In this paper, I explore the Guam Department of Education's (GDOE) decolonization efforts and the potential role of Philosophy for Children (P4C) as a strategic tool for its advancement. I begin with a discussion of Guam's colonial context and its implications for contemporary education on the island. While the GDOE's current attempts to decolonize Guam's public education emphasize the need for an "official body of knowledge," many CHamoru scholars and activists have argued that it is not enough. This paper (...) agrees that such content-based reforms are insufficient and advocates for a more nuanced approach to education through P4C. Drawing on the P4C literature and decolonial education, I argue that while P4C alone may not bring about structural change, its pedagogical framework offers a promising alternative when adapted to indigenous contexts. The paper proposes that P4C can serve as a "Trojan Horse" within public schools, fostering decolonial acts of resurgence by elevating indigenous knowledge, welcoming indigenous masters, and empowering CHamoru students within a Westernized educational setting. (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 80s and 90s (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)

I attend to the temporal schema of open/closed by examining its elaboration in Bergson's philosophy and critically parsing the possibilities for its destabilization. Though Bergson wrote in a colonial context, this context barely receives acknowledgement in his work. This obscures the uncomfortable resonances between Bergson's late work, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, and the temporal narratives that justify French colonialism. Given Bergson's uptake by philosophers, such as Gilles Deleuze, and by contemporary feminist and political theorists (especially “new (...) materialists”), a critical re-examination is called for. The Two Sources not only introduces a new dichotomy into Bergsonian philosophy—that of open/closed—it puts an end to the movement of duration by defining its possibilities as goals already given in advance. By turning the tools of Bergsonian critique onto The Two Sources, I propose an alternative to the open/closed—that of the “half-open”—creating in this way the conditions for decolonizing duration. (shrink)

In his influential history of the post-1967 history of the Palestinian Occupation, radical Israeli architect Eyal Weizman show how even well-meaning decolonial efforts from privileged allies can be coopted by the colonizers, in what I call “de-decolonizing.” Here I focus on one of his examples, namely IDF (Israeli Defense Force) military professors repurposing the anarcho-communist philosophy of French postmodernist Gilles Deleuze into a weapon against Palestinian guerrilla resistance. My conclusion is that attempted decolonizing via (inevitably complicit) privileged (...) allies must include what Weizman calls “co-resistance,” and I call “reconstruction.” In other words, when a Deleuzian “line of flight” to “escape” is impossible, as arguably for Palestinians today, then one should follow the heroic example of the Bedouins, who (as Weizman acknowledges) are the only Arabs who have never stopped rebuilding their Palestine. (shrink)

Can a person from Latin America be a Catholic, or a feminist, or a democratic socialist in an authentic way? These identities come from Europe, and given the colonial history of Latin America, it seems reasonable to think that decolonizing the Latin American mind is a condition for its authenticity. Further, it seems reasonable to think that decolonization itself requires extirpating ideas and identities originating from the colonizers, especially those used to establish the colonial order. Thus, it seems that (...) Latin Americans cannot adopt such identities; authentic decolonization demands otherwise. In this paper I argue that the thought of twentieth century Mexican philosopher Jorge Portilla provides a persuasive account of the nature of authentic self-creation that allows for a kind of decolonization that makes it conceptually possible for Latin Americans to be Catholics, feminists, or democratic socialists in an authentic fashion. That is, authentic decolonization of the mind, I argue, need not involve a blanket rejection of identities originating from the colonizers; instead, it can be understood as a particular kind of authentic self-creation: one that is appropriately sensitive to the colonial history of the identities freely chosen by the agent. (shrink)

[Attached PDF is the Arabic translation, the hyperlink takes you to the original English version] In this paper I argue that the emphasis, which was placed by the PAIGC’s leadership, and specifically by Amílcar Cabral, on the importance of advancing women’s rights and women’s liberation should be understood as being a consequence of Cabral’s modernist philosophical orientation. Moreover, I argue that women played an essential part in the struggle for liberation from Portuguese colonialism. In the first section, I characterize Cabral’s (...) modernist philosophical orientation and the way it influenced his views on the necessity of women’s liberation. I emphasize the philosophical commitment to autonomy as a guiding normative principle. In the second section, I argue that women played a key role in pressuring the PAIGC to integrate them into its structure, i.e., they were active agents and not just passive subjects waiting for somebody to “liberate them.” In the third and concluding section, I describe the limits of the PAIGC’s commitment to women’s liberation, and I discuss why some members of the party’s leadership (e.g., Luis Cabral) disagreed with Amílcar Cabral regarding the importance of women’s liberation. This paper thus approaches the question of feminist anti-colonial imaginaries both from the perspective of the hopes which attended a partially feminist-inflected African liberation struggle, as well the betrayal of these hopes by men in leadership positions. Those leaders never took seriously the idea that the liberation of women was a necessary condition for the creation of a social environment which would allow for the full actualization of the capacities of men and women in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. (shrink)

This paper will reflect on the possibility of epistemic decolonization, particularly in terms of curriculum, as a transformative educational process in the context of the South African university, and with respect to my own positionality. The argument will centre around two difficult interdependent positions. On the one hand I will argue for the university’s task as transformational, even offering, via Cornel West, the ‘salvific’ possibility that knowledge offers those who seek it. To develop this claim, I will draw on and (...) develop the notion of paideia though the work of Plato and Heidegger.On the other hand, within the postcolonial African university, the question of decolonization in the tertiary space cannot be elided, particularly since the 2015 #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements. The university is a powerful colonial relic, and it can be used to reinforce and perpetuate epistemic violence through unreflective or unconscious pedagogical and curriculum decisions. Here I draw on decolonial thinkers such as Santos, Mignolo, Maldonado-Torres, and Mbembe: I argue for a reckoning with the forces of coloniality, and advocate for epistemic justice and criticality, as part of the decolonizing project. In conclusion, working with ideas from Cornel West, I argue to reconcile paideia, as the ‘turning of the soul’, with the decolonizing African university. (shrink)

