Notes for Bruce B. Janz Philosophy in an African Place
Key concepts: dwelling, festival, milieu, philosophical practice, place, platial, practiced place, production of space, provenance, sojourning, space, spatial, theoros, topeme, tradition.
Related theorists: Peter Bodunrin, Jacob Boehme, Michel de Certeau, Wendy Chun, Derrida, Gemma Corradi Fiumara, Foucault, Gadamer, David Gross, Kwame Gyekye, Arto Haapala, Heidegger, Paulin Hountondjii, Henri Lefebvre, Raphael Madu, Jeffrey Malpas, Merleau-Ponty, Damian Opata, H. Odera Oruka, Paul Ricoeur, Watsuji Tetsuro, Stephen Turner, Joseph Weizenbaum, Kwasi Wiredu, J. Macgregor Wise.
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Introduction:
Philosophy-in-Place
WHERE IS PHILOSOPHY'S APPROPRIATE PLACE?
Nowhere of obsolescence is correlated for philosophy of computing to nowhere of oblivion and derivativeness problematizing African philosophy; compare to Latour claim we know foreign tribes better than local technological cultures.
(1-2)
The history of African philosophy has been the history of struggle to
find a place, or to claim a place, or to assert the entitlement to a
place, in the face of those who have maintained that it has no place.
. . . Not the nowhere of transcendence, nor the nowhere of
primordiality, or memory, or promise, but rather the nowhere of
oblivion, or at best derivativeness.
(2) In each case, a
hermeneutic of suspicion breaks apart philosophy's pretensions to
uniquely access the universal, and if it has no more access to
universals, its raison
d'etre dissipates.
(2)
Is this what is behind imagining a geography of philosophy, a
breakdown or dissipation of philosophy? I do not think so. . . .
Placing philosophy in a geography suggests that it has contingent but
not arbitrary interests, that it responds to and shapes a particular
set of conditions of reflection.
(3) The recognition afforded
philosophy by other disciplines is such that philosophy has been
given a territory in relation to other territories, with disputed
borderlands to be sure, but with a kind of integrity.
(3) how
could we tell the difference between our abstract image of philosophy
and the one we have inherited from others in the West who have also
identified themselves as part of this enterprise?
Nowhereness like OGorman remainder; can there be a philosophy of computing, if so, for whom?
(3) Africa has always labored under the accusation of the West that
it is incapable of generating a philosophy. Even now, African
philosophy is as likely to be seen as a species of cultural or
postcolonial studies, or of “self-studies” areas such as
African-American studies.
(4) The frustration is understandable,
and points to the effort wasted on justifying one's existence, and
the insult implied in answering someone else's challenge.
Asking why using philosophical reason comparable to asking why think by working code; goal should be creative production, not justification.
(4) One might ask what it is, from any given culture, that a person feels the need to use philosophical reason to analyze or reflect.
THINKING
IN PLACE
(5)
But if philosophers are the only ones who reflect on themselves, they
are in the presumptuous and uncomfortable position of believing
themselves to be, in a practical sense, above method and
disciplinarity, the self-thinking thought, the view
from nowhere.
(6)
Jeffrey Malpas,
in Place
and Experience,
argues that our sense of self, space and time, agency, objectivity
are all tied to our sense of place. These central aspects of human
experience, then, the ones which have been of intense interest to
philosophers, must take place seriously.
(7) Questions such as
these already assume an essentialist stance. They assume that an
identity will be found, or at least posited, so that the task of
reflection can take place. The task of this book is to survey the
ways in which such essentialism has caused problems for African
philosophy.
(7) The question of African philosophy needs to be
re-asked, not from an essentialist but from a phenomenological and
hermeneutical point of view.
Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty suggest importance of milieu for making types of knowledge possible.
(8)
Heidegger, perhaps, gives the first systematic glimpse into place,
but it falls to Merleau-Ponty
to
make the concept the centerpiece of a philosophical system. One might
take his notion of embodied knowledge as requiring a sense of place
for fulfillment. The two together, along with any mediating devices
(such as technology) that make the connection between body and palce
possible, we will call the “milieu.”
When we ask about place, therefore, we ask about the type of
knowledge that is made possible in a particular milieu. To a certain
extent, the knowledge itself will be a function of the milieu, and
both the palce and the body that knows the place will find their
identity in the kind of relationships possible in the milieu.
(8)
It is not abstracted reflection, which severs the ties between
meaning and structure; it is universal reflection, in which the goal
is not day-to-day coping but rather the larger project of
self-conscious reflection on and maintenance of the milieu
itself.
(11) In various ways, to address place we must also
address identity, history, memory, aspiration, family and social
connection. . . . Place is important also because it is the site for
the meeting between incommensurables—materiality and idea, part and
whole, self and other.
THE
PLACE OF PLACE
(12)
Philosophy-in-place is more than the philosophical analysis of the
concept of place. It turns the concept back on the practices of
philosophy itself.
Rigorous, open-ended creation of new concepts afforded by platial analysis.
(12) Standard philosophical conceptual analysis needs to come with reflectiveness on the place of those concepts. . . . Ultimately, platial analysis makes possible rigorous, open-ended creation of new concepts, ones which make universals available (that is, allow us to recognize and build on connections across cultural, disciplinary, and other boundaries), and also clarifies and establishes one's own identity.
Question of the Topeme
Topeme as smallest intelligible unit of place.
(13) The “smallest intelligible unit of place” question (which I
am calling the “topeme”) also raises the issue of the exclusivity
of place.
(14) The question of the topeme also raises the issue of
the distinction between space and place. . . . Place is like a
language, but that language is not reductionist. Indeed, even as
there are topemes, there are assemblies, or aggregations, which allow
philosophical traditions to respond to the promises and threats of
new places while remaining true to the debts and duties of the
present place.
Question
of Aggregation
(14)
In other words, my interest is not in proposing an analytics of
place, but in establishing that philosophy which attends to its place
is faced with the ways in which its concepts are produced, in
particular the ways in which fecund concepts are produced (that is,
concepts that lead to the production of more concepts, rather than
rendering philosophical reflection arid and uninteresting).
Question of Scale
Question of Borders
Question
of Milieu
(17)
The idea of the milieu stands in contrast to the idea of the center.
A center is static, and centripetal. A milieu is fluid, and
centrifugal, that is, its coherence comes not from identifying and
preserving itself, but from reenacting itself in new forms.
(17)
Philosophy-in-place begins from what matters, whatever that may be.
Question
of Intensity
(18)
In fact, though, platial thinking would look for intensities, the
locations of difference across borders that offer the possibility of
creative production. . . . Aristotle's sense of place assumed that it
was static, a resting point; this assumption about place is one that
must be resisted as we tie philosophy to place.
Question
of Provenance
(19)
Even more importantly, the questions we can ask come out of
provenance. This is important to realize in all areas of philosophy,
especially since we tend to think that our questions come from
no-place.
Question
of Self and Other
(20)
Place must remain both an irreducible other to the self, and a
constitutive part of the self.
(20) Any place, then, will be
something of a mystery, a foreign place, in its irreducible
otherness. There is no interrogation without otherness.
Question
of Listening and Speaking
(21)
In fact, though, the metaphor of textuality is less useful for
philosophy-in-place than the metaphor of speaking and listening.
