interconnected areas: his response to the philosophy of Quine on issues of logic and ontology, issues of language in philosophical reflection, the nature of truth as a practical and philosophical concern, the principle of sympathetic impartiality that all human beings must live by to survive as a group, and finally, consensus building as rooted in intentional, negotiated, and rational exchanges that are part of everyday life. Reading Wiredu explores the scope and depth of Wiredu's philosophical thought, which can be framed through what he calls a genetic methodology—a methodology that privileges environmental considerations in the production of various forms of thought. Hallen's overview is intended to assist scholars and students in grasping Wiredu's complex philosophical thought.

Against Decolonisation

Against Decolonisation PDF Author: Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
ISBN: 1787388859
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’; it suffocates African thought and denies African agency. Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò fiercely rejects the indiscriminate application of ‘decolonisation’ to everything from literature, language and philosophy to sociology, psychology and medicine. He argues that the decolonisation industry, obsessed with cataloguing wrongs, is seriously harming scholarship on and in Africa. He finds ‘decolonisation’ of culture intellectually unsound and wholly unrealistic, conflating modernity with coloniality, and groundlessly advocating an open-ended undoing of global society’s foundations. Worst of all, today’s movement attacks its own cause: ‘decolonisers’ themselves are disregarding, infantilising and imposing values on contemporary African thinkers. This powerful, much-needed intervention questions whether today’s ‘decolonisation’ truly serves African empowerment. Táíwò’s is a bold challenge to respect African intellectuals as innovative adaptors, appropriators and synthesisers of ideas they have always seen as universally relevant.

Sustainable Development, International Law, and a Turn to African Legal Cosmologies

Sustainable Development, International Law, and a Turn to African Legal Cosmologies PDF Author: Godwin Eli Kwadzo Dzah
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009354043
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
A pioneering study that challenges the legal orthodoxy of sustainable development in international law from a non-Western perspective.

New Scholarship on Ghanaian Literatures, Languages and Cultures

New Scholarship on Ghanaian Literatures, Languages and Cultures PDF Author: Dannabang Kuwabong
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527565769
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This volume showcases new research on popular academic topics in Ghana. Its wide range of focus across disciplines includes topics such as pidgin, performing apologies and politeness, music, the argument for adopting geographical indications (GI) policies for Ghana’s unique agricultural products, and the poetics of names, among many others. It will appeal particularly to students pursuing degrees in Africana and Ghanaian studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory PDF Author: Leigh K. Jenco
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190253754
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 772

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Book Description
Chapters emphasize exploration of substantive questions about political life in a range of global contexts, with attention to whether and how those questions may be shared, contested, or reformulated across differences of time, space, and experienceAn interdisciplinary volume that bridges the gaps between various traditions, regions, and concerns regarding political theoryProvides tags and keywords to aid navigation of the handbook and help readers trace disruptions, thematic connections, and conceptual contrasts across entries.

The Postcolonial World

The Postcolonial World PDF Author: Jyotsna G. Singh
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 131529768X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 583

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Book Description
The Postcolonial World presents an overview of the field and extends critical debate in exciting new directions. It provides an important and timely reappraisal of postcolonialism as an aesthetic, political, and historical movement, and of postcolonial studies as a multidisciplinary, transcultural field. Essays map the terrain of the postcolonial as a global phenomenon at the intersection of several disciplinary inquiries. Framed by an introductory chapter and a concluding essay, the eight sections examine: Affective, Postcolonial Histories Postcolonial Desires Religious Imaginings Postcolonial Geographies and Spatial Practices Human Rights and Postcolonial Conflicts Postcolonial Cultures and Digital Humanities Ecocritical Inquiries in Postcolonial Studies Postcolonialism versus Neoliberalism The Postcolonial World looks afresh at re-emerging conditions of postcoloniality in the twenty-first century and draws on a wide range of representational strategies, cultural practices, material forms, and affective affiliations. The volume is an essential reading for scholars and students of postcolonialism.

Afro-Communitarian Democracy

Afro-Communitarian Democracy PDF Author: Bernard Matolino
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498588298
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
In going beyond African socialism and consensual democracy’s use of communitarianism, Bernard Matolino demonstrates that there is a mode of understanding communitarianism that need not necessarily be traditionalist. It is from this ever-evolving communitarian notion that an African-rooted form of democracy may arise. Such a democratic theory is one that seeks to prioritize reality and factors that have shaped and continue to shape current experience of life on the African continent. The work advocates a new mode of communitarianism, without the idealism of traditional foundations of kin connections and one which takes the ontological equality of the community and the individual. Such a communitarian outlook will secure the basic requirements of democratization without abdicating its communitarian responsibility. The communitarian democratic theory advocated here takes seriously the particular situation of each individual and yet points out the need to appreciate the inevitability of the connections among the same individuals.