The second run of the SOAS conference on African Philosophy, Asixoxe – Let’s Talk!, organized by ... more The second run of the SOAS conference on African Philosophy, Asixoxe – Let’s Talk!, organized by Benedetta Lanfranchi and Alena Rettová, took place in London on the 1st and 2nd May 2015. As Alena Rettová, Associate Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures of Africa and Senior Lecturer in Swahili Literature and Culture, emphasized in her short opening speech, Asixoxe is primarily a student conference, but this should not be taken to imply a lower academic level. On the contrary, for people at such early stages of their academic development, learning is a truly existential encounter: students are confronted with new, and often radically different theorizations of the world which shatter their habitual outlooks. This is doubly true in SOAS, whose environment adds a markedly intercultural dimension to these intellectual challenges. In Alena Rettová’s words, “grappling with the diverse perspectives on how the world is conceptualized across disciplines and across cultures is a hum...
Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 2021
This article traces the developments of African philosophy since 1994, a year marked by two event... more This article traces the developments of African philosophy since 1994, a year marked by two events that profoundly impacted Africa: the fall of apartheid and the Rwandan genocide. The article projects a fundamental tension into the history of recent African philosophy: between optimism and idealism, showing in the development of normative concepts and a new philosophical vocabulary for Africa – a “conceptual mandelanization” (Edet 2015: 218), on the one hand, and a critical realism ensuing from the experience of African “simple, that is, flawed, humanity” (Nganang: 2007: 30), on the other. The article identifies prominent trends in African philosophy since 1994, including Ubuntu, the Calabar School of Philosophy, Afrikology, the Ateliers de la pensée, Francophone histories of African philosophy, and Lusophone political and cultural philosophy.
This article traces the history of the Swahili novel in its development from realism to experimen... more This article traces the history of the Swahili novel in its development from realism to experimental prose and follows the experimental phase back to realism in the recent works of some former literary experimenters. This trend is called and defined here as “neo-realism.” The motivation for this return to realism is found in the domains of aesthetics, didacticism, reception of literature, politics and economy, and philosophy. The primacy of aesthetic and philosophical reasons motivating the move to “neo-realism” is questioned and emphasis is placed on the political and social driving forces behind Swahili “neo-realist” writing. While postcolonial authors insist on the empowerment of the periphery, the affirmation of alterity, and economic and social development, the experimental novel appears to work against these aims through its glorification of chaos, of pathological states of mind, dissolving values, collapsing causality, undermining temporal and spatial orientation, disrupting cognitive continuity and clarity, and subverting language. The complexity of the experimental novel is perceived as an obstacle to an implementation of literature’s declared political and social agendas, such as criticism of corruption, women empowerment, education about medical issues, and ecology.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2018
Tanzanian novelist and philosopher Euphrase Kezilahabi strives to “dismantle the resemblance of l... more Tanzanian novelist and philosopher Euphrase Kezilahabi strives to “dismantle the resemblance of language to the world” (1985: 216) through challenging the fundamental philosophical dichotomy of subject and object. The result of this dismantling will be a new “language whose foundation is Being” (Kezilahabi 1991: 69; lugha ambayo msingi wake ni kuwako). This is an expression of a new relationship between humanity and Being built on a holistic epistemology of experience and embodiment. Through “kuwako”, Kezilahabi expresses in Swahili the Heideggerian concept of Sein (Being). His adherence to Heidegger, however, puts him at risk of compromising the very foundation of his own philosophy: his continued critique of essentialism. This article argues that Kezilahabi salvages his concept of “kuwako” from these essentialist pitfalls precisely through his declared “destructive rather than deconstructive stand vis-à-vis the Western philosophy of value and representation” (Kezilahabi 1985: 4). ...