Philosophy-in-place is a topic,
a discourse on something, or perhaps more usefully, a discourse
somewhere.
(21) What would it mean for us to create new concepts,
to come to the expressed problems of society in a manner that did not
start with philosophical categories, but with the skills of
listening, the ability to “list,” to alter ourselves in a
direction, or alternately, to organize and order? We may then have a
true topic,
a place for listening and speaking where people meet.
Question of the Trace
De Certeau space as practiced place, suffused with meaning of practices, trace of divine: try thinking with respect to spaces and places where one worked and works code, such that even simulacral, virtual realities emanate practices; relate to Ulmer mystory.
(22)
Michel de
Certeau refers
to space as “practiced
place,”
or place that has had the meaning of practices imposed upon it.
(22)
And, place may be understood as the trace of the divine.
(23)
Heidegger's most important legacy may just be that he pointed us to
the significance of questions not just for justifying our knowledge,
but for recognizing our human experience as such. Questioning, as he
says, builds a way.
TWO
PROJECTS
(23)
While other disciplines have reflected on their
place,
intellectually, historically, and in relation to their subjects,
philosophy has not done this to any great degree. . . . Derrida's
question, “where does [philosophy] today find its most appropriate
place?” has not been answered, or even taken very seriously.
(24)
It is the intention of this book to give one example of an
appropriate place for philosophy, and in some significant sense its
“most appropriate” place. Perhaps surprisingly (to some), this
place is African philosophy. The second of the two parallel projects
is to work through this
place,
this African
place,
as one which is appropriate for philosophy and always has been.
Compare appropriateness of place for philosophizing with computers; dismissal of programming languages and any specific run time instances or manifestations as unphilosophically unlike critical textual artifacts to start philosophy of computing from creative well of critical programming studies.
(24) Africa is a good starting point for this study precisely because
of the history of its dismissal.
(25) The nature of textuality and
its relationship to philosophical discourse is a live issue with
practical consequences for African philosophy, in different ways than
may be the case for Western philosophy. . . . African philosophy has
tended to focus on subject matter outside of itself, and not seen its
own work as supporting philosophical reflection.
(25) it is at the
point of a new kind of self-consciousness, the kind that happens when
a group of scholars move from justification or legitimation of their
activities to a hostile world, to the ability to generate new
insights for their own purposes.
(26) My argument here is that the
question itself has distracted scholars from moving to a more
creative and less defensive posture, one which can truly examine the
interesting and useful ideas that might come from the sages, from the
proverbs, or from the academy.
Difficulty of obtaining philosophy written in Africa like difficulty of obtaining source code and other documentation of technological undertakings, although Internet and especially floss ethic has reversed this and invites a second look.
(27) There is no special virtue of having written in Africa itself;
however, that is a group that has been systematically ignored, if
only because their work is often so difficult to obtain.
(27) I
believe African philosophy has a great deal to contribute to
philosophy in general, which the rest of the world has not yet had
the ears to hear.
THE ARGUMENT OF THE BOOK
Redirection of concepts initially deployed spatially instead of platially, with aim of generating new concepts rather than justifying the field of African philosophy.
(28)
Philosophy
in an African Place is
structured dialectically, recognizing the paradoxical argument I wish
to make. The dialectic is between the concept of place itself and a
set of concepts in African philosophy. In this introduction, I have
tried to sketch out a schematic of place that I believe is useful in
uncovering African philosophy. Then, for the bulk of the chapters, I
consider a set of concepts within African philosophy which have been
used “spatially” instead of “platially,” that is, they have
been used to establish and/or defend a territory known as “African
Philosophy” rather than generate new concepts within African
philosophy. The intention is not to reject those concepts, but to
redirect them.
In
the final chapter of the book I return to the question of the nature
of place, with a new set of concepts provided by African philosophy,
and consider what has been made available by the redirection of
African philosophy.
(29) Philosophy could be imagined as a
territory which has been mapped. . . . We know where the borders are,
we know who the citizens are, and within the nation of philosophy, we
know the rules, customs, traditions, languages and local
dialects.
(30) However, the problem comes when we believe that
maps are neutral tools, even in this metaphorical form, and that the
result achieved can convince anyone that territory has been
legitimately claimed.
Traditional and modernist maps.
(30) Before the modern Western impulse to exploration and
colonization, maps tended to be records of significant
places.
(30-310 Now, maps are of God's pursuits, made possible
through the auspices of scientific method (another mapping technique)
and the universal pretense of modern life.
(31) African philosophy
has proceeded as if it is drawing a modernist map.
(32) My
intention is not to undermine them, but to undermine their
essentialist, “mapping of space” function. I wish to retain the
dynamic, creative nature of these concepts, as they transform
themselves into adequate concepts for particular thought-lives.
Chapter Two
Tradition
in the Periphery
GYEKYE
ON TRADITION
(38)
Gyekye's Tradition
and Modernity
is,
in a way, the most explicit treatment of an attitude to tradition
that he has exemplified in the rest of his work. The issue he faces,
simply put, is this: How is it possible to take cultural specificity,
especially that which shows some endurance, as philosophically
interesting?
THE USES OF TRADITION
Tradition as related to encoded meanings and values extensible to programming practices and more adequately addresses materiality of code than Floridi and Tanaka-Ishii: that which is unexamined.
(42) With the dawn of modernity, tradition progressively is seen as
“that which is unexamined.”
(43) The significance of the
difference between history and tradition should not be overlooked. .
. . One way to make the distinction is that history tends to be
related to events and people, while tradition tends to be related to
meanings and values as coded in ritual and story.
(45) There is a
reason for starting with the question of the uses of tradition
instead of the definition. It serves to root the concept in a
particular set of practices and in a particular kind of
discussion.
(45) In short, conceptual analysis itself has a
history, has a politics, and cannot be considered a neutral way of
doing philosophy.
Western provenance of tradition as counterposed to modernity.
(46)
Tradition is a concept with a provenance, specifically, a Western
provenance. . . . Tradition makes sense only counterposed to
modernity.
(47) With the rediscovery of history in
nineteenth-century Germany, tradition takes on a different role. It
becomes the collection of stories that form the march to the
present.
(47) Indeed, tradition takes on all the marks of a
Hegelian Aufhebung—it
is something that needed to exist at a particular time, but it also
needed to be overcome.
(48) Whether “tradition” is used
explicitly or not, supposing that we can identify the cultures that
have a “pure” version of the term already imbeds the Western
sense of the debate.
(49) Paul Ricoeur
addressed
the question of tradition in Time
and Narrative.
. . . We are always caught up in traditionality, Ricoeur maintains
(following Gadamer), but we are not necessarily caught up in any
particular
tradition,
thus enabling the critique of traditions themselves (following
Habermas), including ones that undergird our rational accounts of the
world.
(50) But, as Robert Piercey has argued, traditionality and
tradition are not as easy to separate as it seems.
THE
TRANSMISSION OF TRADITION
(50)
Stephen Turner,
in The
Social Theory of Practices,
argues that it is very difficult to generate a scientific social
theory out of the notion of tradition.
(50) The split between
explanation and understanding is an old and contested one. Ricoeur
thinks it is the most unfortunate turn hermeneutics took.
