Decolonisation, Africanisation and the Philosophy Curriculum

Edwin Etieyibo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351336154
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

This book, appropriately titled Decolonisation, Africanisation and the Philosophy Curriculum, signposts and captures issues about philosophy, the philosophy curriculum, and its decolonisation and Africanisation. This topic is of critical importance at present for the discipline of philosophy, not the least because philosophy and the current philosophical canons are perceived to be improvised by virtue of their historical marginalisation and exclusion of other valuable and important philosophical traditions and perspectives. The continued marginalisation and exclusion of one such philosophical tradition and perspective, i.e. African philosophy connects to issues of space contestations and raise questions of justice.

The chapters in this book engage with all of these issues, and they also attempt to make sense of what it will mean for philosophy and the philosophy curriculum to be decolonised and Africanised; how to go about achieving this task; and what the challenges and problems are that confront efforts to decolonise and Africanise the philosophy curriculum. Furthermore, the contributors initiate discussions on the value and importance of non-western philosophical traditions and perspectives, and by so doing challenge the dormant and triumphant narrative and hegemony of Western philosophy, as well as the centrality accorded to it in philosophical discourse.

The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in the South African Journal of Philosophy.

Afri-decolonisation, decolonisation, Africanisation and the task of Africanising the philosophy curriculum

Edwin Etieyibo

Introduction

There are difficulties associated with decolonisation, Africanisation and Afri-decolonisation discourses. While some of the difficulties are conceptual in nature others are practical. In this chapter, I discuss and gesture towards some of these difficulties with a focus on the former set of difficulties. In addition to this, I embark on a disentangling exercise where I attempt to distinguish between decolonisation and Africanisation. The fruitfulness of the disentangling exercise, among other things, is that it points us to the conclusion that Africanisation is broader than decolonisation; that Africanisation involves both colonial and non-colonial foreign and unAfrican influences; that Africanisation that involves non-colonial paradigms and resources is “partial non-colonial Africanisation”; and that Africanisation that involves colonial paradigms and resources is Afri-decolonisation, which is “partial colonial Africanisation” or Africanisation that coincides with decolonisation or decolonisation that is African-oriented.

The fostering of social norms and the development of social and intuitional capacities in every community require the development of the intellectual and mental capacities of members of the community. In order to do this it is important that the community and its members follow through on some program of formal and informal education, where education is taken to include the facilitation of learning and the act or process of acquiring and imparting particular knowledge or skills, values, norms, beliefs, and habits. If education is important for the development of the intellectual and mental capacities of individuals, then at least within the formal aspect of education, it is imperative to pay attention to the content of what forms the education curriculum, namely, subjects, lessons and topics to be taught and learned.

The way that I have characterised education and the place of the curriculum in education vis-à-vis its contents above does seem to suggest that the curriculum is simply about its contents. This is wrong and misleading. A more accurate understanding of the curriculum will take it as being about what may be called the “educational experience,” where educational experience includes things such as attitudes, values, norms, beliefs, dispositions, and worldviews that one gets to form and reform, learn and unlearned, etc. If we keep this point in mind as well as take to heart the apt reminder by the American educator, William Pinar (2004) that there is a relationship between curriculum theory and educational experience, then it is paramount and imperative that a properly and profoundly calibrated curriculum goes beyond the lessons, topics and academic content of the curriculum.¹ The point simpliciter is that if the curriculum, as educational experience, is not just about the lessons, topics and academic content that are taught in a specific course or program but rather extend beyond these to encompass the attitudes, values, norms, beliefs, dispositions, and worldviews that are learnt, unlearnt, formed and reformed, etc., then as we proceed with approaches to curriculum development we have to give proper attention to the philosophies and worldviews underpinning the lessons, topics and academic content of the curriculum.

The point about paying attention to the philosophies and worldviews underpinning the lessons, topics and academic content of the curriculum in our process of curriculum development simply suggest that given that a whole lot of cultural elements and paraphernalia are brought to bear in the curriculum, as educational experience, it is important that the curriculum is as elastic, flexible and expansive as possible. It is elastic, flexible and expansive when it is capable of incorporating as much as possible many diverse cultural norms, values and worldviews. Unless of course one is a “cultural imperialist” or “Western universalist,” namely, subscribes to the view of some superior and dominant culture.² This idea of an elastic, flexible and expansive curriculum is what, it seems to me, discussions about the decolonisation, Africanisation and transformation of the curriculum is more or less about.

