Kwasi Wiredu and Beyond: The Text, Writing and Thought in Africa
‘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.
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
Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
The (De) Colonising Subject: Speech and Imperialism
Chapter Two
Weapons of Victimage: Decolonisation as Critical Discourse
Chapter Three
Kwasi Wiredu and Fanon's Legacy
Chapter Four
Articulation of a Mode: Wiredu on Marx
Chapter Five
Wiredu and the Boundaries of Thought
Chapter Six
Africa as Text
Chapter Seven
Theorising the Postcolony: Parricide, Belonging, Exile
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
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