Pan-Africanism and Epistemologies of the South

in Theoria
Author:
Pascah Mungwini University of South Africa mungwp@unisa.ac.za

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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2017.6415310
Keywords:
decolonisation; epistemic justice; epistemologies; Global South; memorial; pan-Africanism
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Abstract

The topic of pan-Africanism today brings to the fore questions of the unfinished humanistic project of decolonisation in Africa. When Kwasi Wiredu (1996) calls for the need for conceptual decolonisation in Africa, he recognises the intellectual price the continent continues to pay as a result of conceptual confusions and distortions caused by a colonial conceptual idiom implanted in the African mind. Reflecting on the potential which the ideology of pan-Africanism holds for the continent’s future, my position is that the same passion and energy which brought about political independence should now be redirected to the epistemic front. A new form of pan-Africanism on the intellectual front is required to galvanise Africans to develop and deploy in their thinking veritable categories of analysis born out of the experiences of being African in Africa. It is in the generation and application of these alternative epistemologies that the future of the continent lies.

Contributor Notes

Mungwini Pascah is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology, University of South Africa. E-mail: mungwp@unisa.ac.za

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Theoria

A Journal of Social and Political Theory

Cover Theoria
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
22
Keywords:
decolonisation; epistemic justice; epistemologies; Global South; memorial; pan-Africanism
Print Publication Date:
01 Dec 2017
Online Publication Date:
01 Dec 2017
Copyright:
© Berghahn Books 2017

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