(51) The
problem becomes more acute as we realize that tradition amounts to
the unexaminable values we hold. Even if no value is ultimately
unexaminable, tradition assumes that something escapes the direct
rational gaze. . . . Tradition does not escape the rational gaze, but
is in its peripheral vision.
Tradition as mode of thought relating to cultural competence; challenge of navigating micro-cultures of modern societies.
(51) None of this means that philosophers should not subject
everything in a culture to the rational gaze, but it does mean that
we have to recognize that tradition is a mode of thought, not an
object of thought. It is what makes cultural competence possible. The
problem with modern societies is not that they do not have
traditions, but that competence in those cultures is so much more
varied, and there are so many more micro-cultures to navigate.
(52)
There is the illusion that meaning resides in the past, rather than
in a continuum between the past and the future.
(52) Secondly, the
transmission of tradition is not plagiarism of the past.
(52)
Third, the transmission of tradition is not the transfer of some
discrete objects from one time to another.
(52) Fourth, the
transmission of tradition is not the consumption of
tradition.
(52-53) Finally, the transmission of tradition is not
passive or non-rational. . . . If tradition is what is peripheral to
the rational gaze in the competent engagement with culture, we can
see that it must always be present and part of the act of
interpreting culture.
(53) what difference does it make to think
in terms of orality rather than writing in the transmission of
culture?
Gadamer festival theoros engaged spectator, rethinking through representation, reflective appropriation by new generation: consider with respect to SCA, programming cultures, and finally machine cognition.
(54)
Gadamer points out that “theoros”
refers
to “someone who takes part in the delegation to a festival”
(124). That spectator engages in theoria,
participating through presence.
(54) The festival
is
very much like the tradition, as used in the context of African
philosophy. The transmission of tradition may be seen as the basis of
theoria.
The “spectator,” who is the participant in the reenactment of the
festival known as communal life, engages in the process of
re-thinking through re-presentation. So, it is not just that elements
are placed at the disposal of a new generation. Their appropriation
is itself an act of reflective thought.
(56) African philosophy
that has as its foundation the rational study of tradition runs the
risk of simply replicating current systems of domination, even as
that philosophy ties to extricate Africa from those systems.
(56)
But how it it possible that, as Benjamin and McCole argue, tradition
is something other than “goods that can be possessed”? What is
needed is not a theory of how the “contents” of tradition can be
used in the present, but rather how they very concept of tradition
can itself be re-appropriated.
David Gross reclamation of sense of otherness of tradition via current practices and written records more applicable to history of computing than African philosophy.
(57)
[David] Gross's
preference is to remember what is significant about tradition—its
sense of otherness.
(58) Gross sees two basic sources to make this
reclamation possible—the traces of tradition that exist in current
practice, but have been largely forgotten, and the written record. It
is interesting to note that neither of these may be very useful to
the African philosopher concerned about the recovery of
tradition.
(59) Interestingly, both agree that tradition is an
irruption, an aporia. For Gross, it is an aporia in modernity, and
for Benjamin, in history.
(59) The possibility that tradition is
disruption is itself a disruptive thought.
(59) Tradition as
disruption must disrupt not only unreflective Western modes of
power/knowledge, but also the hyper-theorized postcolonialims that
essentially withdraw the traditional from the tradition.
Tradition as mode of thought mediates liminal area between rational gaze and its periphery, even in ultrarational activities like programming, engineering, integration.
(60)
Tradition brings up the liminal area between thought and its other,
or between the rational gaze and its periphery.
(60) This is where
African philosophy gets interesting. Places are certainly
traditional, but tradition is also a place, one which is never
unambiguous or pure, but is also not reducible to an abstraction.
People cannot choose to live or not live in tradition; rather,
tradition becomes a particular kind of useful story about a place
that one inhabits, and more than that, the context for rational
thought. Tradition, then, is not (solely) an object of thought but a
mode
of thought.
Apply tradition as mode of thought mediating liminal area between rational gaze and its necessary peripheries to philosophical studies of computing and programming, in which embodied thinking necessarily interfaces and potentially programs as it addresses situatedness in places; Janz sense of philosophy respecting tradition requiring taking debts and duties seriously well expressed by protocol distributed control operation, and vice versa, working through Galloway, Tanaka-Ishii, Berry, going beyond emergence from subterranean streams to directedness of technological mastery that is nonetheless peripheral to philosophical gaze. That the electronic domain, as opposed to print literacy, is truly executable where the latter only ascribes to be, causes a disruption with human philosophical traditions, giving a new meaning to thought thinking itself as machine cognition, not merely the technological nonconscious with which human cognitive embodied processes intermediate, but potentially nonhuman technological conscious.
(61) What happens when the reflective
scholarly work on tradition is turned back on the culture and becomes
part of its life? What happens when philosophy takes seriously the
debts and duties it has to the place(s) from which it comes? Under
these conditions, we have the potential for new ideas that spring
from tradition.
(61) Liminality is different in different places,
and part of the platial task of philosophy is to identify both the
lived meaning of the participants, and also to turn back on itself
and recognize its own place in that meaning. This is truly thought
thinking itself.
Chapter Three
Questioning
Reason
OLD
QUESTIONS ABOUT REASON
(64)
This pattern can be found in other African philosophers, who proceed
as if the “African” part of African philosophy refers to the
focus of analysis rather than the nature of the tools doing the
analysis.
(66) In fact, this conflict between rationalism and
empiricism required much more than recognizing different starting
points.
(67) Thus, true philosophy cannot emerge without science
emerging, or at least some disciplined attempt to move away from
mythical. Gadamer says something similar to this, in “The Power of
Reason.” . . . Nevertheless, the question for African philosophy
remains open: to what extent does this path from myth to science to
philosophy hold true, and if it is true, where does that leave
African thought?
(67) One hallmark of philosophy that everyone
seems to agree on is that philosophy must be critical, reflective,
and analytic.
(68) Yet, do we not then fall into the problem that
reason must be exactly what the Western Enlightenment said it was?
This is true only if we take reason to be something static—an
attribute of the mind, or of a culture. Reason in the West, has a
history. It developed the way it did due to a set of questions and
requirements being posed.
(69) Reason, then, has a dual position:
it is both inside and outside the demands of its time. And this model
is useful for spatially distributed reason, just as it is for
temporally distributed reason. Platial consciousness need not be
relativist any more than historical consciousness need be
historicist.
THE RATIONAL PATH
MAKING
MAPS: TAXONOMIES OF AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY
(74)
What is “true” African philosophy, and what would it have to
include in order to qualify as truly African, and also as truly
philosophical?
(75) As in any philosophy, defining African
philosophy is the same as doing it. Many people do not realize this,
and want to get a neat definition from the start.
(77) As I have
already suggested, the best way to think of African philosophy is in
terms of its questions. In fact, the question is the key to
philosophy—concepts or claims (usually the focal point of
philosophical argument) are contingent on the kinds of questions we
ask. . . . Identifying a good (appropriate, incisive, critical)
question must come before any other methodological
consideration.
(77) The assumption has been that the ability to
provide a taxonomy of philosophical styles or movements, and argue
for their merits, is enough to legitimate African philosophy as a
real branch of world philosophy.
Oruka's First Taxonomy: “Trends”
Oruka's Second Taxonomy: “Schools”
A. Smet and O. Nkombe
V.
