Recently I heard someone say academia is ‘one of the few remaining guild systems’ in the world. I thought that was an interesting metaphor to help understand how things work. Guilds are in principle ‘flat’, family-like organizations to guard and promote the interests of craftspeople. They cooperatively install boards that consist of peers that attend to all things important to their members and those who use their produce. They look at prices or wages, rights and duties, but will also set up a quality system to guarantee the level of craftpersonship, and they regulate conditions for the peers to self-organize their craft. Any guild system deals with pressures from the market, the governing powers of the country it exists in, and material and financial infrastructures, so although the craftspeople know a large degree of autonomy in their work, they are never completely free to organize themselves and the way they want to work. In academia we see the struggles resulting from internal needs and external pressures playing out historically in diverse ways through time.
As an academic you have to travel a long path of training and gaining craftpersonship. You can only join the ‘guild’ through selective studies, which are provided by ‘masters’ – experienced academics that know all essential aspects of the trade. When you manage to get through the process of learning and being assessed, you can become a peer yourself – a recognized craftsperson who may (or may not) join the guild, academia. When entering is your wish, you go through subsequent and in principle unending further training and feedback rounds, evaluations and assessments, ideally moving up through a hierarchy of positions and then gaining, ideally, some renown for your work, among the peers themselves, among outsiders who can use your research products, or among a generally interested public. This may sound like a cumbersome path and it often is; still it has many rewards too, such as friendships and working partnerships with people with knowledge similar and complementary to your own. There are individual moments of pride and happiness as well, when something you worked on for a long time produces a result. Teaching and learning also can be exciting from both ends – as a student when you grasp something (when it ‘clicks’ in your mind, the ‘Aha!’ feeling) and as a teacher when you manage to bring something across (when you kind of ‘feel’ the click happening in a student, or when you are lucky, in an entire class).
Now to the real topic of this blog post: what did I experience and do as a philosopher in these past years, and why was I silent here mostly? In fact I went through new steps of the endless process, which were joyful as much as they were tough, and experiencing such things deeply, it was just difficult to pick something out to write about. Now let me pick out something here now – concerning publishing. Scholarly publishing too has many forms and stages of craftpersonship. I already had done most types of publishing – articles in academic and general journals, a monograph (single authored book), then others, first mostly in Dutch, my own language, and later in English. Co-editing is a sub-category of things to learn and master, and I tried that too in Dutch collective volumes first, and then, in 2017, a first English volume, produced together with one of nicest research networks I have been in over the years (the Theological Ethics network). Soon after that publication I got the chance to work on no less than two volumes in the field of African Philosophy, on the invitation of Canadian professor Mahmoud Masaeli, who passionately has worked for years to bring suppressed voices in philosophy in print, to promote a global dialogue on global issues.
The production of these books, learning new aspects of the craft on the way, took quite some years. A four person editorial team was formed, including scholars with expertise in the field such as Louise Müller from the Netherlands and Bolaji Bateye from Nigeria, to transform Mahmoud’s initial two outlines to the fully developed two books that highlight African views on Development. As Louise and I were both in the Netherlands, we formed a core team within the team, doing all things that needed close collaboration, whereas the others joined in for the long distance editorial work. Finding the right series to publish our books in, making high quality book proposals, working with authors from over ten countries and several continents; preparing the manuscripts, while writing our own contributions, going through several rounds of peer review – it was a long and interesting learning process. In the meantime the covid pandemic slowed things down and also changed everything in very personal ways (as some authors lost family members, many of us at some time got sick ourselves, the publisher had to slow work down, everyone was dealing with fear and loneliness in some way), but at long last, we got to the end result: two beautifully published and interesting books, of which one already won an award! Being a visually oriented person, I think the photos of actual Kente cloths with symbols that express the topics of both books (an idea of Louise Müller, who also realized this) provide both volumes with more than just a cover, you can judge for yourself below.
From this part of my academic journey I learned more than I can express in these few words. Many diverse aspects of such a work – the technical as well as the interpersonal aspects of editing texts from so many different countries with different writing and publishing cultures being among the most interesting. Now this work took quite some years and has now taken up a large part of this blogpost, whereas its aim was to write an academic update about 2023 and 2024. In these years much more happened at my end of ‘the guild’, especially in the Bantu Philosophy project, that also led to a book publication. At my university I got some new tasks and responsibilities, and had to learn more new things, which included also taking another training course. But now I wrote enough for today, more experiences and reflections are for another time.
Photo of a library catalogue system with index cards (image Wikipedia)
Of all the new tools that academics have gained access to since the appearance of the home computer and the laptop or notebook computer, the best things for me is still word-processing. The fact that while typing, you can erase and retype words, cut and paste paragraphs, and change formatting at any time, is the best thing for someone who writes. No more ‘Tipp-ex’ to correct typing errors, no more re-typing entire pages because you need to change the order of the argumentation, no more planning of lay-out all beforehand to get a tidy document. It has been a life-changer.
