You Have No Past, No History: Philosophy, Literature and the Re-Invention of Africa
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Date
2016-08-31
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Academic Journals
Abstract
Africa has been a victim of misrepresentation since the advent of colonialism. This paper, which is
largely based on textual analysis, examines how African philosophy and literature intersect in an
attempt to bring about a better understanding of Africa in both the West and Africa itself. The study
argues that the intersection of literature and philosophy in African literary discourse we witness is an
inevitable consequence of the historical events (including colonialism) that conspired to condemn the
continent—as a body—to subjection in the Western world of thought, and the response that this reality
solicited from Africans facing the challenges of the Western engineered modernity. The study examines
the writing of some of the pioneering modern African writers who have tried to undermine ideas
propagated by philosophers such as Hegel—in a typical Eurocentric tradition—to undermine Africa, a
continent they hardly understood. The objective is to show that through literature, African writers were
able to reveal more about African thought than what has been readily acknowledged.
Description
Keywords
Africa, African literature, African philosophy, Intersection, African discourse
Citation
Andindilile, M., 2016. You have no past, no history: Philosophy, literature and the re-invention of Africa. International Journal of English and Literature, 7(8), pp.127-134.