This paper summarizes the evolution of analytic philosophy in Taiwan, examines its impact within and beyond academia, and discusses the future of the discipline. The roots of modern philosophy in Taiwan can be traced back to the Japanese colonial era, and analytic philosophy was introduced to the country in the late 1940s when many intellectuals in China moved to Taiwan. However, massive curbs were imposed on philosophy during Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship, and the discipline began to thrive (...) again only after Taiwan’s democratization in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, since its introduction in the colonial era, modern philosophy has made significant contributions in Taiwan, encouraging interdisciplinary engagements, advancing civic education, and promoting the spirit of democracy and political liberation. Philosophy has played a key role in Taiwan’s remarkable transformation from an island colonized for hundreds of years to a country that recognizes democracy, freedom, and human rights. The themes of anti-colonialism and anti-domination seen in the works of modern Taiwanese philosophers not only reflect the discipline’s political and historical underpinnings but also signal how Taiwanese philosophy can acquire a distinct identity, despite being influenced by many other philosophical traditions. While still at a nascent stage, Taiwanese philosophy has the potential to join forces with other philosophical traditions in advancing the vision of decolonizing philosophy. (shrink)

This paper summarizes the evolution of analytic philosophy in Taiwan, examines its impact within and beyond academia, and discusses the future of the discipline. The roots of modern philosophy in Taiwan can be traced back to the Japanese colonial era, and analytic philosophy was introduced to the country in the late 1940s when many intellectuals in China moved to Taiwan. However, massive curbs were imposed on philosophy during Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship, and the discipline began to thrive (...) again only after Taiwan’s democratization in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, since its introduction in the colonial era, modern philosophy has made significant contributions in Taiwan, encouraging interdisciplinary engagements, advancing civic education, and promoting the spirit of democracy and political liberation. Philosophy has played a key role in Taiwan’s remarkable transformation from an island colonized for hundreds of years to a country that recognizes democracy, freedom, and human rights. The themes of anti-colonialism and anti-domination seen in the works of modern Taiwanese philosophers not only reflect the discipline’s political and historical underpinnings but also signal how Taiwanese philosophy can acquire a distinct identity despite being influenced by many other philosophical traditions. While still at a nascent stage, Taiwanese philosophy has the potential to join forces with other philosophical traditions in advancing the vision of decolonizing philosophy. (shrink)

This article, addressed to Yoga Therapists, sorts out the historical roots of our idea of Yoga, elucidates the colonial interference and distortion of Yoga, and shows that trauma and therapy are the primary focus of Yoga. However, unlike most philosophies of therapy, Yoga's solution is primarily moral philosophical---Yoga itself being a basic ethical theory, in addition to Virtue Theory, Consequentialism and Deontology. This article goes some way to elucidating that it is quite ironic (and absurd) that many feel the need (...) to bring being “trauma-informed” into the title of Yoga education. That’s like the vacuous “chai tea” moniker (“chai” being the Hindi word for tea). Decolonizing our understanding of Yoga involves retrieving the original theory as the primary explanation of the topic, which allows us to understand how various activities, called "yoga," can be ways of practicing the moral philosophy of Yoga. The idea that "yoga" means many things and projects relies upon a contra logical methodology of interpretation which violates constraints of basic reasoning. Putting aside interpretation for explication is part of critical thinking but also our own self therapy. (Originally published in Yoga Therapy Today, a publication of the International Association of Yoga Therapists. Shared with permission.). (shrink)

Based on Maldonado-Torres’s formulation of the term, we conceive the decolonial turn as a form of liberating and decolonising reason beyond the liberal and Enlightened emancipation of rationality, and beyond the more radical Euro-critiques that have failed to consistently challenge the legacies of Eurocentrism and white male heteronormativity (often Eurocentric critiques of Eurocentrism). We complement Maldonado-Torres’s account of the decolonial turn in philosophy, theory and critique by providing an analysis of the trajectories of academic philosophy and clarifying the (...) relevance of decolonising philosophy and of the decolonial turn for current efforts in transforming philosophy in face of the challenges of social movements such as the Third World Liberation Front and Black Lives Matter in the United States, and Rhodes Must Fall in South Africa and England. After a brief analysis of the trajectory and current status of philosophy as a discipline in the modern Western research university, we provide examples of the decolonial turn and of decolonising philosophy in three areas: the engagement with (1) Asian and (2) Latin American philosophies, and (3) debates in the philosophy of race and gender. (shrink)

Having elsewhere connected Walter Otto’s interpretation of Dionysus as a politically progressive deity to Huey P. Newton’s vision for the Black Panthers, I here expand this inquiry to a line of Otto-inspired scholarship. First, Alain Daniélou identifies Dionysus and Shiva as the dancing god of a democratic/decolonizing cult oppressed by tyrannical patriarchies. Arthur Evans sharpens this critique of sexism and heteronormativity, concluding that, as Dionysus’s chorus is to Greek tragedy, so Socrates’s circle is to Western philosophy. I thus (...) call for the creation of a hybrid Dionysian-Socratic revolutionary philosophical chorus, modeled on Dionysus Lyseus, wielding philosophical analysis to loosen injustice’s bonds, as a vanguard of social justice. I find a handbook for this chorus’s creation in Euripides’s Bacchae, whose Dionysus is an ally of immigrant women, overthrower of Theban patriarchy, and international revolutionary. Finally, I offer a contemporary example of such a chorus that is based in my hometown in Alabama, namely, the Birmingham Philosophy Guild. (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)