Apart from our word-processing software, many other useful apps and programs help academics nowadays to speed up the research and publication process, and increase the quality and safety of data-collection. I must confess I have tried some, and often rejected them again when I learned how to use them (yes, I don’t use a reference manager, I adapt and correct all my bibliographies by hand). The main reason being that because of my pre-computer-age training to have an eagle-eye for tiny grammatical and spelling mistakes, I still do better in many respects than the software. I have had to correct too many ‘improvements’ made by a grammar and spelling-checker, and I find entering titles in a predesigned reference system cumbersome and irritating. Processing words however, as an academic writer, I still find one of the best inventions ever.
Now, while teaching the Bachelor Thesis Seminar (a course to support and instruct Bachelor students of Philosophy in and about all the aspects of producing their thesis) these past few years, I came to realize that most potential academics-to-be, having grown up more or less with a smarphone in their hand, use most of the technology available for academic work without ever thinking about how it is made, and what category choices were made in its design process. Choises made by IT specialists, and unknown librarians and publishing support people. As one of the most important characteristics of critical academic work is its grounding in an awareness of the material and social foundations and limitations of what we can know, I became more and more interested in doing Slow Science as a means to find out what we are doing. To raise such awareness in class, I read and discuss with the students the chapter from the 1980’s classic by Umberto Eco How to Write a Thesis on the Index Cards.
The fun thing about index cards is that students hardly know what they are, or how organizing research finds through them worked. Also, nobody realizes themselves anymore that before the introduction of the digital search engine, we had to use actual physical search manuals made by librarians to find our way through the meters and meters long cupboards with drawers full of index cards, in order to find a publication that might help our research. That was slow science if there ever was! Even then there was an opaqueness in the process, as the librarians and other support workers would have made choices in accordance with academic presuppositions of the time (say a pro-Western bias, or a bias in favor of natural sciences over humanities) that made creative and/or critical research somewhat tough by times. However, one would sooner see the bias, as the traces of who made the supportive infrastructure were more visible – their fingerprints were all over the scene, so to say.
Now when we turn to doing Philosophy, it springs to the eye that it has become faster and faster over time. There are more publications, more authors, more courses, and all available at a growing speed. One factor in the rapidification of Philosophy is also the still growing dominance of the analytic approach in the discipline. Analytic philosophy offers a methodological approach that works invisible like a computer program: its main orientation is towards concepts, their clear definition, and the study of how they relate to each other, what is their reach and how to change this reach to make more refined conceptual ‘cuts’ to describe and explain the world we live in. This focus, helpful and important as it is, has narrowed the horizon of questions asked by philosophers. Their work often leaps over contextual, historical and existential questions related to the use and embeddedness of concepts. I want to argue that introducing Slow Science for Philosophy can help to repair critical omissions that are thus made.
A start of Slow Science for Philosophy could encompass the following questions:
where do concepts discussed come from, what was the historical context they arose in, for what questions did they gain predominance in discourse?
are texts from which we learn our concepts uncorrupted? Or do we use versions of classic texts that were adapted to historical contexts that are not ours anymore, or that were neither the ones of the original writers?
what about translation? Do we use versions of Kant, Aristotle, and other conceptually influential philosophers that translate the languages they were written in correctly? Or do we not even know if we, readers, and they, the writers, have been talking about the same things at all?
what about the support and financing of our research? Is it the national government, are they semi-governmental funding institutions, or is it the corporate world that is paying our research? Does it make a difference for our conceptual analyses? And if so, what can we do about it?
would doing some investigative work for free change our research questions?
what about sources, libraries, publishers, book-sellers, and other material infrastructures we need for our research – do they influence our use of concepts?
what about exchange of philosophical work, on conferences, in blogs or publications (OA or with limited access)? How accessible is it and to whom, what does that do to our conceptual language?
do our academic well-defined concepts exclude or suppress certain types of knowledge or investigation? Are there any discriminatory realities behind potential exclusions or suppressions?
Et cetera…
I could make up more critical questions, and you, my reader, may have others than I have thought up. Feel welcome to post them in a comment. This blog post is meant to initiate reflection on what we do when we try to publish more and more, fly around the globe to as many conferences as possible, do automated scoping reviews and co-author publications to disseminate results faster. You may have noticed that I gave a number to this post, as I intend and hope to come back to the issue of Slow Science in Philosophy, going into different aspects such as a) Text Reading, b) understanding Situatedness, c) aspects of Publishing, d) Travel and Lodging while connecting to the research community, and more. Maybe I will not discuss all the mentioned topics, or come across others that seem more relevant. It has to be developed slowly, that speaks for itself!
