Some Observations about Philosophy, Postmodernism and Art in Contemporary African Studies

Bibliographic Data

ID2596033
AuthorsBarry Hallen (corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume38
Issue1
Pages69
Publication date1995-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrican Studies Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-0206 • E-ISSN: 1555-2462
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/525474
OpenAlexW2010133844
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited17

Within African studies, one of the few generalizations that may be hazarded-without qualification-is that no area has been more deliberately, consistently, indeed agonizingly self-critical than African philosophy. Western academic philosophy is supposedly well-known for identifying, evaluating and defending the presuppositions upon which it grounds itself. With respect to African philosophy, however, a clear consensus has yet to be reached-after more than twenty years of intensive discussion-about what its presuppositions should be, much less whether they are plausible. The wrangling has been incessant and, at some points, counter-productive.What is meant by presuppositions? Let us take, as one example, the cultural data-base in Africa from which such philosophy might be expected to arise, or with reference to which it might orient itself. There is still serious controversy within the ranks of African philosophers over the intellectual status, and therefore philosophical potential, of that amorphous corpus of oral literature: divination verses, lyrics, myths, maxims, tales, proverbs-indeed virtually everything in traditional African culture that can be classified as verbalized knowledge or belief-that came to be characterized as African Traditional Thought. From the epistemological standpoint of philosophy in Africa, if ever there has been an unknown known, its perimeters are defined by this corpus. Initially most Anglophone African philosophers were predisposed (by their own overseas university training) to treat things that had already been labelled proverbs and myths-literature generally2 -as un-reasoned, non-critical raw data better fit for the maws of religious studies or cultural anthropology than philosophy. A supposedly scientific ideology of modernization dictated that knowledge that was in any sense non-critical and therefore unreasoned had to be rigorously expunged from academia before anything that would receive credibility as African philosophy could emerge (Bodunrin 1981). At the other extreme were those rebels who rejected

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Postmodernism · Sociology · African cultural and philosophical studies · African history and culture studies · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

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