Y. Mudimbe
(81)
Lucius Outlaw sees this plethora of taxonomies as the deconstructive
moment in African philosophy.
(83) Most philosophers assume that
philosophy is a universal enterprise, and geographical designations
simply point out historical contingencies, not essential
differences.
(83-84) African philosophy needs to go beyond
claiming intellectual territory by simply mapping it. Mapping is a
structural activity, which always suffers from over-determination and
ambiguity.
Shortcoming of mapping as inherently structural activity.
(84) This is the core of my concern with the strategy of defining and describing African philosophy. While the map may give the feeling that understanding has been achieved, it is not necessarily so. Like Foucault's description of animals in the Chinese encyclopedia, there is always another way of sorting out the world, and the fact that the new way may be unfamiliar does not in itself mean that it is wrong.
NEW
QUESTIONS ABOUT REASON
(85)
If, however, we do not immediately grant that reason is a-historical
and a-cultural, but that it is rooted in human concerns, we can frame
the issues in Africa more fairly, and (I believe) retain a version of
universality that will allow Africans and others to more fairly
address local concerns while maintaining rational and critical
discourse across cultural boundaries.
What is the goal of reason?
Borders
(86)
Raising the question of the other of reason allows us to see that
reason in any place is pressing against non-reason, however that is
conceived, and is seen as the solution to social problems.
(87) To
deny the possibility of working through tension and contradiction by
requiring that African philosophy always take modern Western
scientific rationality into account, is to deny the possibility of
the production of new concepts, a possibility that the West itself
has benefited from greatly.
How are the uses of “reason” linked?
Are
reason and order necessarily linked?
(89)
More importantly, though, the interrogation of questions must always
interrogate the questioner at the same as it interrogates someone
else.
Where
does reason find its proper place?
(90)
The tools of universalized reason are still important, but what is
often not noticed is what goes into preparing claims for rational
reflection. . . . The rataional question in African philosophy is
not, then, over whether it is reasonable to accept “witchcraft,”
but rather, what are the meaningful experiences that we collect under
the heading, and how belief at various levels and in various forms
might become rational.
How
has reason developed in different places or for different
purposes?
(91)
Just as the methods of rational inquiry in the West benefited from
both materialist versions of empiricism as well as quasi-theistic
versions of German dialectical philosophy, so too African philosophy
should be allowed to rigorously reflect on its intellectual roots and
the concerns that have animated it, and it should furthermore be
allowed to interrogate other traditions, and allow their formative
questions to come to the surface.
Is
particularism in connection with reason equivalent to
relativisim?
(92)
Generative rationality takes seriously the philosopher's mandate to
provide judgment, but it takes descriptive rationality seriously by
recognizing that such judgment lies as a task rather than as
something already included in a set of rules or principles.
Are
reason and philosophy co-extensive terms?
(93)
I am less interested in arguing for non-rational moments in
philosophy (others have taken this route) than suggesting that
disciplines have developed different strategies of rationality that
can inform philosophy.
(94) The key is for philosophy to recognize
that anthropology is not the same as it was at the beginning of
African philosophy. . . . In fact, though, social anthropology has
become much more sophisticated since the time it was dominated by
structuralist and functionalist approaches.
Is reason reducible to method?
Compare to Deleuze and Guattari on the concept.
(95) Philosophy is not positivist science. Being disciplined in philosophy must mean something different than just the practice of confirming what we know and then building on it.
Chapter Four
“Wisdom
is Actually Thought”
RETHINKING
SAGE PHILOSOPHY
(99)
Just as it would be difficult to avoid mentioning sage philosophy in
a respectable survey of African philosophy, it would be difficult to
not start from Oruka's trends, even if only to improve on them.
OVERCOMING
ETHNOPHILOSOPHY
(102-103)
Yet, the same is a disadvantage here. The sage knows the wisdom of
the culture, while the Western trained philosopher knows now reason
and disciplined inquiry are supposed to work. But, in making the
reasonable positions of the sages manifest, it is quite possible that
the positions are simultaneously being made Western.
(103) Sage
philosophy can be seen as an attempt to address the central problem
in both ethnography and ethnophilosophy—the African is not involved
as a peer in a cooperative project of construction or discovery, but
remains a mute text, unable to recognize, resist or even comment on
coercive readings imposed upon him or her.
(104) I would like to
focus on three crucial issues within the process: the nature of
wisdom, the nature of critique, and the conversation in which the
sage is invited to be philosophical. . . . If they are taken
seriously, the sages themselves will have a truly critical
capacity—the ability to critique sage philosophy itself—and will
open the door to a truly African philosophy-in-place.
THREE
CONCEPTS: WISDOM, CRITIQUE, CONVERSATION
Wisdom
(107)
Wisdom is not defined objectively but recognized
intersubjectively.
(107) The intersubjective understanding of
wisdom is a hermeneutic moment, dependent on platial knowledge.
Critique
(110)
A truly African philosophy-in-place would have the critique placed so
that the unexpected could find a voice.
(110) As it stands, the
charge that sage philosophy is not far from ethnophilosophy is
substantially true. The folk sage is simply the person who can
articulate the beliefs of a people (e.g., Ogotemmeli), and the
philosophic sage is the one who is able to comment on those beliefs.
But the lived experience of the people may have still been missed.
Conversation
(113)
Socratic dialogues attempted to raise questions of meaning, perhaps
paradoxically by pushing the question of identity (the forms) as far
as they would go. This is not occurring in the sage philosophy
interviews.
(115) And, the fact that the questioner must have some
common horizon with the sage is never interrogated. It is not enough
to ask what the beliefs are, or even to push the question of their
logical consistency. The question of their meaning has to be raised,
and the inequality of power has to be addressed, before sage
philosophy can move from being technique to philosophy.
SAGACITY
AND PHILOSOPHY-IN-PLACE
(115)
In the reliance on a method, the production of knowledge has become
technologized, a regularized process designed to guarantee the
outcome of the identification and classification of sages.
(117)
African thought must be addressed not just as a first order activity,
in which the belief structures of individuals or groups are
interrogated, but as second order as well, in which the process of
truth-making becomes an object of thought as well. . . . The terms of
understanding must be generated from all the peer conversations
available to African philosophy, rather than from foreign
conversations.
Chapter
Five
Culture
and the Problem of Universality
(123)
The point is that the given-ness of culture needs to be subject to
inquiry.
THE
MYTH OF PURITY
(123)
While the ability to govern one's own philosophical agenda and
destiny is a laudable goal, there are a number of questions or issues
that arise with this notion of purity, and its accompanying notion of
decolonialization.
(129) One criticism of both negritude and
Afrocentrism is that they spend more time focused on the oppressive
forms of thought that they are rejecting, than on African thought
itself.
CULTURAL UNIVERSALS
Wiredu
on Cultural Universals
(132)
Universals get their initial Greek statement from Aristotle, and
become one of the central issues throughout the medieval
period.
(133) [Kwasi] Wiredu
asserts
the existence of cultural universals (and Oruka agrees at this level)
because this will establish the possibility of knowledge across
cultures. But, just as with the medieval version of the problem, the
gain of a coherent epistemology comes at the expense of an incoherent
metaphysics.
