Afrikology Philosophy And Wholeness An Epistemology

How do we understand and create kowledge? Does scientific knowledge cover all knowledge? Afrikology tries to answer these questions by tracing the issue of epistemology to the Cradle of Humanity in Africa and through such a reflection the Monograph establishes a basis for holistic and integrated ways of knowledge production that makes it possible to interface scientific knowledge with other forms of knowledge. In this way Afrikology responds to the crisis created by the fragmentation of knowledge through existing academic disciplines. Afrikology therefore advances transdisciplinarity and hermeneutics to a level where they attain a coherent basis for interacting with Afrikology as an epistemology which returns wholeness to understanding and knowledge production.

This monograph is intended to examine the epistemology of restorative rights in view of the continuing violation of rights in all aspects of life on the African continent and other parts of the world. It is based on the research, which the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute undertook between 20062008, under a cross-disciplinary research project entitled Restorative Justice and its Relationship to International Humanitarian Law, which resulted in a Comprehensive Report that was later discussed at an international conference in Nairobi in August 2008. This conference was opened by the Prime Minister of Kenya, Right Hon. Raila Odinga and attended by Ministers of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, judges and other ministers from the five countries in which the research was carried out, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Southern Sudan. The objective here is to relate the concept of restorative justice, in its broad and cross-disciplinary meaning to the epistemology of Afrikology and transdisciplinarity, which aim at breaking down disciplinary boundaries between the different academic disciplines, which inhibit our capabilities of looking at realities in a comprehensive, holistic manner; leading to the adoption of fragmented solutions to problems, which inevitably fail to address those problems. As stated in the monograph on the epistemology of Afrikology, knowledge is created holistically by the heart and the basis of the perceptions and experiences of the five senses. The knowledge created through the word, which ultimately constitutes the language and the community, is related to our cosmic forces and reason, which gives cosmic significance to our existence. We cannot therefore detach ourselves from these cosmic forces and reality must be examined from this combinatory holistic understanding.

This book focuses on African metaphysics and epistemology, and is an exercise in decoloniality. The authors describe their approach to "decoloniality" as an intellectual repudiation of coloniality, using the method of conversational thinking grounded in Ezumezu logic. Focusing specifically on both African metaphysics and African epistemology, the authors put forward theories formulated to stimulate fresh debates and extend the frontiers of learning in the field. They emphasize that this book is not a project in comparative philosophy, nor is it geared towards making Africa/ns the object/subjects of philosophy. Rather, the book highlights and discusses philosophical insights that have been produced from the African perspective, which the authors argue must be further developed in order to achieve decoloniality in the field of philosophy more broadly.

This monograph is intended to examine the epistemology of restorative rights in view of the continuing violation of rights in all aspects of life on the African continent and other parts of the world. It is based on the research, which the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute undertook between 2006ñ2008, under a cross-disciplinary research project entitled Restorative Justice and its Relationship to International Humanitarian Law, which resulted in a Comprehensive Report that was later discussed at an international conference in Nairobi in August 2008. This conference was opened by the Prime Mi.

Epistemic Freedom in Africa is about the struggle for African people to think, theorize, interpret the world and write from where they are located, unencumbered by Eurocentrism. The imperial denial of common humanity to some human beings meant that in turn their knowledges and experiences lost their value, their epistemic virtue. Now, in the twenty-first century, descendants of enslaved, displaced, colonized, and racialized peoples have entered academies across the world, proclaiming loudly that they are human beings, their lives matter and they were born into valid and legitimate knowledge systems that are capable of helping humanity to transcend the current epistemic and systemic crises. Together, they are engaging in diverse struggles for cognitive justice, fighting against the epistemic line which haunts the twenty-first century. The renowned historian and decolonial theorist Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni offers a penetrating and well-argued case for centering Africa as a legitimate historical unit of analysis and epistemic site from which to interpret the world, whilst simultaneously making an equally strong argument for globalizing knowledge from Africa so as to attain ecologies of knowledges. This is a dual process of both deprovincializing Africa, and in turn provincializing Europe. The book highlights how the mental universe of Africa was invaded and colonized, the long-standing struggles for 'an African university', and the trajectories of contemporary decolonial movements such as Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall in South Africa. This landmark work underscores the fact that only once the problem of epistemic freedom has been addressed can Africa achieve political, cultural, economic and other freedoms. This groundbreaking new book is accessible to students and scholars across Education, History, Philosophy, Ethics, African Studies, Development Studies, Politics, International Relations, Sociology, Postcolonial Studies and the emerging field of Decolonial Studies. The Open Access versions Chapter 1 and Chapter 9, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429492204 have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Dani Wadada Nabudere, the illustrious Ugandan scholar, produced a diverse body of work on various aspects of African culture, politics, and philosophy. Toward the end of his life, he formulated a theoretical construct that he termed “Afrikology.” Unlike most other Afrocentrists, who have stopped with the task of proving the primacy of the Egyptian past and its numerous cultural and scientific achievements, Nabudere strenuously attempts to connect that illustrious heritage with the African present. This, remarkably, is what makes his project worthy of careful attention. His corpus is multidisciplinary, although a major preoccupation with Africa is discernible in virtually all his works. His writings deal with critiques of imperialism, African political systems, processes of globalization and Africa’s location within them, and finally the ideological and existential imperatives of Afrocentric discourse.

This book investigates how knowledge is conceived and explored within the African context. Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, has historically been dominated by the Western approach to the discourse of knowledge. This book however shines a much-needed spotlight on knowledge systems originating within the African continent. Bringing together key voices from across the field of African philosophy, this book explores the nature of knowledge across the continent and how they are rooted in Africans’ ontological sense of being and self. At a time when moves to decolonize curricula are gaining momentum, this book shows how understanding the specific ways of knowing that form part of the every day life of the African, will play an important part in rebalancing studies of philosophy globally. Employing critical, conceptual and rigorous analyses of the nature and essence of knowledge as understood by indigenous African societies, the book ultimately asks what could pass as an African theory of knowledge. This important guide to the connections between knowledge and being, in African philosophical thought, will be an important resource for researchers and students of philosophy and African studies.

Travel and the Pan African Imagination explores the African Atlantic world as a productive theater or space where modernity, racialized dominance, and racialized resistance took form. The book stresses the importance of placing three Atlantic figures—the Charleston, South Carolina-based armed resistance leader Denmark Vesey; the West African emigration advocate Edward Wilmot Blyden; and the Christian missionary and teacher in Liberia as well as the United States, Alexander Crummell—within an Atlantic context and as African world community figures between the late-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The book also examines the religious origins of Black Power ideology and modern Pan Africanism as products of the intense dialogue within the African world community about concepts of modernity, progress, and civilization. Tracy Keith Flemming identifies how travel and social mobility led to the generation of an ever more complex and dynamic Atlantic world and of a fluid and adaptive African world community imagination for those figures who were forced to operate within and against a racially framed universe. The vexing social position and symbolic figure of “the African” was central to the dilemmas facing the racialized imagination of African world community figures and the discipline of Africology.