Fanon (1925-1961) was born in the French West Indies and studied in France before moving to Algeria to join the independence struggle. In this text, originally published in French in 1952, he addresses the Black man’s condition, and more particularly his subjectivity and experience in the colonial context of the French West Indies and of France in general, also drawing parallel with North Africa and Indochina. Black Skin, White Masks is both a minute and complex description of the violence of colonization and a sketch of a liberation from its effects. A psychiatrist by training, Fanon investigates the psychological impact of both racism and colonization, with a strong focus on inter-subjective relations, including the intersection of race and gender relations. He uses a large variety of resources: philosophy (a critical reading of Sartre, an elaboration of Hegel’s slave-master dialectic, Leiris, Marcel, and contemporary linguistics) ; Marxism (materialism and alienation); psychiatry and psychoanalysis; the literary Négritude movement (Black Francophones writers who, starting in the 1930s, wrote about lived experience of blackness, displacement and colonialism). Its reception, though belated, has nevertheless made it one of the seminal works of postcolonial theory.
African Women, Illogicality and Epistemic Tyranny
The book argues that women’s perspectives and gender issues must be mainstreamed across African philosophy in order for the discipline to truly represent the thoughts of Africans across the continent.
African philosophy as an academic discipline emerged as a direct challenge to Western and Eurocentric hegemonies. It sought to actualize the project of decolonization and to contribute African perspectives to global discourses. There has, however, been a dominance of male perspectives in this field of human knowledge. This book argues that African philosophy cannot claim to have liberated people of African descent from marginalization until the androcentric nature of African philosophy is addressed. Key concepts such as Ujamaa, Negritude, Ubuntu, Consciencism, and African Socialism are explored as they relate to African women’s lives or as models of inclusion or exclusion from politics. In addition to offering a feminist critique of African philosophy, the book also discusses topics that have been consistently overlooked in African philosophy. These topics include sex, sexuality, rape, motherhood, prostitution, and the low participation of women in politics.
By highlighting the work of women feminist scholars such as Oyeronke Oyewumi, Nkiru Nzegwu, Ifi Amadiume, Amina Mama, and Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, the book engages with African philosophy from an African feminist viewpoint. This book will be an essential resource for students and researchers of African philosophy and gender studies.
African Philosophy and the Shackles of Androcentrism
The book argues that women’s perspectives and gender issues must be mainstreamed across African philosophy in order for the discipline to truly represent the thoughts of Africans across the continent.
African philosophy as an academic discipline emerged as a direct challenge to Western and Eurocentric hegemonies. It sought to actualize the project of decolonization and to contribute African perspectives to global discourses. There has, however, been a dominance of male perspectives in this field of human knowledge. This book argues that African philosophy cannot claim to have liberated people of African descent from marginalization until the androcentric nature of African philosophy is addressed. Key concepts such as Ujamaa, Negritude, Ubuntu, Consciencism, and African Socialism are explored as they relate to African women’s lives or as models of inclusion or exclusion from politics. In addition to offering a feminist critique of African philosophy, the book also discusses topics that have been consistently overlooked in African philosophy. These topics include sex, sexuality, rape, motherhood, prostitution, and the low participation of women in politics.
By highlighting the work of women feminist scholars such as Oyeronke Oyewumi, Nkiru Nzegwu, Ifi Amadiume, Amina Mama, and Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, the book engages with African philosophy from an African feminist viewpoint. This book will be an essential resource for students and researchers of African philosophy and gender studies.
Philosophy and Oral Tradition
From: Sophie Oluwole: Celebrating the Radical Spirit of African Philosophy, By Tunji Olaopa
In Philosophy and Oral Tradition (1997), Sophie Oluwole urges us to return to Africa’s oral tradition as the source of excavating an authentic foundation of Africa’s intellectual culture which the West has tried so hard to undermine and destroy. One argument that underlies the relevance of Africa’s oral tradition is that the traditional and cultural practices of the past must have been guided by some form of logic and rational principles which not only predate the Western scientific canon, but which cannot also be subsumed totally under it.