(134) Unlike Dewey, he argues for interpreted
knowledge at the individual as well as the social level. We do have a
kind of “bodily intelligence,” which can be seen in the various
actions the body performs without conscious direction, and the body's
ability to “know” its environment. Merleau-Ponty argues that our
sense of self and the world is traceable back to this kind of
knowledge, and not to conceptual thinking.
(134) Indeed, as many
feminists have convincingly argued, biology does not imply necessity,
much less universality.
(136) The existence of talk is not enough
to establish that communication also exists. It is certainly not
enough to require that cultural universals exist.
(138)
Wittgenstein gives us the most devastating critique of this sort of
notion. He argues in the Philosophical
Investigations
(sections
65-77) that we use terms as if they have a constant meaning across
different domains. In fact, they do no not.
(139-140) Perhaps
truth (universals) does not precede meaning (cultural understanding),
but meaning precedes truth. If universals are found in what humans
strive for, and more specifically in their attempts to communicate,
then we may see the universal as arising from human interaction. It
will then be the earned manifestation of human existence, rather than
the presupposition of communication.
(140) Oruka is correct when
he says that many of the advances in philosophy are not due to
logical rigor, but something like intuition. . . . One might also
look to C. S. Peirce's notion of “abduction,” a very similar
concept to Oruka's “intuition.”
(140) The fact that intuition
exists does not tell us anything about intuitions in
particular.
(141-142) But the fact that his [Husserl's]
phenomenology has been largely revised does not detract from his
basic observation that intentionality must be a component of all
discourse on human experience. . . . Intentionality is the first step
away from that view of language, and toward a view that does not
attempt to separate language from issues of culture and
selfhood.
(144) It is a Western rationalist prejudice, inherited
in the modern age from Descartes, that our minds are a repository for
concepts which are separated from the world of human action.
(145)
Indeed, I am ultimately resisting metaphysics itself with this move,
and not simply suggesting that an inhabitant of this category in fact
does not belong there. Communication does not depend on the
reification of any particular notion, whether that is a concept, an
intuition, or a cultural universal.
(145) The question moves from
metaphysics to phenomenological hermeneutics.
Rehabilitating
the Universal
(146)
But, as with feminism, there must come a time when one realizes that
everyone that is going to be persuaded already has been, and now it
is time to move past the attempts at self-justification.
(146) The
problem is that we cannot start from the assumption that
communication exists, and that we simply have to account for
it.
(146) Earlier I mentioned the idea that we might focus on
already shared meanings as the basis for communication. This idea
clearly has its roots in Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, and has
been critiqued by various post-structuralists such as Derrida, as
well as thinkers such as Foucault and Habermas.
(147) Wiredu's
intuition (to use Oruka's addition) that there must be something
connecting dialogue partners is correct.
(147) Perhaps the key is
to recognize that the universal is the result of dialogical
reflection, not the presupposition of it.
(147) Philosophy has
been founded on the utterance, or the claim, and has forgotten the
other side of this communicative act.
(148) What if the hearer is
taken as significant in the act communication? . . . It could be that
the dialogue itself conditions the kinds of subjects that can take
part in it.
(149) Wiredu indeed does go on to consider ways in
which nokware
has
senses of truth connected with it. However, this is done on the basis
of conceptual analysis, not on the basis of finding out the shared
meaning within the culture. I am arguing that we should take a
statement like this on fact value, and if we find discrepancies with
what we expect, this should serve to throw a light on our
expectations as much as it does on the terms in conflict. The light,
alas, does not shine on expectations in this account.
(150)
Philosophy itself must be rooted in local soil, and listening holds
forth the possibility that not only foreign concepts, but also
foreign metaphysics and definitions may be questioned.
Chapter
Six
Listening
to Language
(155)
African philosophy by and large has seen language as a conduit of,
rather than a hindrance to philosophy. . . . African philosophy, on
the other hand, must deal with both written and spoken “texts.”
LANGUAGE AND WORLD VIEWS
Listening to language: do not be put off by programming languages.
(156) The intention of Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativism was
laudable—it was to break the anthropological hierarchy of cultures
which placed the West at the top. However, particularizing the
thought of cultures by their language also meant that those cultures
remained isolated, objects of investigation by the rational social
scientific mind.
(157) The point here is simply that the hope that
language will, in some direct manner, lead to philosophy-in-place,
will not be borne out. Language is, of course, a central aspect of
philosophy, but the analysis of its structure alone will not yield a
self-reflective philosophy.
LANGUAGE
AS THE BASIS OF PHILOSOPHY: KAGAME
(159)
Are we asking about the difference that language makes, or are we
asking about what difference a different
language
makes?
TRANSLATION:
HALLEN AND SODIPO
(161)
But Western philosophy tended not to pay a great deal of attention to
the problem of translation as a philosophical issue.
(162) There
is no comparativist agenda at work here. Translation is rather a
positive philosophical method designed to sharpen philosophical
categories within Yoruba, as well as correct errors in the English
translation of specific terms.
(162-163) I believe, though, that
Quine's indeterminacy thesis is actually a positive step in
phenomenological investigation, rather than a negative limit on
knowledge. . . . In other words, Quine's thesis becomes a
philosophical method rather than a philosophical claim. Difference
creates the opportunity for questioning. If one begins from the
position of misunderstanding (at least, recognizing that
misunderstanding has taken place), one beings from a place.
(165-166)
The form of dialogue that happened with the onis e gun uncovered not
only beliefs about the world through the uses of words in natural
language, but also served to acquaint Hallen and the other
researchers with that synthetic understanding of the place in which
those beliefs made sense. . . . The project could easily absorb
self-reflective questions, and as such, it has the potential to
create new ideas because it is open to them.
PROVERBS AS THE BASIS FOR AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY: GYEKYE, WANJOHI, MADU
The
Argument for Proverbs as the Basis for African Philosophy
(167)
The impetus to look to proverbs, as mentioned earlier, comes as a
positive need to ground “true” African philosophy in indigenous
soil, and as a negative need to resist writers who argue that
philosophy must be based on written texts, must be critical, and must
not be anonymous.
The
Limitations of Proverbs as a Basis for African Philosophy
(170-171)
All of this suggests that proverbs are not so much philosophy, as the
occasion or impetus for philosophy. They may,
along with speeches, songs, diaries, business contracts, political
addresses, constitutions, and a host of other linguistic events, be
the occasion for philosophical reflection to take place. . . . In
other words, the questions themselves are the location of philosophy,
and the proverbs become philosophical to the extent that they answer
or are involved with philosophical questions.
Another Approach to Proverbs: Raphael Madu
How Could Proverbs be Relevant to Philosophy?
Philosophy does not inhere in its artifacts, which are instead traces of philosophy occurring; as thought questioning itself, it is a present concern.
(178)
Philosophy does not lie in its artifacts. These are just shells,
carcasses if you will, that give evidence that there might have been
philosophy present at one time.
(179) What is the difference?
Philosophy, as Hegel put it, is “thought thinking itself” (or in
my formulation, thought questioning itself). As such, it is a present
concern.
(179) What if the proverb scholars gave up the search for
a pure source of African philosophy? What if they gave up the search
for the metaphysical anchor-point of African philosophy? It might
seem as if everything is lost. I would like to argue that, in fact,
it is at this point that African philosophy can begin.