In 2021, I posted under the above heading three papers of students from my course Diversifying Philosophy. It is now already for the ninth year that I teach this course, while Academia, with varying success, undertakes diversification of its curriculum and its staff. The students attending our English Philosophy Bachelor program are already as diverse as possible (structural hindrances of studying abroad that are a sad reality aside)! This led, this year especially, to lively exchanges between the students, in class and in the breaks, as they shared the knowledge they possessed from their home countries, and thus enriched our ways to see the world. Next year the course will have a new title and focus: Intercultural Philosophy and Postcolonial Theory, and this year I already ran it with a selection of readings in that field as a pilot. I read many interesting papers from the students, and am proud of the work they did! It is time I share once again one of those, by Maira van Emden, who added to the course, by arguing that it should include more of the contributions to the field from Latin American thinkers. I wish you enjoy reading it as much as I did!
The invisibility of Latin American philosophy: Internal and engrained colonial echoes
Suburbio Azul by León Ricaurte – picture taken from Wikimedia Commons.
Introduction
A surge of desire to diversify the academic canon has pervaded the academic realm. Rather than merely upholding Western ideals, academia now strives to offer a well-rounded view of scientific inquiry. Courses like Diversifying Philosophy aim to underscore the underlying power structures and inherent biases within the philosophical world. Consequently, a more diverse and colorful philosophical canon has emerged. From amplifying the voice of people of color to learning about the wisdom of Asian philosophers, the canon is slowly but surely enriching. However, despite the interesting array of fields of thought, as a philosophy student, I have not once encountered a Latin American philosopher within the curriculum. The Latin American continent is a vast one with many Spanish or Portuguese-speaking scholars, so how come it is so under-exposed in philosophical education? There is philosophical education in Latin American universities, but Western thought, such as that of Hegel, Kant, and Marx, still holds a position of dominance. In addition, modern works by European scholars are overrepresented in Latin American universities, whereas works by Spanish and Portuguese-speaking authors are often overlooked.
This paper will dive into Latin American Philosophy’s complex historical, cultural, and internal challenges to come to a distinct and inclusive solution for the problem of identity and lack of representation in the global discourse. Furthermore, essential steps for decolonizing and liberating the philosophical narrative will be explored.
Latin America’s colonial history
To deconstruct this issue, the history of Latin America and its people should be examined. This history is inseparable from colonialism. Before Columbus found the Americas in the 15th century and turned Latin America into the continent we know today, indigenous peoples were the custodians of the land. As James Maffie, a prominent academic in the field of indigenous philosophy, articulates, these pre-Columbian peoples had a rich tradition of philosophical thinking preceding Western occupation. Fundamental questions, all too familiar to the European tradition, that inquire into the nature of being, ethics, and knowledge were pondered on by various Aztec and Andean thinkers. Nevertheless, Western, and pre-Columbian philosophies at the time proved hard to marry. While indigenous philosophy perceived humans as “a part of the world” and “of the world”, Western ideals positioned humanity at the center of the world with the God-given right to exploit the natural world. (Maffie, 2010) Western ideals at the time were grounded in the Christian religion, whereas pre-Columbian thought did not honor a deity as much as it honored the living world, including themselves as an integrated part. Thus, lacking in the Christian godly values, missionaries viewed indigenous philosophy as primitive and superstitious. Nowadays, amidst the climate crisis and the destruction of vital forests by Western ideals, this integrated view held by indigenous philosophy is often glorified and looked upon as a helpful alternative structure. Yet, at the time indigenous thought was deemed ungodly and banished, at which the colonial power was incredibly successful. In the end, Eurocentric and Christian ideology prevailed in Latin America, resulting in the eradication, dilution, or banishment of indigenous cultures by racist and Eurocentric ideals.
Philosophy with a Latin American character
It is evident that indigenous philosophy, although occasionally glorified by the West, does not dominate modern Latin American philosophy. However, the history of inequality and racism does play a crucial role in shaping modern Latin American philosophy. The Indigenous population in the Latin peninsula often experiences higher levels of poverty as a result of colonial ideology. Still, they are looked down on and negatively affected by biases. Latin America, in general, is plagued by inequality and poverty. This is frequently used as an excuse for the underdevelopment of the philosophical tradition in this area. It is thought that there is no room for philosophical inquiry in a society where simply surviving is the main priority. This would coincide with an attitude of ridicule towards a superfluous activity such as philosophy. Following this line of reasoning, short essays that are easy to read would be more suitable for such an underdeveloped society. This perspective, while seemingly plausible, implies that Latin American philosophers lack the capacity for independent thought. (Pereda, 2006) It is condescending to suggest that because of limited money and therefore limited time, people in Latin America have a limited capacity to think. Be that as it may, it is true that philosophy often takes up another form in the face of social issues. Rather than solely pondering ontological, epistemic, or metaphysical questions such as “What is being?” Or “What is truth?” it takes on a politically and socially engaged role.