This article describes my ongoing attempts to more successfully engage the full linguistic repertoires and cultural identities of undergraduate students at a “Hispanic Serving Institution” (HSI) in South Texas by teaching a bilingual Introduction to Latin American Philosophy course in the “Language, Philosophy, and Culture” area of Texas’ General Education Core Curriculum. By uncovering the diverse identities, worldviews, and languages of those who were historically excluded from the Eurocentric discipline of philosophy through the conquest and colonization of (...) the Americas, Latin American philosophers offer us new ways of thinking and living by challenging Anglocentric language, philosophy, and culture. As part of the new B3 (Bilingual, Bicultural, and Biliterate) vision of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, the course is designed to draw upon the richly varied bilingualisms and biliteracies of predominantly Latinx students in order to help them honor, theorize, and cultivate their bicultural identities by “philosophizing in tongues” rather than being forced to assimilate to the monolingual and monocultural ideology that prevails across both mainstream Anglophone philosophy and the system of higher education in the United States of America. (shrink)

This paper is an introduction to the dossier on “the present and the future of doing philosophy with children”, which itself drew inspiration from a conference on the same topic that was held in University College Dublin on the 24th of June 2022. While the conference aimed at building a case for the importance of engaging pre-college students in philosophical thinking, it also aspired to function as a forum where the participants can critically reflect on the practice of doing (...) philosophy with children. The participants were asked to reflect on 1) the ways in which philosophy prepares children to engage with an increasingly complex world; 2) the future challenges of the P4wC movement; 3) the ways in which and the extent to which P4wC practice contributes to the decolonization of childhood discourses; 4) the ways in which and the extent to which the philosophy with children initiative addresses issues of epistemic injustice and educational and social inequalities. Building on the discussions that took place during and after the conference, the authors in this dossier interrogate the hierarchical opposition between child and adult, and cast a critical gaze on adultist assumptions that prevent Philosophy for/with Children initiatives from achieving their full potential. (shrink)

Review of David Ludwig, Inkeri Koskinen, Zinhle Mncube, Luana Poliseli, and Luis Reyes-Galindo, eds. Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science. Routledge, 2021, pp.i-xviii+319.

How should philosophers in India approach the work of John Rawls? I argue against the view that his work should be regarded as exclusively within the domain of 'Western philosophy', which needs some distinctive process of translation and contextualization in order to speak to 'Indian conditions'. I also question the idea that 'Indian political philosophy' should be seen as an autonomous discipline with roots specifically in the Indian past.

The place of Glissant’s philosophy of decolonisation in relation to Fanon and Césaire has been theorised by some authors, but the emphasis has not been placed on the fact that Glissant refers to both his predecessors as examples of the absence of a link between the two tactics of resistance – un détour [a tactical diversion] and un retour [a return]. For Glissant, both Césaire and Fanon are still diverters and not properly producers of a new reality, of a (...) real Caribbean territory and history. Thus, following previous analyses by commentators, but departing from them (or adding a new layer, the layer of spatiality that should be combined with a traditional analysis of temporality), this chapter defends the idea that Glissant locates his decolonial thought between Césaire and Fanon: it neither advocates a reconstruction that points to a past located elsewhere (Africa), nor recommends the rejection and replacement of the here/now with a different, unknown spatiality and temporality. For Glissant, the locus of resistance is located in the present and in the possibilities of decolonisation already contained in the Caribbean, although concealed and understated. This chapter begins by showing what is, according to Glissant, the necessary conjunction between the different tactics of resistance, then focuses on some of Césaire’s and Fanon’s texts in order to show why they do not offer this necessary link. The final section comes back to Glissant to analyse the notion of l’antillanité as the possibility of truly focusing on a here/now as a multilayered strategy of resistance. (shrink)

What do we mean when we describe the history of the Caribbean as traumatic? Is it possible to use the term ‘trauma’ here in a more technical sense, or should we give it the less strict connotation of an extreme form of an event in which the past no longer stays just in the past and the future never ceases to demand something from the present? In this paper I analyze the image of the abyss, used by Édouard Glissant to (...) evoke poetically one of the beginnings of the Caribbean, as leading to a paradox on the attitude toward history: Caribbean communities have been burdened with a non-history that feels, at the same time, like too much history. I show that this image resembles the paradoxical structure of trauma developed in the works of Cathy Caruth, according to whom trauma is a paradoxical structure of experience in which the subject (or a community) is painfully possessed by an image that they have barely perceived and that is so minimal that it cannot be controlled. However, I argue, there are limits to this resemblance. I focus on the question whether the (traumatic) paradox is escapable in this region of the world, that is, whether Caribbean communities can be de-traumatized, and what are the connections of this possibility with the question, central to Glissant, of decolonization. In order to answer these questions, I analyze a central feature of the Caribbean history according to Glissant, transversality, to show in what way the paradox of history can be loosened. (shrink)

The recent call for a conceptual and intellectual decolonization in the humanities critiques the conventional, all-white, largely male philosophical canon. Its critique is directed at the centering of the experiences of this specific group in global knowledge transmission practices. Its proponents focus on the canon’s implicit claim, namely that only one social group is able to think thoroughly and accurately about all problems of philosophical significance across varying spatiotemporal contexts. In this short article, I will use two different debates to (...) make some aspects of this call more meaningful: the US-American discourse in academic philosophy on deracializing the knowing subject and the post-Holocaust German understanding of public intellectual spaces (sections 2 and 3 respectively). (shrink)