(180) Even
if Plato's Republic
could
be interrogated philosophically, but also in a variety of other ways;
conversely, it has been the genius of theorists to show how fashion
(Barthes), clinics (Foucault), diaries (de Beauvoir), cinema
(Deleuze), and a host of other artifacts of culture might have
philosophical import.
Same play for approaching ECT philosophically from various disciplinary methods that address particular technologies or practices.
(180) The African philosopher must necessarily draw on research from those who have used various disciplinary methods to address proverbs. That includes paremiologists, anthropologists, semioticians, literary and religious scholars. None of these are philosophical, necessarily, but they all inform philosophical questions.
Chapter
Seven
Practicality:
African Philosophy's Debts and Duties
CAN PHILOSOPHY BE PRACTICAL
IN AFRICA? PHILOSOPHY AND ITS COMMUNITIES
ON PRACTICALITY
PRACTICALITY AND SOME PHILOSOPHERS
Paulin Hountondjii
Kwame Gyekye
H.
Odera Oruka
(194)
The practical necessity for mankind that he identifies is the
elimination of poverty. It is a practical necessity because without
it, nothing else can reasonably happen.
Four missions of philosophy for Oruka: truth, aesthetic, communicative, moral.
(195) While Oruka explicitly talks about practicality toward the end
of the essay [ “Achievements of Philosophy and One Current
Practical Necessity for Mankind: The Question of the Present and
Future of Humanity”], I would like to argue that the most
interesting section concerning practicality comes at the beginning,
where he talks about four “missions” (a word he takes as the
equivalent of “achievement” in the paper's title) of philosophy:
the truth mission, the aesthetic mission, the communicative mission,
and the moral mission.
(197) The fifth problem is in the core
assumption of practical philosophy, which is that people act based on
sets or systems of ideas, and that action can be changed by altering
an existing system or proposing a new one.
Connect notion of judgment to critical programming to avoid reduction to technical reason, also crucial to Weizenbaum.
(198) Humanism itself, for some a value so obvious it is hardly worth
arguing for, has been subjected to intense scrutiny by a number of
recent philosophers, as carrying with it moral imperatives that
marginalize various voices, both present and past, and valorizing a
dominant intellectual tradition at the expense of other lesser known
streams of thought.
(199) Again, why should this matter? In part,
because Kant wrote three critiques. . . . If you consider practical
reason by itself, you cannot determine whether you actually are
speaking of technical reason, that is, rules of skill which are
technically practical, or morally practical, which are founded on the
principle of freedom. A new feature of human life is needed,
judgment, that can tell us which is which.
(200) Without the
notion of judgment, the philosopher seems stuck between providing
technical advice or providing commentary on ends, neither of which
truly gets at the issue of practice.
Ngugi
wa Thiong'o
(201)
Perhaps the common problem is this: both the ad hoc version of
practicality and the radical version assume a linear relationship
between theory and practice. If we get our theory straight, or in the
radical case, the conditions for the possibility of our theory, then
the practice will follow. There is little or no provision to see
theory as dependent on practice. . . . To extend Ngugi's comment,
what is needed is not a practical philosophy, and not a philosophy of
practice, but a philosophical practice.
Oladipo
Irele
(202)
Irele's answer to the question of how philosophy can be relevant in
Africa revolves around maintaining the dual roles of giving detailed
social analysis as well as critique. The philosopher must “dirty
his hands” with non-philosophical material, and engage other
disciplines. At the same time, the philosopher still must be the one
who produces larger frameworks of “how things hang together.”
Peter
Bodunrin
(203)
What of the possibility that philosophy might not be practical?
(204)
“Philosophy as Pivot,” from the title of his paper, refers to the
function of philosophy as the point of orientation for other
disciplines. The pivot does not move in space, but rather simply
turns, allowing other disciplines to move.
(205) And, more
recently in South Africa, discussion over the meaning of ubuntu
has,
in part, been a question of the practicality of the concept within a
changing society.
PHILOSOPHICAL
PRACTICE
(205)
To paraphrase Derrida, Africa's communities are, in part, those to
whom philosophy owes its debts.
Following Derrida, philosophy must speak back to places that gave it voice.
In case of computing to speak back to places that gave philosophy voice suggests reentering 1980s personal computer culture to better understand current Internet age.
(205-206)
Philosophy owes a debt to the society in which it finds itself. It is
not only materially sustained by the institutions of these societies,
it also finds its material for reflection in these communities. . . .
There is at least the debt, then, that philosophy must “speak
back” to
the place that gave it voice.
(206) Philosophy's unique ability
(as opposed to other disciplines) is to analyze and account for
thought-lives, to develop and apply the conceptual tools that show
the communities what they are like. . . . Even those aspects of
Western philosophy that pretend to be culture-free (that is, not
reflecting on the concerns of a specific community) are in fact
developing the reflective tools that various communities use to
reflect on themselves. The most abstract logician in the West is, to
that extent, doing “Western philosophy” in that he or she is
showing forth a certain set of reflective possibilities that in turn
makes the culture what it is. That logic may well form the basis of
computer science, for instance, which gives the culture a particular
self-understanding.
(206) In Africa, philosophy develops tools
that, explicitly or implicitly, allow a culture to show itself for
what it is and, as importantly, allow it to create new concepts
adequate to its circumstances.
(207) Attending to the community
means paying attention both to the source of one's philosophical
ideas, as well as their audience, use and results.
(207) The
mistake is in thinking of this only as a burden. This is not simply
guilt. Responsibility to a community means engaging with that
community to come to self-understanding. . . . Philosophy's
practicality lies not only in showing society for what it is, and
what it can be. This is what I am calling philosophical
practice.
(207)
One example of this is Odera Oruka's notion of sage philosophy.
Recall his “four missions”: if they are taken together, they
point to a sense that philosophy is always already part of a
community.
(208) Sage philosophy, then, can be seen as an exercise
in true practical philosophy on at least two levels. First, the
project recognizes the connection between thought and the community,
and the responsibilities that lie on both parties. . . . Second, the
project is practical in that the “professional” philosophers are
attending to the communities outside of the academic world, and
helping to develop the thought of the sages.
Practical outcome of re-imagining world, recovering the important and addressing current problems suitable objectives for critical programming.
(209) In the end, philosophy's practicality in Africa will only be evident in its accomplishments. . . . Perhaps the greatest outcome of philosophy's activities is to enable people to re-imagine their world, to recover what is important while addressing current problems.
Chapter
Eight
Locating
African Philosophy
(213)
The argument has been that these concepts have largely been used to
support spatial philosophy, that is, the tendency to regard
philosophy as establishing and defending an intellectual territory.
Each concept has been shown to be inadequate to that task, and thus,
the project of guaranteeing that African philosophy is both truly
African and truly philosophical cannot be accomplished in this way. .
. . If, however, we as “What is it to do philosophy in this
place?”, a platial question, the ground shifts from the defense of
territory to the explication of place, that is, the consideration of
the relationship between concepts and the places that give them life,
produce them, and refine them. Concepts then are not used to
guarantee anything, but rather are used creatively, to produce new
concepts through asking new questions.