Visualizing the Body: Western Theories and African Subjects
The “woman question,” this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western construction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures.
Author Oyeronke Oyewumi reveals an ideology of biological determinism at the heart of Western social categories-the idea that biology provides the rationale for organizing the social world. And yet, she writes, the concept of “woman,” central to this ideology and to Western gender discourses, simply did not exist in Yorubaland, where the body was not the basis of social roles.
Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed and that the subordination of women is universal. The Invention of Women demonstrates, to the contrary, that gender was not constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age.
A meticulous historical and epistemological account of an African culture on its own terms, this book makes a persuasive argument for a cultural, context-dependent interpretation of social reality. It calls for a reconception of gender discourse and the categories on which such study relies. More than that, the book lays bare the hidden assumptions in the ways these different cultures think. A truly comparative sociology of an African culture and the Western tradition, it will change the way African studies and gender studies proceed.
(Re)constituting the Cosmology and Sociocultural Institutions of Ọ̀yọ́-Yorùbá
The “woman question,” this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western construction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures.
Author Oyeronke Oyewumi reveals an ideology of biological determinism at the heart of Western social categories-the idea that biology provides the rationale for organizing the social world. And yet, she writes, the concept of “woman,” central to this ideology and to Western gender discourses, simply did not exist in Yorubaland, where the body was not the basis of social roles.
Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed and that the subordination of women is universal. The Invention of Women demonstrates, to the contrary, that gender was not constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age.
A meticulous historical and epistemological account of an African culture on its own terms, this book makes a persuasive argument for a cultural, context-dependent interpretation of social reality. It calls for a reconception of gender discourse and the categories on which such study relies. More than that, the book lays bare the hidden assumptions in the ways these different cultures think. A truly comparative sociology of an African culture and the Western tradition, it will change the way African studies and gender studies proceed.
Be Sure of God’s Truth
This manuscript is from a collection of poems written by Nana Asma’u Bint Usman ‘dan Fodiyo, a nineteenth-century Muslim scholar, who lived in the region now known as northern Nigeria and was an eyewitness to battles of the largest of the West-African jihads of the era. The preparation and conduct of the jihad provide the topics for Nana Asma’u’s poetry. Her work also includes treatises on history, law, mysticism, theology, and politics, and was heavily influenced by the Arabic poetic tradition. Asma’u rallied public opinion behind a movement devoted to the revival of Islam in West Africa and organized a public education system for women.
The Path of Truth
This manuscript is from a collection of poems written by Nana Asma’u Bint Usman ‘dan Fodiyo, a nineteenth-century Muslim scholar, who lived in the region now known as northern Nigeria and was an eyewitness to battles of the largest of the West-African jihads of the era. The preparation and conduct of the jihad provide the topics for Nana Asma’u’s poetry. Her work also includes treatises on history, law, mysticism, theology, and politics, and was heavily influenced by the Arabic poetic tradition. Asma’u rallied public opinion behind a movement devoted to the revival of Islam in West Africa and organized a public education system for women.
Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism
A comprehensive collection of classic texts, contemporary interpretations, guidelines for activists, issue-specific information, and materials for environmentally-oriented religious practice. Sources and contributors include Basho, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gary Snyder, Chögyam Trungpa, Gretel Ehrlich, Peter Mathiessen, Helen Tworkov (editor of Tricycle), and Philip Glass.
Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans
Confucianism demonstrates a remarkable wealth of resources for rethinking human-earth relations. This second volume in the series on religions of the world and the environment includes sixteen essays that address the ecological crisis and the question of Confucianism from three perspectives: the historical describes this East Asian tradition’s views of nature, social ethics, and cosmology, which may shed light on contemporary problems; a dialogical approach links Confucianism to other philosophic and religious traditions; an examination of engaged Confucianism looks at its involvement in concrete ecological issues.