A central discussion in African Philosophy concerns the “African concept of time,” famously theor... more A central discussion in African Philosophy concerns the “African concept of time,” famously theorized by John S. Mbiti. Mbiti makes a distinction between a circular and a linear concept of time, associating the former with Africa and the latter with the West. Critical of such essentialist binaries, this article develops a nuanced understanding of the concepts of time and history expressed in two categories of novels in three African languages: Ujamaa novels in Swahili (Tanzania) and Chimurenga/Umvukela novels in Shona and Ndebele (Zimbabwe). While Ujamaa novels often operate on a circular concept of time, the Zimbabwean novels are based on a view of time as linear progress. The article argues that these concepts of time are determined by the genre conventions of the novel and the tale and that the adoption and hybridization of these genres has been decisively impacted by the state ideologies in Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
Le texte s’interesse a la relation entre l’existentialisme, en tant que mouvement philosophique e... more Le texte s’interesse a la relation entre l’existentialisme, en tant que mouvement philosophique et litteraire, et la litterature swahili. En dehors de quelques romans programmatiquement existentialistes, beaucoup de textes litteraires peuvent etre consideres comme implicitement existentialistes, parce qu’ils developpent une comprehension de l’etre humain a partir de l’experience plutot que sur la base des qualites exterieures ou objectives. L’existentialisme peut egalement servir a interroger certains concepts, comme par exemple celui d’authenticite. De nombreux textes litteraires africains ont servi de support a une recherche sur une « essence africaine » dont les caracteristiques stables pourraient etre theoriquement elaborees, fixees et identifiees a travers cette litterature. Le present article montre comment une critique litteraire axee sur la pensee existentialiste disqualifie de telles vues de l’« authenticite » en exposant le caractere proteen et insaisissable de cette derniere.
... Hadebe's definition of isintu is almost identical to Ncube's definition of ... more ... Hadebe's definition of isintu is almost identical to Ncube's definition of imikhuba: Isintu yindlela abantu abaqhuba ngayo isiko labo (Isintu is the way in ... photograph of him, but it was hushed up by the head of the British South Africa Company in Blantyre, Major Forbes, who was ...
The second run of the SOAS conference on African Philosophy, Asixoxe – Let’s Talk!, organized by ... more The second run of the SOAS conference on African Philosophy, Asixoxe – Let’s Talk!, organized by Benedetta Lanfranchi and Alena Rettová, took place in London on the 1st and 2nd May 2015. As Alena Rettová, Associate Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures of Africa and Senior Lecturer in Swahili Literature and Culture, emphasized in her short opening speech, Asixoxe is primarily a student conference, but this should not be taken to imply a lower academic level. On the contrary, for people at such early stages of their academic development, learning is a truly existential encounter: students are confronted with new, and often radically different theorizations of the world which shatter their habitual outlooks. This is doubly true in SOAS, whose environment adds a markedly intercultural dimension to these intellectual challenges. In Alena Rettová’s words, “grappling with the diverse perspectives on how the world is conceptualized across disciplines and across cultures is a hum...
Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 2021
This article traces the developments of African philosophy since 1994, a year marked by two event... more This article traces the developments of African philosophy since 1994, a year marked by two events that profoundly impacted Africa: the fall of apartheid and the Rwandan genocide. The article projects a fundamental tension into the history of recent African philosophy: between optimism and idealism, showing in the development of normative concepts and a new philosophical vocabulary for Africa – a “conceptual mandelanization” (Edet 2015: 218), on the one hand, and a critical realism ensuing from the experience of African “simple, that is, flawed, humanity” (Nganang: 2007: 30), on the other. The article identifies prominent trends in African philosophy since 1994, including Ubuntu, the Calabar School of Philosophy, Afrikology, the Ateliers de la pensée, Francophone histories of African philosophy, and Lusophone political and cultural philosophy.