(214) In the chapter on
tradition, instead of using tradition as a guarantee of the
African-ness of African philosophy, we asked how tradition is
transmitted, and how that transmission is a philosophical
issue.
(214) The chapter on reason raised a host of questions,
meant to get past the debate over whether reason in Africa is the
same as elsewhere in the world or is different in some important
way.
(215) The chapter on wisdom was meant to specifically
consider the sage philosophy project.
(215) The chapter on culture
undermined the idea that cultures are pure, but even with that,
questions still remain.
(215) The chapter on language addressed
the idea, present since at least Kagame, that African languages can
undergird African philosophy.
(216) The second half of the chapter
dealt with the question of one “artifact” of language, the
proverb. This section argued that proverbs can be the occasion for
philosophy, but not the basis for philosophy.
(216) Finally, the
chapter on practicality addressed one widespread concept in African
philosophy, that for philosophy to be truly African it must be
applicable to African problems and needs.
(216-217) I have posed
them as emerging from a kind of negative project, that is, to show
how the concepts are not adequate to undergird spatial philosophy.
That is their provenance, tied to the attempt to clarify the project
of African philosophy at a fairly abstract level. But for these
concepts to become truly creative, the questions that engender them
will have to be critiqued and rethought by those who inhabit other
thought-lives.
(217) I hope that others will take this book as a
call to identify the place of concepts, and to create new concepts
appropriate to the place, which can then also serve to transform the
place. I, however, would like to turn back to the schematic sense of
place offered in the introduction. Now that we have worked through a
set of concepts, I am interested in developing a fuller sense of
place, informed by a philosophy-in-place as outlined in this book to
this point. . . . How is it that the concepts that are central to
African philosophy not only can be thought platially, but they also
contribute to a renewed and more robust understanding of place?
THE
PLACE OF QUESTIONS
(217)
One way to understand various traditions in philosophy is to see them
as answers to historically contingent questions. German philosophy,
for example, has no essential core (there are no specific claims or
concepts that all German philosophers must hold in order to be
considered German philosophers), but it does have a history of
disciplined dialogue.
Think about motivating platial, fluid and persistent questions to which texts respond.
(218) The key is the think about the motivating questions to which texts respond. The questions are platial, that is, they are contingent but “viscous,” that is, they are both fluid and persistent. It is rare, though, that much time is spent on the dialogical effort of determining whether questions are the same, and how one's own questions might contain limitations and blind spots.
Goal of generating questions seems applicable to unthought philosophies of computing.
(219)
African philosophy has, by and large, not thought carefully enough
about its own questions, but has allowed its questions to be defined
by a skeptical and dismissive West. . . . The goal of African
philosophy should be to generate and create new questions, which will
make possible new concepts.
(219) Questions come from places. They
are not transcendental, but rather are rooted in ways of reflectively
existing that occur throughout the world. In this sense, viable and
stable populations must have some level of philosophy.
(220) What
happens when philosophy comes into contact with other disciplines?
Questions in literature, for example, or in politics are not the same
as questions in philosophy. Working at the edges of different kinds
of questions does not necessarily dilute those questions.
(221)
Philosophical traditions have places because questions have places,
and the more we are able to recognize them as coming from places, the
more we will be able to put them in constructive conversation, and
generate new questions, and new concepts.
(221) One good example
of taking questions and place seriously comes not from African or
Western philosophy, but from Japanese. Watsuji Tetsuro's
best known work is Fudo
ningen-gakuteki kosatsu,
translated into English as Climate
and Culture.
(221)
It is not apparent at the beginning of his study, but his real
question is “What does it mean to be Japanese?” He means that as
a philosophical question, not a political or social one. His analysis
of contextualized human existence—existence in climate—begins
from a Japanese experience of the world, even though it uses
Heidegger as one of its inspirations.
(221) A more direct example,
again using Heidegger, is in Arto Haapala's
analysis of different traditions' treatments of Heidegger's “The
Origin of the Work of Art.” Haapala makes the case that
philosophical traditions (located platially and linguistically) have
differed on their understanding of the context of Heidegger's work,
and thus asked different questions of the text.
(222) My argument
here is that, as such platial philosophical traditions are
constructed, their encounters with each other can shed light on their
own questions, and in that way allow a much more creative, higher
order (although not more abstract) philosophy.
(222) Differences
of interpretation are really windows into the differences about the
places from which we come. Kant's texts, like any texts, make our
places available to us.
QUESTIONING PLACE
Question
of the Topeme: The Legibility of African Philosophy
(223)
The question of the topeme is really a question of legible place. An
-eme is a unit of the construction of meaningfulness. It is the
element of pre-grammar, re-used to create words, and out of words
sentences. Language is assembled from phonemes, word variants are
assembled based on lexemes, and myths are assembled from “mythemes.”
In each case, there is order, meaning, and legibility that comes
possible because atomic regularized units are available.
See Deleuze and Guattari What is Philosophy on concept assemblies; Lefebvre production of space simultaneously perceived, conceived, lived.
(223-224)
Philosophers' grammar always exists in two places, at both the level
of the explication of life-worlds, and at a more abstract or formal
level of concept manipulation. The assembly of concept manipulation
uses nothing but the topemes for its constructions. . . . Henri
Lefebvre
made
this clear—in accounting for the “production
of space,”
he recognized that we simultaneously exist in perceived space,
conceived space, and lived space. . . . These three form a
“trialectic” for him. . . . The problem comes when we do not
realize that they are all present, when we think that place is just
lived, or just thought.
(224) My argument is that the third
location has been largely ignored, and with it the recognition that
African philosophy is produced in the relationship between its ground
and its thought, and that this relationship is something apart from
either of those.
Question
of Aggregation: African/a Philosophy
(225)
My argument is not that we should not use the term “African/a,”
but rather that its use should be a task rather than an assumption,
and one which (as I will discuss in a moment) needs to attend to the
differences of intensitites.
(225) I want to suggest ways in which
the place of African and African American philosophy is very
different, and that a constructive dialogue between the two rather
than an identification under a larger umbrella is preferable.
(228)
The central question of philosophy must be asked anew in both these
areas. That question is not “Does African (or African American)
philosophy exist?” but rather, “What is it to do philosophy in
this place?” Unlike African philosophy, African American philosophy
does not so clearly have a platial designation. . . . It is more
likely to refer to the identity of a group of people or a culture
(which is how the term is normally used) than to an identifiable
place.
(228-229) When we sojourn, we tarry in a place, but it is
not home. . . . When we dwell, on the other hand, we are at home in a
place.
Philosophy as explication of tension between dwelling and sojourning.
(229)
Philosophy is the explication of that tension between dwelling
and sojourning.
The contours of that are different for African philosophy than they
are for African-American, no less real, but different. My contention
is that culture is that kind of tension between dwelling and
sojourning, that is, a meaningful set of practices for those who
engage in them, but a task nonetheless.
(229) Why is race more of
an issue than it is in African philosophy? Because place itself is
defined differently, and through place, culture and identity.
Question
of Scale: Internationalism
(230)
Is place a subdivision of space or is space an aggregation of place?
With only these two options, a philosophy-in-place faces problems.
Either we begin with space and deduce places (essentially, the
universalist position), or we first have places and then have to
determine how they relate to each other.