In his work, “Canonizing the Critical Race Artifice, An Analysis of Philosophy’s Gentrification of Critical Race Theory” (2018 ), Curry emphasizes the importance of an engaged and realistic approach to the philosophy of race. The realist approach advocates for maintaining a connection to tangible social constructs when philosophizing. It calls for voicing the experience of actual people and fights against the over-abstract view on race and social inequality. The realistic view is both economically and politically engaged, resonating with the Latin American experience as the region continues to grapple with the harmful effects of colonialism. The socially engaged philosophical tradition, referred to as Liberation Philosophy, has been quite vast in Latin American countries. Liberation philosophy utilizes the tools of philosophy to dissect the reality of the Latin American people, providing a distinctly Latin American perspective to philosophy. Much like what Curry calls for, Liberation philosophy disregards idealism and focuses on the material conditions of Latin American people. It is based on the fact that human existence, that with which philosophy is most often concerned, is embedded within cultural identity, and should therefore be concerned with cultural and social issues. (Gandolfo, 2010) Philosophers like Arturo Andres Roig often shift the focus from a Heideggerian mode of being, towards materialism based on Marx and Hegel’s theory. Roig emphasizes this by stating that the only way in which humans have access to being is through the fact of being human. Therefore, these distinct aspects of being a human embedded within a social and historical context should be examined. (Roig, 2004; Gandolfo, 2010) Philosophy, thus, takes up a social responsibility. Ignacio Ellacuria deepens this idea by historically reconstructing the human tendency toward the realization of freedom. Humanity is effectively working towards a state of freedom at all times and because of this, philosophy must be engaged in seeking freedom for the people. (Gandolfo, 2010)
The “distinctivist” and “universalist” approaches
Although Liberation philosophy focuses on Latin American issues, it is still based on much of the ideas of Western philosophers like Hegel, Marx and Heidegger. This begs the question of how one goes about distinguishing Latin American philosophy and if such an endeavor even is possible. Philosopher Andrea Nuccetelli (2010) deconstructs this issue by offering a “universalist” and a “distinctivist” answer. According to the universalist view, there are at least some philosophical theories, methods, and topics that are universal, meaning that they apply to a Mondial philosophical tradition. Whereas strong Universalism would imply that all philosophical endeavors are universal, the weaker variant allows for the possibility of distinctively Latin American aspects to philosophy (2010). The weaker universalist view would classify Latin American philosophy as Ethnic philosophy, Nuccetelli contends, which means that it does not fit within the universal philosophical tradition, as well as not fitting into another ethnic philosophy. As follows, a Chilean Philosopher working from Hegelian ideas is not practicing Ethnic Latin American philosophy. This takes on a distinctly Eurocentric undertone when these European-based ideas are taken as universal. It could be said, however, that these ideas are so deeply engrained within philosophy due to having the upper hand in dialogue for so long, that it has become a universal thought framework. On the other hand, a distinctivist, would say that the Chilean philosopher is practicing Latin American philosophy when she uses theories, methods, or topics that are characteristically Latin American (Nutacelli, 2010). As to the nature of this distinct “Latin Americanism”, not much is clear. According to this view, however, the previously mentioned Liberation Philosophy would be distinctively Latin American as it regards a specific Latin American topic, namely Latin American social, cultural, and economic inequality. Howsoever one may look at this issue, being from a universalist standpoint or a distinctivist standpoint, it is evident that both leave room for ambiguity. While one regards the tradition in Latin America as “philosophy in Latin America”, the other one views it as “characteristically” Latin American (Nutacelli, 2010). Yet both views ought to determine what falls under the differently worded concepts.
Evidently, it is not easy to define Latin American philosophy. The lines of demarcation are vague and historically, a varied array of philosophical topics have been discussed by Latin thinkers. The opposing views on the universality of philosophy would lead to drastically different answers to the question of distinguishing Latin American philosophy. Whereas a universalist would find it only logical that Latin American philosophy is similar to European philosophy, distinctivists would be more inclined to view theories like Liberation philosophy as truly Latin American. Following this idealist Philosophy would call for liberation from Western ideas as they stem from a colonized past. From here it would follow that philosophy in Latin America would adhere to a characteristically Latin American framework applied to practical issues in society.