From the foregoing, it will be right then to claim that it is an understatement to say that curriculum transformation and development is important. Limiting this discussion to tertiary institutions, part of the reason for holding that curriculum transformation and development is important has to do with the fact that the student body and universities have changed over the years. Some of these changes largely have to do with the way that universities are presently organised and constituted. Some of these changes have to do with factors like massification, managerlism and information dissemination or accessing of information. With regard to the last factor (the dissemination or accessing of information) there have been massive changes in the way information used to be accessed and how it is accessed today. Previously it used to be accessed hierarchically but today it is accessed randomly and chaotically. This has implications for the diversity of the student body and their capabilities to engage with lecturers and other students. If this is right, then the claim that I want to advance (although I won’t be arguing for) is that the ability or capacity of universities to adequately engage with these changes is more or less connected with a properly adapted, calibrated and transformed curriculum.

The last point I want to make as part of my introductory and preliminary remarks is that discussions about decolonisation, Africanisation, and transformation in the context of schools and education have occupied academics, students, researchers, policymakers, administrators, educationists, and other stakeholders in the education sector for some time. That is, discussions about these issues neither began today nor only recently.³ Of more recent though and specifically in the South African context it has become clear that discussions about decolonisation, Africanisation, and transformation are closely tied to social, economic and political issues.⁴ Those familiar with the South African socio-political environment and higher educational system will note that in the last two and a half years or so students have been protesting over issues of increase in tuition and free education in higher institutions — protests that have been spread and popularised under the movement/hashtag #feesmustfall, which may have achieved some success following President Jacob Zuma’s announcement of free education for poor and working class students during his address to delegates at the ANC’s 54th national conference on 16 December, 2017 in Gauteng. Instructive of these protests and the issues surrounding them is that the demands of students and the various reasons offered for the protests are layered by discourses in decolonisation and transformation of the academy and education curriculum.

I have engaged in the above preliminaries in order to help set the stage for what this chapter is mostly about, which is the exploration of some of the issues in and around decolonisation and Africanisation. I will be examining these issues by focusing on a number of topics. The first has to do with the disentangling of decolonisation from Africanisation. And the second is pointing to some of the tasks that are involved in decolonisation and Africanisation discourse. With regard to the first, I shall attempt to disentangle decolonisation from Africanisation by delimiting the scope of both concepts. The delimitation exercise is a way of showing that a correct understanding of Africanisation discourse is one that takes Africanisation as discussions about decolonisation in a sense, albeit decolonisation in a particular space. That is to say, decolonisation in Africa and in respect of some particular political, economic and social cultural experience (that is colonialism). It is for this reason that I introduce the term “Afri-decolonisation” to capture the sense of a decolonisation project that is embarked on within the African space and that speaks to a specific experience, that is decolonisation that is Africanisation.

Decolonisation

I must point out right from the outset that when one talks of decolonisation one is using a term that has a long history in social and political discourse — a term that goes as far back as the 1940s (precisely, the years after World War II). When the term was introduced immediately following the events of the Second World War it was used to refer to the dismantlement of the colonial empires, many of which were established throughout the world in the 19^th century, some of which go back to the 16^th and 17^th centuries and some as early as the 14^th and 15^th centuries. On this political slant to decolonisation, the term is generally used to denote straightforwardly any of the following: the undoing of colonialism; the withdrawal of a colonial power (or settler in another territory or country) from that territory or colony; the acquisition of political or economic independence by a former colony. Let us call this sense of decolonisation “political decolonisation.” So for example, in terms of this notion of decolonisation as the undoing of colonialism this refers to the displacement of political power or control formerly expressed over a colony by a colonialist or colonial power or coloniser (a territory that establishes and maintains its domination over dependent territories, i.e. the colonies or colonised). Put differently, there is political decolonisation when a nation or territory (the former colony or colonised) which used to be either under the full or partial political control of another country or occupied by a colonial power (or coloniser) “overthrows” this form of domination or political control. This is usually what is referred to when a country or nation is said to gain or acquire independence.

