Contemporary African Philosophy and Decolonial Thought

A condensed, point-by-point summary of the module, for reviewing right before a test or exam.

1. Achille Mbembe and the Critique of Postcolonial Power. Mbembe theorizes the postcolony's excess of power and the necropolitical "right to kill."
2. Decoloniality: Quijano and the Coloniality of Power. Quijano's "coloniality of power" argues that a racial hierarchy from colonial conquest still structures the modern world.
3. Walter Mignolo and Border Thinking. Mignolo's "border thinking" seeks knowledge from the colonial exteriority of Western modernity, not simply against it.
4. Paulin Hountondji and the Critique of Ethnophilosophy. Hountondji attacked "ethnophilosophy" for mistaking a people's collective worldview for individually argued philosophy.
5. African Feminism and Womanism. African scholars developed womanism and STIWANism as alternatives to what they saw as a Western-centered feminism.
6. Epistemic Justice and the Decolonization of the University. Fricker's epistemic injustice and African student protests reframed whose knowledge counts as legitimate.
7. Ubuntu and Decolonial Ethics in Dialogue. Ubuntu's relational personhood was central to South Africa's reconciliation process and now informs decolonial ethics.
8. The Global South in Contemporary Comparative Philosophy. Santos's "epistemologies of the South" reframes the Global South as a political category and pushes philosophy to diversify.