Problems of specification
In her paper, “Intercultural, Transcultural, Cross-cultural – Why We Need All Three Of Them” (2018), Roothaan addresses the vagueness of delineating between cultural philosophies, showing that culture is not as bounded as previously believed and that these ideas of boundedness are unhelpful for the goal of decolonization as well as for cross-cultural human understanding. Roothaan transforms the concept of culture into the idea of “thinking spaces”. Thinking spaces are the space from which people seek to understand reality. They unfold within a specific historical and geographical area, yet they are not bounded by such spatio-temporal borders. In this sense, “cultures” are inherently touched and shaped by other “cultures”, leading to new ideas within such cultures. Instead of the multicultural approach of recognizing other cultures, Roothaan advocates for a dialogue where ideas from different parts of the world touch each other and subsequently shape each other. It is only through his framework that true understanding can arise, and power structures can be abolished. Roothaans ideas are ever so applicable to the Latin American peninsula. Instead of defining Latin American philosophy as either Western-centered or something specifically Latin American, it is exactly the touching of viewpoints that represents Latin American philosophy. Stemming from colonization as well as globalization, Latin America is a melting pot of ideas, traditions, and philosophies. However, as explained in a previous paragraph, the hegemony of Eurocentric ideals has led to economic and social inequality as well as unequal power dynamics in the philosophical world. These unequal power dynamics are expressed in a lack of indigenous representation in the philosophical canon in Latin America, as well as the lack of Latin American authors in the Western philosophical canon.
A possible explanation for the underrepresentation of Latin American authors could be the ambiguity in the definition of Latin American philosophy. However, if Latin American philosophy is indeed the culmination of different “thinking spaces”, then firstly, it would indeed offer a unique view on the issues dealt with in philosophical thinking and therefore be a valuable addition to philosophical thought. Secondly, the ambiguity of the definition does not explain the fact that Latin American works regarding Western Philosophy are also underrepresented in the Western canon. This shows a racist tendency, as Western scholars are deemed more well-versed to write about topics stemming from their own continent. Following Roothaan’s ideas, merely defining what is Latin American will not abolish this power system but will uphold the differentiation of colonial thinking. Instead, as Roothaan emphasizes, an unbreaking awareness of the power system is vital to ensure that these are not unknowingly sustained (2018). In practice, this would mean that Latin American authors are represented in the canon just as much as authors from other “thinking spaces” and that investigating Indigenous philosophy, as well as any other philosophical tradition, would be held to the same esteem as investigating Kant or Hegel in Latin American universities, as well as European, African or Asian ones.
Internal issues
Regarding the invisibility of Latin American authors, Uruguayan Mexican philosopher Carlos Pereda offers some internal deficiencies that could explain the lack of representation. In his 2006 text Pereda emphasizes the remnants of colonial power dynamics by stating that even scholars from Latin America disregard the ideas of their Latinx1 colleagues. Rarely are ideas stemming from one’s peers offered the same podium as those originating in Europe, even internally. Pereda (2006) broadens this invisibility to the realm of intercultural dialogue, comparable to Roothaan’s views. Even here, Pereda states, Latin American philosophers remain unnoticed. It should be mentioned that Roothaan’s ideas are more recent and that the scope has evolved somewhat. However, the underrepresentation of Latin American authors in the canon is proof that this evolution is not as far as one might hope.
Pereda (2006) explains the underrepresentation through three internal deficiencies. Firstly, the internally engrained belief that the center of ideas resides elsewhere than the Spanish-speaking continent limits scholars to the realm of reflection rather than that of innovative ideas. Secondly, Pereda discerns a certain degree of intellectual laziness within the philosophical tradition, where Latin American scholars seek sensational and trending ideas. This makes for superficial philosophical inquiry. To remedy these vices a philosophy with a national character emerges, which is a vice in itself according to Pereda. While striving towards an authentic philosophical tradition, the rhetoric is returned to topics that are authentically Latin American. Here, Pereda essentially describes the” distinctivist” categorization of Latin American philosophy. Although Pereda advocates for decolonization, this refocus on authentically Latin American philosophy does not help the status of Latin American works and is not a remedy for colonization. As Roothaan mentions in her text, Franz Fanon said, “The colonial world is a compartmentalized world”. By compartmentalizing between authentically Latin American and “Other”, colonial power dynamics are upheld. More practically, this attitude of exclusion does not make it appealing for scholars from different parts of the world to investigate Latin American works. Despite Pereda’s critical words regarding the philosophy in question, he also emphasizes that the tradition should not be simplified or reduced. He stresses that despite its shortcomings and even though the people in Latin America experience poverty, there is still a vast array of profound thought within the continent. Subsequently, he calls for Latin scholars to read the work of their Spanish and Portuguese-speaking peers. This combats internal invisibility as well as dismantling the system where Western thought is deemed leading.
