African Intellectuals and Decolonization

Decolonization and the Practice of Philosophy

Decolonization and the Practice of Philosophy Tsenay Serequeberhan When the axe came into the forest, the trees said: the handle is one of us. —Turkish proverb What has been, to date, the character of African decolonization, and how is it related to the practice of philosophy? In engaging this double question what I hope to do, at least in outline, is to look at the actuality of decolonization as it has unfolded thus far, and examine the way in which philosophy—the metaphysical tradition of the West— has served as a theoretic buttress for colonialism. I will also look at how the contemporary practice of African philosophy can serve as a reflective supplement necessary for the consummation of Africa’s ongoing decolonization, of which it is a rather late theoretic offshoot.1 In this double effort, the focus will be on exploring the character and substance of decolonization and the responsibility this lived worldhistorical situation and process imposes on us—African intellectuals. - I But first let us begin by looking at philosophy’s own self-understanding. In his book Vocazione e responsabilità del filosofo, Gianni Vattimo points out that philosophical arguments are discourses aimed at “persuasion ” and situated in the shared views of “a collectivity.”2 And so, he observes: “It becomes clear that it essentially concerns proposals for interpreting our common situation according to a certain line and starting from shared presuppositions.”3 In such “proposals” and 138 / Decolonization and the Practice of Philosophy deliberations we try to persuade one another by presenting arguments and citing authors we value and our counterparts in dialogue also value and appreciate. The authors we cite, furthermore, are not concerned with demonstrating that such and so is or is not the case, based on indisputable facts,4 but are themselves engaged in persuading one another and searching for a shared interpretation of a “common situation,”5 which has become—in view of lived exigencies and concerns—problematic and worthy of questioning. Our persuasiveness is therefore not merely a rhetorical ploy directed at others, but a critical and reflective exploration of the situation at hand directed not only, or primarily, at others, but more importantly, at ourselves.6 To validate our respective interpretations of the “common situation ,” we thus cite, to one another, interpreters and interpretations in whose esteem or appreciation we agree. From this it follows that the truth we try to maintain, and the way in which we maintain it, is along the lines of arguing for a stance, or a perspective, in view of certain accepted reference points, in terms of which we can then pose the critical question: “How can you still say this?”7 In other words, asks Vattimo, “is it not perhaps true that the experience procured for you by a reading of Nietzsche (or of Kant, or of Hegel) impedes you from saying things that perhaps at one time you might have said and sustained?”8 The question then is: Don’t the insights secured in reading such and similar thinkers compel us to reconsider, or confirm, our thus-far-held prejudices and/or presuppositions? The affirmative response to this rhetorical question takes for granted accord in our deeds and words,9 and assumes rigor and consistency as indispensable for the practice of philosophy: a kind of reflection that incessantly assesses and reassesses itself, in light of “all that which happens in human reality.”10 Otherwise, the “How can you still say this?” of philosophy, as Socrates patiently explains to Crito, would be “in truth play and nonsense.”11 In all of this, our efforts are aimed at validating, and/or discarding, our prejudices or “shared presuppositions ,” and calibrating, accordingly, the line of sight that they make possible. Philosophy is therefore focused on sifting and exploring our presuppositions and prejudgments—the prejudices we live by12 —in view of the shared possibilities of our present. Consequently, it stands in very close proximity to history; it is the reflectively critical self-validation of its lived time—its historicity.13 Conversely, the historicity in which a philosophic discourse finds itself furnishes the problems of concern and concretely establishes the contextual back- Tsenay Serequeberhan / 139 ground within and out of which a specific philosophic discourse foregrounds its interpretations.14 Now, this self-understanding of philosophy is not a view that is peculiar , or idiosyncratic, to Vattimo. It is the basic self-comprehension of the practice of philosophy. As Hegel...