African legal theory and contemporary problems

Oche Onazi's edited volume is certainly refreshing. Although written in our times, it is perhaps by avoiding what are often called the post-colonial and post-structural approaches to scholarship that Onazi and the contributors to this collection have been able to develop it in such a clear manner. It is around Homi Bhabha's theoretical construct that the book unfolds, to give ontological priority to the phenomenon of cultural difference between the colonizers and the colonized. Rather than bifurcate these categories, however, Onazi and the other contributors articulate such difference in ‘in-between’ places that produce a ‘hybridization of identities’, while keeping a simpler actor-centred approach. The text is divided into three porous parts: Law, Rights, and Society. The sections on Law (with five chapters) and Rights (with four chapters) focus on the problem of alterity and global knowledge asymmetries. The contributors make daring yet convincing attempts to historicize knowledge and demonstrate its contextual unfolding. This is accompanied by efforts to ‘reclaim[ing] [the] authenticity of African knowledge systems’ as seen in Dan Kuwali's Chapter 3, ‘Decoding Afrocentrism: decolonizing legal theory’, and Basil Ugochukwu's Chapter 10, ‘Unpacking the universal: African human rights philosophy in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart’. At the centre of these two sections is the question: ‘What is the nature of human rights and legal practice in contemporary Africa?’ I find this question and the manner of its engagement very attractive as it is premised on the notion of human agency that appreciates the capacity of individual actor(s) to process social experiences through various interpretations and strategies. This theme, which I prefer to call the social life of human rights, runs through chapters by Mark Toufayan, Dominic Burbidge, Olufemi Taiwo, Thaddeus Metz, and Oche Onazi. Informed by theorists of hybridity and the varied discourse of creolization – such as that espoused by Bhabha – these chapters are interested in the negotiation and accommodation that takes place in the interplay between African values, the Western modernity of law, and the human rights project.

Agency (philosophy) · Alterity · Colonialism · Construct (python library) · Epistemology · Human rights · Phenomenon · Political science · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Land Rights and Reforms · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · Philosophy

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