Conclusion: toward a liberated dialogue in Latin American philosophy
Seeking to define Latin American philosophy reveals the multiple layers that contribute to its underrepresentation in academic discourse. The historical remnants of colonialism are ever so present, with indigenous philosophies marginalized and dismissed in favor of Eurocentric ideals. The power dynamics, rooted in the colonial past, persist in the modern academic landscape, overshadowing the richness of Latin American philosophical thought. Delineating a distinct Latin American philosophy proves problematic and the opposing universalist and distinctivist approaches don’t quite grasp its unique identity. Liberation philosophy is an example of a characteristically Latinx philosophy and offers a socially engaged philosophical lens for Latin philosophers. However, the question whether Latin American philosophy can truly break free from the persuasive influence of Western Thinkers remains open.
The concept of “thinking spaces” proposed by Roothaan provides a nuanced lens through which to view Latin American philosophy. The interplay of ideas and ideologies stemming from colonization as well as globalization is what defines Latin American philosophy. Embracing this fluidity challenges the notion of boundedness to culture and calls for a dialogue that transcends spatio-temporal borders. Yet, internal deficiencies further exacerbate the challenges faced by Latin American scholars. The remnants of colonial power dynamics are ever so persistent in the academic community. This perpetuates an intellectual hierarchy that favors ideas that originate outside of Latin America. Pereda’s critique highlights the need for Latinx scholars to overcome intellectual laziness and engage in an exploration of their own philosophical traditions.
Moving forward, it is important to recognize the intricacies of Latin American philosophy and address the systemic issues that perpetuate its invisibility. Roothaan’s call for an unbreaking awareness of power structure resonates, emphasizing the importance of dismantling distinctions between “Latin American’ and “other”. A liberated dialogue demands the inclusion of Latin American authors in the global canon and an equal assessment of their contribution alongside those from other “thinking spaces”.
Ultimately, the journey toward a more inclusive and diverse academic landscape requires a commitment to decolonization. This involves not only acknowledging Latin American philosophy’s unique perspective but also actively dismantling the hierarchal structures present in the philosophical discourse. In doing so, the academic canon can truly reflect the richness of human thought, transcending geographical boundaries and embracing the interconnectedness of diverse philosophical traditions,
Gandolfo, D. I, (2010) Liberation Philosophy. In Nuccetelli, S., Schutte, O., & Bueno, O. (Eds). A companion to Latin American philosophy. John Wiley & Sons.
Hurtado, G. (2006). Two models of Latin American philosophy. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 20(3), 204–213. https://doi.org/10.1353/jsp.2007.0004
Maffie, J, (2010). pre-Columbian Philosophies. In Nuccetelli, S., Schutte, O., & Bueno, O. (Eds). A companion to Latin American philosophy. John Wiley & Sons.
Nuccetelli, S, (2010) Latin American Philosophy. In Nuccetelli, S., Schutte, O., & Bueno, O. (Eds). A companion to Latin American philosophy. John Wiley & Sons.
Some people may say that thinking about the future makes you not live in the moment. I beg to differ. Thoughts of the future as well as of the past always bleed into this ‘now’ and change it and form it and color it.
When I was young I always thought of the past, that is, my personal life’s past. I repeated what I experienced in my mind, and did so more or less always. I thought this was normal. Only when I entered student life and the many new acquaintances asked about my life, I noticed they were shocked that I could relate certain events always to a certain year and age and sometimes even a month of the year. I began to feel weird. I comforted myself with the thought that it must be because I am a writer at heart. I always write so to speak about everything that I encounter in my mind. But later I forgot these reflective thoughts again, when struggling to find a job and finance this life at all.
More years later, around forty, they call it midlife, I read two books that shifted my view again. Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa, and Curriculum Vitae by Victor Klemperer. It was on a holiday and I read them on a blanket in the shade of a big tree that kept the hot summer sun from burning any thoughts out. Whereas the lastmentioned book is a true life memoir, the Isegawa book is fiction, but obviously based on a rich trove of life experiences and projected as a memoit. They gave me a new view of my childhood mental writing on my daily life. What if, as a child, I felt that I would write my memoires later, and had been unconsciously training for it? That even comforted me more.
Now I am gradually progressing in that senior stage of life, and I don’t know about all these explanations and self-descriptions anymore. Especially since after reading Klemperer and Isegawa, the mental writing slowly disappeared. I realised more and more that memorising is not that important. That a human life is only a small link in an endless web of millions of consciousnesses and intentions, not even only human ones; all life has its own aims and leaves its own traces. Especially digital life impresses on us that there may be even too many traces and we should be selecting and erasing them to a certain extent.
And now life has even made me turn the entire process around, now that an artificial boundary will affect me in four years: retirement. I realise how blessed I am to have been able to work for so many years, even if, as for many academics, it took so long before that tenured job came on my path. But now I have to think of the future: when all the automatic obligations of pressing student mails, grades and ever so many course manuals will not be there anymore, how will I make the transition to retired life as smooth and good as possible?
Luckily, in this profession, we do not have to abruptly leave working life. As many others, I think it will be nice to have more relaxed time to study and do the research I still find meaningful. I hope my network will still value my over a long time built experience and expertise on certain questions and how to approach them.
