De-Westernization - On African Philosophy

Nadia Yala Kisukidi

What does the “decolonization of philosophy » mean? Is « philosophy » the real object of such a critical operation? Lecture of the performative discussion event UNEXPECTED LESSONS – Decolonizing Memory and Knowledge, June 11-12 2021 at Academy of the Arts, Berlin, in Nairobi and online.

At the core of the philosophical discourse, a strange desire can be emphasized: a desire of abstraction – that is a spiritual desire of death: to erase the faces, the skins, and the topoi that are the material conditions of the production of the philosophical discourse. This desire of spiritual death bears a name: this is the movement of the universal.

As this lecture will try to draw, the idea of « epistemic decolonization » has nothing to do with a new expression of theoretical melancholia but with a certain understanding of remaining alive. Thus, it breaks with the classic idea that the subjects of philosophy have to be dead to their own bodies.

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© Emilie Noteris
UNEXPECTED LESSONS — De-Westernization - On African Philosophy – German
UNEXPECTED LESSONS — De-Westernization - On African Philosophy – English