In the present article, the first section recapitulates my “figuration” philosophy of dance, the “dancing-with” interpretive method derived therefrom, and my previous application of figuration to salsa dance as a decolonizing gestural discourse. The second section deepens and modifies this analysis through a reinterpretation of Argentinian philosopher Ernesto Laclau’s concept of hegemony and his dance-resonant interpretations of Derrida. And the final section offers a template for this hegemonic dancing-with in the Birmingham, Alabama Latin dance troupe, Corazon de Alabama (...) (Heart of Alabama), as a new strategy for decolonizing and reconstructing social justice. (shrink)

One of the central strengths of Salem's analysis of Nasserism is that she recognizes both its world-historical significance as a progressive nationalist movement, and its severe limitations. In the first section of this paper, I discuss Salem's notion of the "afterlives" of the Nasserist project by drawing attention to one of the most debilitating legacies of that project, namely the transformation of Egyptian politics into petty bourgeois politics. In the second section, I argue that while Salem does not explicitly draw (...) on Hegel's understanding of tragedy in her account of Nasserism, her analysis of Nasserism essentially amounts to depicting it as a Hegelian tragedy. By placing Salem's book in conversation with Hegel (and his philosophy of action), we can make explicit what I take to be one of the central claims made by Salem, namely that when passing judgment on past and present national liberation movements we should remember that innocence is "only non-action, like the mere being of a stone" [nur das Nichttun wie das Sein eines Steines] (Hegel 1986, 346). In the third section of this paper, I raise some critical points about Salem's characterization of the nationalism that was associated with the Nasserist project, as well as about the deployment of the concept of modernity in her analysis. I argue that her account of modernity in the book does not distinguish between the concept of modernity as it refers to a certain kind of normative philosophical discourse, and modernization theory qua theory of development. Finally, I draw on Salem's use of the concept of hegemony in order to pose a question regarding the political significance of the contemporary cultural hegemony of Islamist movements in Egypt. (shrink)

Common notions of comparative philosophy tend to be strongly configured by the East-West axis. This essay suggests ways of seeing Latin American liberation philosophy as a form of comparative philosophy and an important Latin American thinker as being relevant for East-West political philosophy. The essay focuses on the Peruvian activist and intellectual, José Mariátegui, who is widely regarded to have been a leading Marxist, liberatory, and decolonial figure in 20th century Latin America. Like many “Third World” (...) intellectuals of the interwar years, Mariátegui had an interest in decolonization struggles in Asia and wrote with some consistency on this subject and in ways that bear significantly upon key themes in his political theory. Since very little of this has received commentary, this essay begins a discussion of Mariátegui's decolonial experimentation with ideas about Asia, decolonization, and indigenous cultural forms, like those of the Incas and Confucians. After some preliminary discussion of Euro.. (shrink)

State violence against disabled people and Indigenous people as well as disabled Indigenous people has long been endemic in the US. Recent scholarship in philosophy of disability and disability studies rarely addresses the underlying issue that causes such state violence: settler-colonial conceptions of land. The aim of this article is to begin filling this gap in the literature. We detail settler colonial epistemologies and argue that the property relation underwrites operative concepts of accessibility dominant across disability theory. We show (...) how such concepts of accessibility are Lockean and thereby defined terms of the project of settler colonialism. We instead offer an Indigenized account of access, which we term deep access, that does not rely on the notion of Lockean property and that provides a coalitional path for Indigenous futures and disability justice. On our account, decolonization is and must be a deep access measure. (shrink)

This paper does three interrelated things. First, it argues that the universalism that forms the target of criticism and attack by decolonial theorists from the Global South is a debased form of universalism, what might be termed “ethnocentric universalism.” Second, equipped with a conceptual grip on ethnocentric universalism, it shows that the picture on which ethnocentric universalism confers some innocuous epistemic privilege to members of dominant groups is not quite accurate—ethnocentric universalism is incompatible with the epistemic flourishing of members of (...) dominant groups. And third, based on that claim, and the additional consideration that ethnocentric universalism equally undermines the epistemic flourishing of members of historically marginalized groups, it proposes an emancipatory framework for engaging with it. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta una propuesta biologizada del arte y la Filosofía Indígena desde el pueblo kichwa Saraguro, con el fin de discutir especialmente los fundamentos de los derechos de la naturaleza. Aunque, hay que resaltar que, el sitio de enunciación no es estrictamente el lugar descrito; porque la matriz de discusión es el Sumak Kawsay que involucra a Latinoamérica en general. La metodología que se usa es la transdisciplinar. El orden de desarrollo está enmarcado en una primera parte que desarrolla (...) a modo teórico la presencia del arte y la estética en el mundo indígena. Luego, se presenta un breve análisis de campo, específicamente una discusión con el artista kichwa Saraguro Luis Antonio Lozano. Se concluye que existe un contenido religioso, espiritual o Trascendental en el arte y la estética kichwa Saraguro, que puede aportar para el desarrollo del fundamento filosófico de los derechos de la naturaleza y el Sumak Kawsay. (shrink)

Este trabajo critica del derecho y la economía, bajo la corriente desarrollada por Franz Hinkelammert. Se utiliza el método transdisciplinario, atravesando la Filosofía indígena, la Teología de la Liberación y la Filosofía de la Liberación. En el análisis de casos se recurre a la justicia comunitaria del pueblo kichwa Saraguro. Se critica que tanto la teoría como la filosofía del derecho grecorromana está centrada en la propiedad privada, que justifica y protege al sistema económico capitalista. La propuesta está centrada en (...) el cuidado de la vida, es decir, se busca que la teoría y filosofía del derecho tome como centro de análisis al sujeto vivo: personas, plantas, animales, montañas, etc. Esto, a su vez, constituye la crítica de la economía política, porque la teoría económica también está centrada de una manera necrótica en la generación de utilidades; y, cuando el derecho asume la reproducción de la vida como centro de protección, la economía también se transforma. (shrink)