And suddenly I realised this one thing I often not even have time to think about: that presently I don’t have enough time to write my blog. After retirement, if possible, and if I like the idea still then, I may start reading the books I don’t have enough time for now and review them here. Or just reflect on them. I could write as often as I want.
And that thought made me go here and write, in the train, returning from a meeting. A time I often spend with digital distraction. So here is this new blog piece: on how thinking of the future made my train ride!
When I was researching for my master’s thesis, I focused on forgotten European 17th century thinkers, and got hooked on the old prints reading room. The only things you were allowed to take inside were paper and a pencil. The pages of those old books were made of acid free pulp, and their covers of leather, so they were much stronger than newer ones, but still the reverence asked to keep them in shape for future centuries attracted me. Forgotten or not, heretical or not, the remains of that age were still treated like temple treasures. My research reached a dead end, back then, as the prints didn’t answer all my questions. And I had no clue how to find my way in old archives, if they even existed for the material I needed, and I left the historical track in philosophy.
Recently, this past month of May, I repaired my former cluelessness when I entered an archive for the first time, determined to just find some answers about Placide Tempels (1906 -1977) and his Bantu Philosophy that the literature didn’t provide. I was inspired by the work of a cultural historian I had met, which had shown me how historical data can give us an informed view on the complex ideological and intellectual struggles in the end days of colonialism and its aftermath – this type of work should fill the gaps on the book I was researching on.
I research Bantu Philosophy not however as part of colonial history, not from an interest in missiology or religious studies, but to understand its philosophical aim and impact. Among philosophers interested in African philosophy the book is contested – a classic, yes, the source of a long debate on the nature of African philosophy, that too, but ‘real’ philosophy (in itself a suspicious classification) – doubtful. Philosophers such as Paulin Hountondji and Eboussi-Boulaga classified it as ethnophilosophy, one of the many specialized ethnosciences, a part of cultural anthropology more or less, and no constructive philosophy in itself. Ethnophilosophy or not, postcolonial thinkers such as Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon criticized it as just another contribution to the colonial system, as it focused on the spiritual, not on the material conditions of the colonized. The most seriously argued positive interpretation of Bantu Philosophy has been given by Valentin Mudimbe, who read the work – even if ethnophilosophical – as opening our eyes for what philosophy can be, beyond its too narrow definition in the modern age.
One of the reasons why Tempels himself was never easily taken serious as a philosopher was because he was trained a priest, not an academic philosopher, and his attempt to articulate an African ontology, the ontology of vital force, was considered by many to remain stuck in describing a worldview among others, a cultural thing, not the ultimate logical structure of reality as disciplinary philosophy was supposed to do. I had supposed, after reading all those interpretations, that Tempels maybe was not too serious about the philosophical part of his endeavour, that he had only wanted to improve missionary activity in Africa, and to change the very negative view of African humanity to that end. How wrong I was.
The unending stream of letters that rest in the archive – exchanged between him and befriended intellectuals on his ideas, as well as concerning the spread and publication of his work with more distant contacts (among them several influential phenomenologists of those days) show that Tempels was very much concerned about the philosophical implications of his work, and that contemporary philosophers were also interested in that aspect. His aim was not to present an African worldview, calling it a philosophy, as another culturally interesting object in the world of (colonial) knowledge. He was – on the contrary – convinced that European philosophy was on a dead end road, as it had forgotten a more fundamental understanding of reality as vital force, that appeared present to him in many non-European philosophical systems, among them Daoist philosophy, Native American philosophies, and Bantu philosophy.
Was he right in his view? Did he convince in his attempts to be taken seriously? Did he not overplay his hand by describing – as a foreigner – what indigenous Baluba people told him about their understanding of reality? Was his being part of the colonial system (even though he held a critical view of assimilationist ideas in missionary work) not a too heavy burden on his work all the same? Too many questions, and let me make it clear: it is not my aim to defend Bantu Philosophy or its author before the court of decolonial history. My aim is to dig through the mess that colonial history is, to see how someone followed a strong calling to articulate a new approach in philosophy, how he (mis)understood what he was doing, maybe, and how he was (mis)understood by his contemporaries. My motive: all of this is not finished, of that I am convinced. The past is not over, it is still at work, and we still have to work through it to have a future together, as humans on this earth.
Philosophy curricula rarely include non-European “great thinkers”, and even less take philosophy seriously that has never been owned by individuals with “great” names, but that often was not owned at all, but still practised as the all too human effort to understand life and our place in it, and to guide ourselves while living here, now – in all kinds of societies and ages. To create a fundamental discussion of the standard curricula and their blindness to most human reflection outside that of a few “great men”, can only be done by looking and listening in other places than the all too familiar instruction books of philosophy – in real conversations with real people, and partly also in forgotten letters in a colonial archive.
