Kwasi Wiredu and
Beyond: The Text, Writing and Thought in Africa
Sanya Osha
Published May 2005; 240 pages; index ISBN 2-86978-150-4
‘This study offers a comprehensive exploration of the work of
Kwasi Wiredu, arguably Africa’s leading philosopher. It not only
provides an insight into the richness of his thought but also
the tensions by which it is traversed, both of which contribute
to the energy that informs Wiredu’s work’.
F. Abiola Irele,
Harvard University, USA.
‘A
philosophical reflection that takes on one of the leading
thinkers who has worked in bringing back to Africa the agency of
knowledge and through it promote an epistemology of Africa’s
liberation can only be welcome. ... This reflection by Africa’s
young philosopher strikes a vibrant chord and it is with great
interest I welcome a contribution, I believe, whose time has
come’.
Mammo Muchie,
Middlesex University, UK.
Kwasi Wiredu is one of Africa’s foremost philosophers, whose
thinking on conceptual decolonization in contemporary African
systems of thought is well known. Wiredu advocates a
re-examination of current African epistemic formations in order
to subvert unsavoury aspects of tribal cultures embedded in
modern African thought, as well as deconstruct the unnecessary
Western epistemologies to be found in African philosophical
practices. In this book Sanya Osha argues that Wiredu’s apparent
schematism falls short as a viable project and suggests that
because of the very hybridity of postcoloniality, projects
seeking to retrieve the precolonial heritage are bound to be
marred at several levels. Language itself presents a major
problem which Wiredu’s thesis does not fully address.
Additionally, the postcolonial milieu with its welter of social
disarticulations presents numerous problems of its own to
Wiredu’s project of conceptual decolonisation. To buttress his
argument, the author draws on postcolonial theory as advanced by
figures such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Abiola
Irele and Biodun Jeyifo among other scholars.
Sanya Osha
has
a PhD in Philosophy and taught the discipline in Nigerian
universities for several years. His main areas of research
include African studies, literature, cultural studies and
postcolonial theory. He is currently with the Centre for Civil
Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Africa: 10,000 CFA; non-CFA zone: 20,00 USD; Rest of the world:
25.00 USD
|
Introduction |
v |
Chapter One
The (De)
Colonising Subject: Speech and Imperialism
|
1 |
|
Chapter Two
Weapons of
Victimage: Decolonisation as Critical Discourse
|
34 |
|
Chapter Three
Kwasi Wiredu and Fanon's Legacy
|
62 |
|
Chapter Four
Articulation of a Mode: Wiredu on Marx
|
100 |
|
Chapter Five
Wiredu and the Boundaries of Thought |
111 |
|
Chapter Six
Africa as Text |
130 |
|
Chapter Seven
Theorising the Postcolony: Parricide,
Belonging, Exile |
151 |
|
Conclusion |
184 |
|
Bibliography |
187 |
|
Index |
199 |
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