However, when we talk of decolonisation in education the idea is not so much about political control or the dethroning of political and economic domination. Rather, this notion of decolonisation refers to the content and substance of knowledge and knowledge production. We shall call this sense of decolonisation “educational decolonisation” to distinguish it from “political decolonisation.”⁵ Of course, political control as well as politics may be involved in this form of decolonisation. However, the way in which control is implicated in talk of educational decolonisation is different from the way political control and politics are involved in political decolonisation. I think that political control and politics feeds into educational decolonisation discourse only insofar as one speaks of political control and politics as means towards decolonisation or one attempt to locate the power relations that are involved in the decolonisation discourse and process. In what follows my focus will be on educational decolonisation.

As brief as the above discussion on the distinction between political decolonisation and educational decolonisation is, one thing that it highlights and which seems to me to be apparent is that any talk of decolonisation is not an easy talk. Conceptually, a lot of controversies surround it, as to what it means or what it doesn’t mean. Here are a few indications of what is generally said about decolonisation both in folk and popular discourses and by some scholars.

D1: Decolonisation is the advancement of the interests and welfare of Africans, instead of Eurocentric ones (from folk and popular discourses).

D2: Decolonisation as a process of recentring Africa and of the search for a liberating perspective within which to understand Africans qua Africans in relationship with the rest of the world (Mungwini 2016, 523–536).

D3: Decolonisation as preventing universities or higher institutions in Africa from becoming mere extensions of former colonial powers (from folk and popular discourses).

D4: Decolonisation is the replacement of works from Europe or the global North with local theorists and African authors (from folk and popular discourses).

D5: Decolonisation concerns “the consciousness and rejection of values, norms, customs and worldviews imposed by the [former] colonisers” (Césaire 2000, 89).

D6: Decolonisation in the context of conceptual decolonisation has both negative and positive aspects. The negative aspect is about the avoidance or crawling back “through a critical conceptual self-awareness the unexamined assimilation in our thought (that is, in the thought of contemporary African philosophers) of the conceptual frameworks embedded in the foreign philosophical traditions that have had an impact on African life and thought.” And on the positive side, decolonisation concerns the judicious exploitation of “the resources of our own indigenous conceptual schemes in our philosophical meditations on even the most technical problems of contemporary philosophy” (Wiredu 1996, 136; see also Wiredu, 1995).

From the remarks above, one would have noticed that there is reference to two forms or aspects of decolonisation: radical and moderate decolonisation. On a radical aspect of decolonisation, the rejection of the framework and resources (values, norms, customs, worldviews, etc.) of the former colony (or colonial territory), i.e. the colonised is absolute and total. That is, for any x, if x is a colonial framework and resources, and if it can be isolated from any y (where y is taken to be part of some indigenous or local framework and resources), th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Afri-decolonisation, decolonisation, Africanisation and the task of Africanising the philosophy curriculum
• 2. A defence of Wiredu’s project of conceptual decolonisation
• 3. “Yielding ground to none”: Normative perspectives on African philosophy and its curricula
• 4. Teaching African philosophy in African institutions of higher learning: The implications for African renaissance
• 5. Four questions on curriculum development in contemporary South Africa
• 6. Teacher and student with a critical pan-epistemic orientation: An ethical necessity for Africanising the educational curriculum in Africa
• 7. Why ought the philosophy curriculum in universities in Africa be Africanised?
• 8. Space contestations and the teaching of African philosophy in African universities
• 9. The question of recentring Africa: Thoughts and issues from the global South
• 10. On a contextual South African philosophy curriculum: Towards an option for the excluded
• 11. Can the philosophy curriculum be Africanised? An examination of the prospects and challenges of some models of Africanisation
• 12. On Africanising the philosophy curricula: Challenges and prospects
• 13. Pursuing the agenda of Africanising philosophy in Africa: Some possibilities
• 14. Teaching African philosophy alongside Western philosophy: Some advice about topics and texts
• 15. Africanising the philosophy curriculum through teaching African culture modules: An African Renaissance act
• 16. Some comments on Africanising a philosophy curriculum
• 17. Problematising Western philosophy as one part of Africanising the curriculum
• 18. Pitfalls of Negritude: Solace-driven tertiary sector reform
• Index