This article traces the history of the Swahili novel in its development from realism to experimen... more This article traces the history of the Swahili novel in its development from realism to experimental prose and follows the experimental phase back to realism in the recent works of some former literary experimenters. This trend is called and defined here as “neo-realism.” The motivation for this return to realism is found in the domains of aesthetics, didacticism, reception of literature, politics and economy, and philosophy. The primacy of aesthetic and philosophical reasons motivating the move to “neo-realism” is questioned and emphasis is placed on the political and social driving forces behind Swahili “neo-realist” writing. While postcolonial authors insist on the empowerment of the periphery, the affirmation of alterity, and economic and social development, the experimental novel appears to work against these aims through its glorification of chaos, of pathological states of mind, dissolving values, collapsing causality, undermining temporal and spatial orientation, disrupting cognitive continuity and clarity, and subverting language. The complexity of the experimental novel is perceived as an obstacle to an implementation of literature’s declared political and social agendas, such as criticism of corruption, women empowerment, education about medical issues, and ecology.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2018
Tanzanian novelist and philosopher Euphrase Kezilahabi strives to “dismantle the resemblance of l... more Tanzanian novelist and philosopher Euphrase Kezilahabi strives to “dismantle the resemblance of language to the world” (1985: 216) through challenging the fundamental philosophical dichotomy of subject and object. The result of this dismantling will be a new “language whose foundation is Being” (Kezilahabi 1991: 69; lugha ambayo msingi wake ni kuwako). This is an expression of a new relationship between humanity and Being built on a holistic epistemology of experience and embodiment. Through “kuwako”, Kezilahabi expresses in Swahili the Heideggerian concept of Sein (Being). His adherence to Heidegger, however, puts him at risk of compromising the very foundation of his own philosophy: his continued critique of essentialism. This article argues that Kezilahabi salvages his concept of “kuwako” from these essentialist pitfalls precisely through his declared “destructive rather than deconstructive stand vis-à-vis the Western philosophy of value and representation” (Kezilahabi 1985: 4). ...
A central discussion in African Philosophy concerns the “African concept of time,” famously theor... more A central discussion in African Philosophy concerns the “African concept of time,” famously theorized by John S. Mbiti. Mbiti makes a distinction between a circular and a linear concept of time, associating the former with Africa and the latter with the West. Critical of such essentialist binaries, this article develops a nuanced understanding of the concepts of time and history expressed in two categories of novels in three African languages: Ujamaa novels in Swahili (Tanzania) and Chimurenga/Umvukela novels in Shona and Ndebele (Zimbabwe). While Ujamaa novels often operate on a circular concept of time, the Zimbabwean novels are based on a view of time as linear progress. The article argues that these concepts of time are determined by the genre conventions of the novel and the tale and that the adoption and hybridization of these genres has been decisively impacted by the state ideologies in Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
Le texte s’interesse a la relation entre l’existentialisme, en tant que mouvement philosophique e... more Le texte s’interesse a la relation entre l’existentialisme, en tant que mouvement philosophique et litteraire, et la litterature swahili. En dehors de quelques romans programmatiquement existentialistes, beaucoup de textes litteraires peuvent etre consideres comme implicitement existentialistes, parce qu’ils developpent une comprehension de l’etre humain a partir de l’experience plutot que sur la base des qualites exterieures ou objectives. L’existentialisme peut egalement servir a interroger certains concepts, comme par exemple celui d’authenticite. De nombreux textes litteraires africains ont servi de support a une recherche sur une « essence africaine » dont les caracteristiques stables pourraient etre theoriquement elaborees, fixees et identifiees a travers cette litterature. Le present article montre comment une critique litteraire axee sur la pensee existentialiste disqualifie de telles vues de l’« authenticite » en exposant le caractere proteen et insaisissable de cette derniere.
... Hadebe's definition of isintu is almost identical to Ncube's definition of ... more ... Hadebe's definition of isintu is almost identical to Ncube's definition of imikhuba: Isintu yindlela abantu abaqhuba ngayo isiko labo (Isintu is the way in ... photograph of him, but it was hushed up by the head of the British South Africa Company in Blantyre, Major Forbes, who was ...
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