Suchergebnisse

This book puts contemporary calls for decolonisation in context. Featuring an interdisciplinary team of scholars from around the world, the book explores and critically assesses the diverse theoretical visions which inform calls for decolonisation of the mind today

Social equality, relative property and marginalized groups / Jonathon Wolff -- Racial equality / Charles W. Mills -- Epistemic contribution as a central human capability / Miranda Fricker -- Equality of intelligibility / Daniel Putnam -- Capability luck egalitarianism / Bekka Williams -- From well-faring to well-being: prospects for a metric of liberal egalitarian justice / George Hull -- Hierarchy and social respect: friends or enemies? / Tom P.S. Angier -- Equality of freedom / Lucy Allais -- An African egalitarianism: bringing community to bear on equality / Thaddeus Metz -- Equality, liberty and modern constitutionalism / David Bilchitz -- Forward-looking equalization: can it subsume historical redress claims? / Daryl Glaser -- What is equality in higher education? / Ann E. Cudd -- Does the gendered division of labor undermine citizenship? / Gina Schouten -- Social equality and economic institutions: arguing for workplace democracy / Pierre-Yves Néron

Lungisile Ntsebeza's empirical work on rule and resistance in South Africa's countryside has a subterranean philosophical seam. Implicit in both his historical studies and his contemporary fieldwork-based studies of rural conflict is a philosophical question: what constitutes adequate political representation? Ntsebeza's work, exemplifying engaged scholarship, is rich in evaluative insights. But the conception of democracy which is his explicit evaluative yardstick is both too narrow and too indeterminate. It leaves no space for the crucial work of representation carried out by unelected non-governmental organisations and local organisations; and we are given no concrete detail about how participatory and representative democracy are to be integrated, as Ntsebeza insists they should be. Showing that his writings can be brought into conversation with approaches to political representation in contemporary political philosophy, this article argues that Ntsebeza's evaluative work is most helpfully understood as identifying and diagnosing several pathologies of representation. Normative theory is often most constructive when it articulates distinctive types of system failure, rather than simply stating ideals. Each of the pathologies of representation recoverable from Ntsebeza's analytical work is a recurring way in which rural South Africans have been politically misrepresented or otherwise inadequately represented – a type of flaw which all systems of representation must guard against.

In African countries there has been a surge of intellectual interest in foregrounding ideas and thinkers of African origin--in philosophy as in other disciplines--that have been unjustly ignored or marginalized. African scholars have demonstrated that precolonial African cultures generated ideas and arguments which were at once truly philosophical and distinctively African, and several contemporary African thinkers are now established figures in the philosophical mainstream. Yet, despite the universality of its themes, relevant contributions from African philosophy have rarely permeated global philosophical debates. Critical intellectual excavation has also tended to prioritize precolonial thought, overlooking more recent sources of home-grown philosophical thinking such as Africa's intellectually rich liberation movements. This book demonstrates the potential for constructive interchange between currents of thought from African philosophy and other intellectual currents within philosophy. Chapters authored by leading and emerging scholars: recover philosophical thinkers and currents of ideas within Africa and about Africa, bringing them into dialogue with contemporary mainstream philosophy; foreground the relevance of African theorizing to contemporary debates in epistemology, philosophy of language, moral/political philosophy, philosophy of race, environmental ethics and the metaphysics of disability; make new interventions within on-going debates in African philosophy; consider ways in which philosophy can become epistemically inclusive, interrogating the contemporary call for 'decolonization' of philosophy. Showing how foregrounding Africa--its ideas, thinkers and problems--can help with the project of renewing and improving the discipline of philosophy worldwide, this book will stimulate and challenge everyone with an interest in philosophy, and is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate students, postgraduate students and scholars of African and Africana philosophy

This volumeprobes the interdisciplinary relationships between African literature and African philosophy within the context of epistemological decolonization and the (South) African scholarly transformation project. The contributors map out how philosophy and literature can be viewed as mutually enriching disciplines within and for Africa.