(230) Both of these
options lead to “internationalism” in philosophy. In October of
1997, the journal Metaphilosophy
published
a special issue on the question of internationalism in philosophy.
Lens focal point variation versus other layer models.
(231) The question of scale is related to the question of the topeme.
What do we take as a “unit” of philosophical context? . . . To
what extent is any coherent philosophy a unity or identity, and to
what extent is it an aggregation? And if an aggregation, what are its
terms, that is, what is the topeme? This becomes a little like a
lens, which has different focal lengths. We can choose to bring into
focus some point on the scale, which necessarily renders points
nearer and further as indistinct, as organized around the focal
point.
(232) Philosophy-in-place is always a matter of scale.
Issues of scale are buried in philosophical assertions, and exist as
questions placed at the edge of differences. Focusing on one level of
scale allows the questions of another level to recede into the
background, but they do not disappear.
Question
of Borders: Whose Place Is It?
(232)
Places are never univocal, and to make the concept of place pivotal
in the construction of philosophy requires that we deal with
historically unequal, often coercive relationship.
Embed issues of voice in hermeneutic discussions.
(235) The key is to embed issues of voice in the hermeneutic discussion. Hermeneutics of suspicion and of trust must operate simultaneously, and every speaker, including me, is susceptible to questions about motives, assumptions, and intentions, as well as questions about the strength of arguments.
Question
of Milieu
(236)
Our living describes our set of possibilities, not the other way
around. In other words, space does not precede place, but place
precedes space.
(236) As J. Macgregor Wise
puts
it, . . . [quoting] Indeed, the subject is an expression of the
territory, or rather the process of territorialization. Identity is
territory, not subjectivity.
Question
of Intensity
(237)
Intensities point to difference within concepts, not between
concepts. The point, then, is to recognize the ways in which concepts
contain tensions, and make those tensions productive by recognizing
that they always refer back to the contradictory existence that we
have.
(237) African philosophy does not emerge from its resistance
to European thought, then, but from its resistance to its own
spatialized and essentialized forms, as well as its recognition of
difference within itself.
Question
of Provenance
(237)
Provenance refers to the recognition that all present theory is
implicated by its own history, that is, it stands with traces of past
questions, and past forms of reason.
(238) Provenance does not
depend on shared goals in conversation to be true.
Question
of Self and Other
(240)
Otherness has many faces: [fascination, repulsion, desire,
dependence, smugness, appropriation/subsumption, marginalization,
horizon, domination, foil, mirror, body]
How may faces of the Other in computing be characterized presupposes place.
(241) The point is that African philosophy is defined by its ability
to set for itself others for it to understand. The Other of
(neo-)colonialism is an important one, but not the only one. There is
the other of culture, as Theophilus Okere argues. There is the other
of its own tradition, of other world traditions of philosophy, of
religion. The other may be relatively benign, as the trope of the
mirror or the foil may suggest, or it may be insidious, as the trope
of domination may suggest.
(241) The result is a move to the
construction of coherence with the realization of complexity, the
hope of repetition with the realization of power/knowledge, and the
possibility of action with the realization of fallibility.
(241)
And, in this way, the self/other relationship presupposes the
construction of place.
Question
of Listening and Speaking
(242)
The call for dialogue itself betrays a position of power, as terms
such as “agreement” and “cooperation” raise questions about
whose terms that agreement will take.
(243) The problem is that
dialogue is embedded within tradition and reason, it does not rise
above it.
(243) Because of these problems, it is more useful to
focus on listening and speaking. And, in the same way that I have
tried to re-orient philosophy toward questions rather than claims, I
would like to re-orient philosophy primarily toward listening, rather
than speaking.
Focus on listening and speaking; tie to Chun on reading.
(243)
Listening suggests inclination, and an active ordering capacity,
rather than simply the passive act of reception.
(243) Little
attention has been paid to listening in philosophy. The most
important work on listening is by Gemma Corradi Fiumara.
The
Other Side of Language
treats
listening as dialogic, having as its goal unity.
(243) Listening
cannot presuppose accord, nor does it necessarily have accord as its
goal. Rather, it open space for understanding to occur.
(244) To a
much greater degree than Western philosophy, African philosophy
occurs within social communities. If we accept that the telling of
stories or proverbs could be the site for philosophy (although they
themselves may not be philosophy—it depends on the questions we ask
of them), then we must recognize that stories and proverbs are
communal activities. They must be spoken, and as importantly, they
must be listened to. Listening means more than hearing. Listening
suggests engagement.
(244) Therefore, while many philosophers have
argued for the importance of writing in the establishment of
philosophy, I believe that the oral situation allows thought to
continue to be connected to place, while attaining the level of
theory.
(244) In academic philosophy, it is frequently the case
that theories are constructed first, and then applied to new
situations. . . . One might argue that these cases are just examples
of philosophy poorly done, but in fact, any
prior
theorization amounts to speaking before listening, and will always
necessarily cover over more than it uncovers.
(245) But unlike
dialogue, listening must include an aspect of questioning. It is not
just the act of filling an empty container with content. Listening is
not passive absorption. It involves Gadamer's “genuine question.”
Question
of the Trace: Explicating and Creating the Space of Thought
(246)
A “space within which something can take place” is a meaningful
space, a space that is not simply a range of abstract possibilities
but one of meaningful possibilities, along with prereflective
constraints. But these meaningful possibilities convey more than a
list of options, even viable ones.
(247) [Damian] Opata's
discussion of place/space gives us an opening to discuss
philosophy-in-place, and in particular the question of the
trace.
(247-248) The point is to argue that anywhere, Europe,
Africa, or anywhere else, philosophy begins from the lived experience
of people, and from there constructs abstractions and concepts which
are useful, but which are artifacts of philosophy, or the evidence
that philosophy has passed this way.
THE
EXHAUSTION OF PLACE
(248)
Clearly, though, if we take seriously the idea that places are
topemes, assembled from sub-significant elements, that they have
scale, borders, and form a milieu and operate as intensities formed
by self/other and speaking/listening relationships, that they have
provenance and leave traces that lead us to understand what has
currency, we are faced with the question of limit cases.
(248)
Jacob Boehme,
the Lutheran mystic, wrote in 1623 of “gefassete,” a neologism
for him that was a combination of the German word “Gefäß,”
or container, with the verb “fassen,” or grasping. He believed,
in a proto-Nietzschean manner, that entities (including conceptual
ones) came into being when they produced their own containers, or
shells. The difficulty, though, is that those shells can ossify, and
they can also be mistaken for the vital life within, which required
shells to be manifest, but was also limited by them.
(249) Are
there places that are so changing, so desperate, unpredictable and
inhuman, that they hardly qualify as places, and thus concepts can
barely take hold? Can one do philosophy in a concentration camp? In a
refugee camp? In a famine? What would it mean for concepts to live up
to the debts and duties of these places?
(249) Place, then, is not
a universal philosophical solution. . . . It does not abolish the
need for spatialized philosophy, but puts it in its rightful place,
as a codifier of concepts but not a creator of concepts. It is a
starting point and guide for questioning. Derrida's challenge from
the beginning of the introduction, then must also complete this
study: “Where does the question of the right to philosophy take
place? Where does it today find its most appropriate place?”
Janz, Bruce B. Philosophy in an African Place. Lantham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009. Print.