This paper will contend that we, in the first quarter of the 21st century, need an enhanced Age of Reason based on global epistemology. One reason to legitimize such a call for more intellectual enlightenment is the lack of required information on non-European philosophy in today’s reading lists at European and North American universities. Hence, the present-day Academy contributes to the scarcity of knowledge about the world’s global history of ideas outside one’s ethnocentric sphere. The question is whether we (...) genuinely want to rethink parts of the “Colonial Canon” and its main narratives of the past. This article argues that we, if we truly desire, might create “a better Enlightenment.” Firstly, by raising the general knowledge level concerning the philosophies of the Global South. Thus, this text includes examples from the global enlightenments in China, Mughal India, Arabic-writing countries, and Indigenous North America—all preceding and influencing the European Enlightenment. Secondly, we can rebuild by rediscovering the Enlightenment ideals within the historiography of the “hidden enlightenment” of Europe’s and North America’s past. In Part I, of two parts of this paper, a comparative methodology will be outlined. In addition, examples will be given from the history of ideas in India and China to argue that we need to study how these regions influenced the European history of ideas in the 16th and 17th centuries. Finally, towards the end of this text, a re-reading of the contributions from Egypt and Greece aspires to give a more global and complex context for Western Europe’s so-called Age of Reason. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the concept of culture industry developed by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno had a decisive influence on Jean Godefroy Bidima’s critique of black African modernity. Drawing on some of his writings, I seek to demon- strate how Bidima’s philosophical endeavor inherits the concept of culture industry and applies it to the modern context of black Africa, where it is transformed into the concept of colonial industry. In both cases, the same critical perspective is (...) at play, namely to formulate a broad critique of how cultural products (artworks in Horkheimer and Adorno, and philosophy in Bidima) are deprived of their substance to align with the mystification of the masses. The critique of the culture industry, which serves in Adorno as a fundamental criticism of the production of modern art and its decadence into mass production serves, revisited in Bidima, as a critique of the modern black African philo- sophical discourse. With the light provided by this connection, I propose a rereading of Bidima’s critique of Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, the latter being presented as a promoter of a “discourse of mastery” in black African modern philosophy. (shrink)

Pangunahing layunin ng papel na ito ang patunayan na mayroong konsepto ng sarili sa kamalayang Pilipino at gamitin ang pag-unawa rito sa pagtugon sa mga suliraning nakapalibot sa pilosopiyang Pilipino. Abala ang unang bahagi sa pagpapatibay ng pagkameron ng sarili at paglalahad ng depinisyon at mukha nito sa pamamagitan ng pagsagot sa mga sumusunod na katanungan: “Mayroon bang Sarili?” at “Ano ang Sarili?” Nakatungtong ang pagpapatibay at paglalahad na ito sa metalinggwistikal na pagsusuri ni Leonardo Mercado at pagmumuni sa meron (...) ni Roque Ferriols. Mapapansin sa paglalarawan sa sarili ang pagkamangha ni Mercado sa konsepto ng kasarinlan salungat sa kalayaan. Ang pagtuon ni Mercado sa kasarinlan ang tulay patungo sa pagsagot sa mga paratang sa pilosopiyang Pilipino. Sinasabi ni Noel Pariñas na imposible ang pagkakaroon ng pilosopiyang Pilipino habang naniniwala naman si Rolando Gripaldo na Kanluranin ito. Naging inspirasyon ng papel na ito ang “balangkas ng dekolonisasyon” ng peministang si Kelly Agra sa pagtugon sa dalawang suliraning inihayag ni Pariñas at Gripaldo. Kung kaya’t ipinakikita ng papel na ito na mahahalagang sangkap ang ating pag-unawa sa sarili at kasarinlan sa pagpapasimula ng dekolonisasyon at maging sa pagbibigay kaganapan mismo sa kasarinlan. Higit sa lahat, pinalilitaw ng buong diskursong ito ang hindi napapansing kahalagahan at implikasyon ng pagsasaliksik tungkol sa sarili; kalakip nito ang hangad na mas marami pang mga palaisip at mag-aaral ang magtangka na sumisid sa mga hindi kilalang mga sangkap ng pilosopiyang Pilipino habang nakikilahok sa proseso ng dekolonisasyon ng Pilipinong kaisipan. (shrink)

[English] This paper aims to discuss ten traditional and contemporary methodological paradigms in African philosophy, and demonstrates how they may apply to African environmental ethics research. The methods include: Ethno-philosophy, Sage Philosophy, Conversational Philosophy, Conceptual Mandelanization, Eco-Afrocentricism, Indigenous Language Analysis, Eco-Afro-feminism, Conceptual Decolonization, Storytelling Philosophy, and Cultural Adaptationism. The significance and limitations of the methodologies are highlighted. The concept and principles of African environmental ethics are analyzed and discussed to facilitate an understanding of the conceptual (...) frameworks that underpin the methodologies. In conclusion, the discourse demonstrates that environmental ethics research in Africa should be based on African philosophical methodologies so as to facilitate production of research that will be relevant in African contexts. -/- [Annang] N̄wed nduongo ami ayem ibene nwọ́d mme n̄kaan nne mfa usung unam nduongo ke vilọsọvi Afrịke , nne nte amọ ekeme iwam unam nduongo mbanga ido ukpeme nkan-nkuk ke Afrịke. Mme usung unam nduongo ami nsehe ade ami: vilọsọvi mben ufọk, vilọsọvi n̄kan ideen, vilọsọvi nneme, vilọsọvi Mandela, “Eco-Afrocentricism”, nduongore usem utiit ajid, vilọsọvi ibaan Afrịke, vilọsọvi mkpọk-nyak, vilọsọvi n̄ke, nne ukpep ido idung agwo. N̄wed ami abene awọd mme ikek nne nde mem idem usung nduongo ami. N̄wed ami atang mkpọ abanga se ido ukpeme nkan-nkuk ke Afrịke anwongo nne mme itai amọ, nne nte amọ ewam mbon nduongo ediọhọ nnanga ekpekakpa ibọrọ nduongo amọ. Ke n̄suuk ikọ, ukpep ami mkpọ abene awọd ate ke ekpena ekama usung nduongo vilọsọvi Afrịke enam nduongo ebanga ido ukpeme nkan-nkuk ke Afrịke man ibọrọ nduongo asanga akekem nne se adiiwam Afrịke. (shrink)

