Post-Genocide, Post-Apartheid: The Shifting Landscapes of African Philosophy, 1994–2019

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Alena Rettová

Abstract

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.

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How to Cite
Rettová, A. (2021). Post-Genocide, Post-Apartheid: The Shifting Landscapes of African Philosophy, 1994–2019. Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 9(1), 11–58. https://doi.org/10.26806/modafr.v9i1.360
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Articles
Author Biography

Alena Rettová, University of Bayreuth

She is Professor of African and Afrophone Philosophies at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, where she leads an ERC-funded project on “Philosophy and Genre: Creating a Textual Basis for African Philosophy.” She is the author of African Philosophy: History, Trends, Problems (2001); Afrophone Philosophies: Reality and Challenge, 2007; Chanter l’existence: La poésie de Sando Marteau et ses horizons philosophiques (2013); and We Hold On to the Word of Lizard : A Small Anthology of Zimbabwean Ndebele Writing (2004). E-mail: alena.rettova@uni-bayreuth.de