This paper interrogates the concept of sexuality within the purview of an African context by evaluating the position revolving around a conception of an African sexuality as opposed to a multivariated conceptualisation of sexualities within Africa. The paper raises critical questions as regards the concepts of an African sexuality ranging from; what constitutes the grounds for a conceptualisation of African sexuality? To what extent do the viability or non-viability of such ground answer the deep challenges as it relates to alternative (...) sexualities? How does the question of sexuality play a role in determining the ideological framework upon which intra-socio-cultural interrogations are properly built? To this end, the baseline argument of this paper, seeks to create a point of synergy between the concept of African sexuality and the dynamics of sexualities in Africa, by presenting a moderate call for the decolonization of African minds, most especially as it pertains to issues of sexuality, through an analysis of the diverse patterns within which sexuality has been conceived within the African setting. Furthermore, in reclaiming the sanctity of an African perspective, this paper argues for cultural conservatism as both a historic African phenomenon, and a more pragmatic approach towards attaining a mentally decolonized post-colonial Africa. (shrink)

[Selected African intellectuals' views on the impact of colonial powers on the development of a postcolonial African state]. This article provides an analysis of a Nigerian political thinker Claude Ake's and Sierra Leonian philosopher George M. Carew's views concerning the impact of colonial powers on the political and, to a lesser extent, economic development of a postcolonial African state. According to their opinions, colonial powers are responsible for introducing in their African colonies during the period of decolonization democratic institutions and (...) mechanisms that were inadequate for multiethnic societies. This did not contribute to the building of democratic, peaceful, and politically and economically stable states in Africa. Published in: Forum Politologiczne 13, „Stare” i „nowe” mocarstwa w Afryce, Arkadiusz Żukowski (ed.), Instytut Nauk Politycznych, Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski, Olsztyn 2012, s. 61-83. (shrink)

Post-colonial African society is undeniably experiencing serious development problems. Analyses of the causes and the way out have been suggested by many African scholars. For instance, Kwame Nkrumah (1974) popularly attributes the causes to colonialism and suggests a cultural revivalist solution that will revive the African cultural values of the past. But, given that these problems seem endemic, a cultural anti-revivalist like Moses Oke (2006) rejected the revivalist analysis as an over-elaboration of the effects of colonialism and the appeal to (...) a cultural past as counter-productive. This essay, however, argues that as long as Africa is not yet decolonized strictly, colonialism cannot be totally exonerated as a cause of African problems. To African problems, there is a need for total decolonization, and the tools for the total decolonization are rejected as African historical ideals on nonindividualistic life. Hence, the objectives of this study involve unearthing the real nature of “development”, showing the relationship between African development problems and colonialism in examining the revivalist and anti-revivalist views to the problems and proffering a solution, as it adopts the methods of philosophical argumentation and conceptual analysis to investigate primary and secondary data. (shrink)

A recent (2020) special issue in Critical Philosophy of Race dedicated to Maria Lugones illustrates and thematizes the continuing challenge of (re)constructing coalitions among Latina and Black feminists and their allies. As one proposed solution to this challenge, in their guest editors’ introduction to that special issue, Emma Velez and Nancy Tuana suggest an interpretive “dancing with” Lugones. Drawing on my own “dancing-with” interpretive method (which significantly predates that special issue), in the present article I choreograph an interpretive duet (...) between Lugones and Saidiya Hartman. My first section retraces Lugones’ essay on queering tango as a decolonizing practice, and how the latter echoes Marta Savigliano’s Tango and the Political Economy of Passion. My second section then utilizes Lugones’ queering of tango as a lens for interpreting her magnum opus, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes, emphasizing the dance-resonance of its central concepts, including “playfulness” reinterpreted as a “dance-fulness” that empowers the peregrina’s “world-traveling.” My third section identifies this dancing peregrina’s world-traveling with the wayward young Black female chorus member, or “chorine,” at the center of Saidiya Hartman’s tour de force history, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. And my conclusion names chorines of color in Afro-Latin social dance communities today as exemplary agents for empowering coalitions among Latina and Black feminists and allies. (shrink)

This chapter examines the three projects that constitute contemporary African epistemology and suggests various ways in which they can be put on a firmer footing, and by so doing advance the epistemic goal of the discipline. These three projects include ethno-epistemology, analytic African epistemology and what one might call ameliorative African epistemology. Ethno-epistemology is the study of the phenomenon of knowledge from the perspective of particular African communities as revealed in their cultural heritage, proverbs, folklores, traditions, and practices. Analytic African (...) epistemology involves the philosophical study of concepts such as ‘knowledge,’ ‘justification,’ ‘belief’ and ‘truth’ from the African perspective using the methods of analysis, criticism, arguments, ordinary language philosophy, and so on. And finally, ameliorative African epistemology addresses the predicament of African knowledge systems and voices in the global knowledge and credibility economy within the broader context of the problem of epistemic injustice suffered by historically marginalized groups. (shrink)

If, as asserted by the French collective Tiqqun, we are essentially living in a global colony, where the 1% control the 99%, then it follows that the revolutionary struggle should strategically reorient itself as guerrilla warfare. The agents of this war, Tiqqun characterize, in part, by drawing on ethnologists Pierre de Clastres and Ernesto de Martino, specifically their figures of the Indigenous American warrior and the Southern Italian sorcerer, respectively. Hybridizing these two figures into that of the “warrior-mage,” the present (...) article posits an actionable exemplar thereof in players of the massively popular trading and online card game, Magic: The Gathering (MTG). More specifically, I propose a strategic mapping of MTG’s five colors of magic onto the five divisions of a coalition against late capitalist Empire, which I call the “Warrior-Mage Guild,” including liberation clerics, animal rights activists, propagandists, anti-psychiatrists, hackers, saboteurs, and those who threaten decolonizing force contra Empire. (shrink)

In this chapter we focus on the debate over publicly-maintained racist monuments as it manifests in the mid-2010s Anglosphere, primarily in the US (chiefly regarding the over 700 monuments devoted to the Confederacy), but to some degree also in Britain and Commonwealth countries, especially South Africa (chiefly regarding monuments devoted to figures and events associated with colonialism and apartheid). After pointing to some representative examples of racist monuments, we discuss ways a monument can be thought racist, and neutrally categorize removalist (...) and preservationist arguments heard in the monument debate. We suggest that both extremist and moderate removalist goals are likely to be self-defeating, and that when concerns of civic sustainability are put on moral par with those of fairness and justice, something like a Mandela-era preservationist policy is best: one which removes the most offensive of the minor racist monuments, but which focuses on closing the monumentary gap between peoples and reframing existing racist monuments. (shrink)

This study resumes the discussion undertaken by Ulpiano Bezerra de Menezes, historian, archaeologist and museologist at the University of São Paulo, the first to “decolonize the history of Art in the Americas”. At the same time, this resumption is in charge of paying homage to this researcher who found the mistakes and gaps left by European scholars who were at the service of Eurocentric colonialism and its Eurocentric culture. However, the central objective of this text is to contribute to this (...) process of decolonization, expanding the discussion that began in the 1980s. To this end, here, the chapter that opens the work História geral da arte no Brasil, edited by Walter Zanini, whose title is Art in the pre-colonial period, and which completes decades. (shrink)

This article argues for epistemic decolonization by developing a relational model of knowledge, which we locate within indigenous knowledges. We live in a time of ongoing global, epistemic coloniality, embedded in and shaped by colonial ideas and practices. Epistemological decolonization requires taking nondominant knowledges and their epistemes seriously to open up the possibility of interrogating and dismantling the hegemony of the Western knowledge tradition. We here ask two related questions: What are the decolonial affordances of indigenous knowledges? And how do (...) these compare to other contemporary critiques of epistemic coloniality, specifically those mounted by posthumanism? In answer, we develop three definitional senses of relational with reference to indigenous knowledges. First, we define indigenous knowledges in relation to Western knowledge, with which they share a dialectical origin at the moment of colonial contact. Second, indigenous knowledges are relational in their ontological and axiological orientations. Third, relationality in indigenous knowledge suggests a trialectic space, rather than a dialectic space. We argue for the necessity of an anticolonial framework, which assigns priority to indigenous people’s perceptions and ways of knowing for theorizing recurring colonial relations and their (imperialistic) manifestations in producing and reproducing knowledge. (shrink)

In recent years, the international commons movement has increasingly joined forces with the global movement of municipalities, putting common ideas on the political agenda in many western countries. Commons have been widely discussed in literature. Broadly understood, commons refers to the practices for collective development, ownership, management, and fair access to resources and artifacts (social, cultural, economic, political, environmental, and technological). However, the concept remains vague, complex, and unclear, especially when it comes to different contexts in which new definitions are (...) needed to better understand the societal and cultural dimensions of urban commons. Decolonizing the notion of urban commons brings into visibility the unseen cultures, infrastructural systems, and communities showing where de-growth and separation can take place. Therefore, this analysis can provide new insights, opportunities, and the need for new theoretical, methodological, and shared approaches. There is a gap in transnational research and cultural understanding within the field of urban commons. This research opens new lines of inquiry relating to the definitions of commons in non-European countries. This may include longitudinal research on the decolonization and potential fragmenting of the commons and in particular 'commoning' mindset, more detailed empirical evidence of the cultural and communal concepts, and how these cultural diversities and new interpretations can be implemented in collaborative governance in a wider variety of non-western contexts. By challenging existing frameworks, this study facilitates the emergence of differentiated, dynamic, and non-linear forms of social and political subjectivity within various sociospatial domains. (shrink)

Should we believe our controversial philosophical views? Recently, several authors have argued from broadly conciliationist premises that we should not. If they are right, we philosophers face a dilemma: If we believe our views, we are irrational. If we do not, we are not sincere in holding them. This paper offers a way out, proposing an attitude we can rationally take toward our views that can support sincerity of the appropriate sort. We should arrive at our views via a certain (...) sort of ‘insulated’ reasoning – that is, reasoning that involves setting aside certain higher-order worries, such as those provided by disagreement – when we investigate philosophical questions. (shrink)

Decolonization, a word that belongs majorly to the 1960’s and perhaps one of the most important events in the twentieth century is a historical process that can only become comprehensible in the exact measure that the movement which gives it historical form or content is understood. When it became apparent that the European-centered world was no longer tenable, because of the unsettling of all empires during the Second World War, anti-colonial nationalism surged after 1945. Drawing from the lessons in mass (...) politicization and mass mobilization of the 1920s and 1930s, anti-colonial nationalists set about dismantling the European colonial order and creating a free world of their own. (shrink)

Law is ‘sovereign’, it has been said. Since the poet Pindar expressed this fulminating thought in the 6th century B.C., the whole western tradition, from Aristotle to Cicero, from Heidegger to Schmitt, hasn’t stopped raising questions about the ambivalent relationship connecting law, strength and violence...

There are two dominant approaches towards understanding medieval Muslim philosophy: Greek ancestry approach and religiopolitical context approach. In the Greek ancestry approach, medieval Muslim philosophy is interpreted in terms of its relation to classical Greek philosophy, particularly to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. The religiopolitical context approach, however, views a thorough understanding of the religious and political situation of that time as the key to the proper understanding of medieval Muslim philosophy. Notwithstanding the immense (...) significance of the two approaches for understanding medieval Muslim philosophy, the question on the reason behind medieval Muslim philosophers’ preference for Plato’s Republic over Aristotle’s Politics in political philosophy is not accurately answered. This preference is usually attributed either to the availability or unavailability of the text or to the suitability or unsuitability of the text for Islamic theological views. However, this article shows that neither the availability or unavailability of text nor its suitability or unsuitability for Islamic religious and theological views can appropriately explain medieval Muslim philosophers’ preference for Plato’s Republic over Aristotle’s Politics in their political thought. This article proposes that the key to understand this preference lies in understanding the transmission of Greek philosophy to medieval Muslim philosophers. Contribution: This study highlights the significance of the thorough understanding of the transmission of Greek philosophy to medieval Muslim world as one of the important approaches towards proper understanding of medieval Muslim philosophy, particularly medieval Muslim political philosophy. (shrink)

This paper advances the view that the history of philosophy is both a kind of history and a kind of philosophy. Through a discussion of some examples from epistemology, metaphysics, and the historiography of philosophy, it explores the benefit to philosophy of a deep and broad engagement with its history. It comes to the conclusion that doing history of philosophy is a way to think outside the box of the current philosophical orthodoxies. Somewhat paradoxically, far (...) from imprisoning its students in outdated and crystallized views, the history of philosophy trains the mind to think differently and alternatively about the fundamental problems of philosophy. It keeps us alert to the fact that latest is not always best, and that a genuinely new perspective often means embracing and developing an old insight. The upshot is that the study of the history of philosophy has an innovative and subversive potential, and that philosophy has a great deal to gain from a long, broad, and deep conversation with its history. (shrink)

This volume offers a collection of in-depth explorations of pragmatism as a framework for discussions in philosophy of science and metaphysics. Each chapter involves explicit reflection on what it means to be pragmatist, and how to use pragmatism as a guiding framework in addressing topics such as realism, unification, fundamentality, truth, laws, reduction, and more. -/- .

The central thesis of this book is that we need to reform philosophy and join it to science to recreate a modern version of natural philosophy; we need to do this in the interests of rigour, intellectual honesty, and so that science may serve the best interests of humanity. Modern science began as natural philosophy. In the time of Newton, what we call science and philosophy today – the disparate endeavours – formed one mutually interacting, integrated (...) endeavour of natural philosophy: to improve our knowledge and understanding of the universe, and to improve our understanding of ourselves as a part of it. Profound discoveries were made, indeed one should say unprecedented discoveries. It was a time of quite astonishing intellectual excitement and achievement. And then natural philosophy died. It split into science on the one hand, and philosophy on the other. This happened during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the split is now built into our intellectual landscape. But the two fragments, science and philosophy, are defective shadows of the glorious unified endeavour of natural philosophy. Rigour, sheer intellectual good sense and decisive argument demand that we put the two together again, and rediscover the immense merits of the integrated enterprise of natural philosophy. This requires an intellectual revolution, with dramatic implications for how we understand our world, how we understand and do science, and how we understand and do philosophy. There are dramatic implications, too, for education. And it does not stop there. For, as I show in the final chapter, resurrected natural philosophy has dramatic, indeed revolutionary methodological implications for social science and the humanities, indeed for the whole academic enterprise. It means academic inquiry needs to be reorganized so that it comes to take, as its basic task, to seek and promote wisdom by rational means, wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge, technological know-how and understanding, but much else besides. The outcome is institutions of learning rationally designed and devoted to helping us tackle our immense global problems in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, thus helping us make progress towards a good world – or at least as good a world as possible. (shrink)

In the mid-seventeenth century a movement of self-styled experimental philosophers emerged in Britain. Originating in the discipline of natural philosophy amongst Fellows of the fledgling Royal Society of London, it soon spread to medicine and by the eighteenth century had impacted moral and political philosophy and even aesthetics. Early modern experimental philosophers gave epistemic priority to observation and experiment over theorising and speculation. They decried the use of hypotheses and system-building without recourse to experiment and, in some quarters, (...) developed a philosophy of experiment. The movement spread to the Netherlands and France in the early eighteenth century and later impacted Germany. Its important role in early modern philosophy was subsequently eclipsed by the widespread adoption of the Kantian historiography of modern philosophy, which emphasised the distinction between rationalism and empiricism and had no place for the historical phenomenon of early modern experimental philosophy. The re-emergence of interest in early modern experimental philosophy roughly coincided with the development of contemporary x-phi and there are some important similarities between the two. (shrink)