I have been rather silent here these past years. Just a few blog posts. Many in my mind, as always, conceived sometime during the day doing other things, a few as drafts in my invisible wordpress writing studio, but very little finished and published. Contrary to appearances however, this (two-year-long) year was a very productive year – not in publications, but in investments in projects and – above all – in people. Let me mention some of what excited me and consoled me, and how I hope to develop things from here.
Workshops / meetings
It seems I have been at home the whole time, in more or less severe lockdowns. As if the only outside events were ever so many walks around the block or further, in parks and lanes. Still there were some live events, and because of their rarity they were more exciting and pleasant even. Like that trip to Leuven, in the autumn of 2021 – first time abroad, since february 2020… A mini-conference of the Dutch-Belgian research network Theological Ethics in the inspiring silent buildings of the ETF – the former Jesuit training institute, now the Evangelical Theological Faculty. We discussed new developments in the field, and our views of where we want it to go. It was a good reason to catch up with one of the former students of the Winter Course, who had just returned from a long research trip in Kivu, DRC.
Another inspiring workshop was just this past week at the University of Amsterdam – all distanced and with facemasks – on Derrida. organized by Mary Aude Baronian. Six colleagues discussed how their work was influenced or inspired by Derrida. So no exegesis, but critical extensions or new intellectual appropriations. My talk was titled: ‘From Algeria to Apartheid. Derrida and the Ambiguities of Decolonization’ – for myself an appetizer for the elective course I will teach in spring on Derrida and Africa. So good to get to know new people there and make new connections for the future.
The PhD students
The most wonderful experience these years, however, was to work with a growing group of PhD students – who work on Continental Philosophy, African Philosophy and Philosophy of Race. I am so humbled that they chose me to help them along, give feedback and support. One of them, from Nigeria, came over in this past summer to get introduced to our department and to some research colleagues. I saw most of them online, though. They gave presentations in one the research networks I have been chairing (Theological Ethics and African Intercultural Philosophy), they wrote their proposals and first, second, third chapters, took part in the reading group Critical Philosophy which I organize since several years, and were present in some of the conferences I visited or presented in. This is my thank you for the pleasant and interesting work to them!
Lectures, defenses, conferences
And, strangely enough, this was a very busy time giving lectures. Once, twice, sometimes even three times a month, as the online world made switching continents without visa, airplanes, and tiring planning of trips possible. There were weeks where I was in a PhD defense committee in South Africa as well as in a conference in Nigeria, or where I gave keynotes in the Philippines and Brazil – combinations I would never have been able to do with analogous travel (travel is exciting but also tires me a lot). I got to know new networks of colleagues in all these worlds, I learned so much from being with them, even on ever so many zooms!
Research projects
I have been planning and organizing several research projects which I hope to do the best work for before retirement. I organized and edited two books on African Philosophy, with my colleagues Bolaji Bateye, Louise Müller and Mahmoud Masaeli – now they are under review and we are in a waiting phase, prolongued by the effects of covid on so many people and institutions.
In its active phase is now the Bantu Philosophy project. With all the teaching that goes on continuously, writing and translating (which is my main task) did not progress enough to my taste, but our network of academic collaborators grew, also with honors students, interdisciplinary insights, and several applications for funding.
A third project concerns Indigenous Knowledge Systems. That is still in a phase of exploration, a few colleagues get to read my first project descriptions, want to collaborate in an interview series to map the cleft between ‘colonized’ academia and indigenous knowledge (more to come here!). Writing will come later.
Last but not least – teaching…
There was a lot going on there, revisions of courses, the elective course on 20th century African Political Philosophy, several editions of Diversifying Philosophy – with a few new texts every time, and this year a much valued zoom visit by Tommy J. Curry when students had read his take on article on the Gentrification of CRT. There was more, but let me leave it here. You have an impression now. It was a year of many investments. I hope to reap and harvest with all my valued research partners for years to come!
Just last week the third edition of our VU graduate Wintercourse in (alternatingly) Intercultural and African Philosophy was held. Last year the topic was African Philosophy in Global Times, with guest lecturers from Senegal, Cameroon, South Africa, this year we returned to the initial topic – Intercultural Philosophy, and as the subtitle ‘Critical Revisions and Alternative Approaches’ made clear, we looked into possibilities to critize and decolonize this relatively new and dialogical approach in academic philosophy.
Intercultural Philosophy as a specific field with that name is known in Europe since the 1990s, when men such as Ram Adhar Mall, Heinz Kimmerle and Franz Wimmer – all working in the German language philosophical space – wrote their systematic articles and books on the topic. As a practice – to dialogue beyond and to think through cultural differences – it is of course not restricted to any philosophical place. In the course we started out with these ‘grand old men’, to further discuss critical revisions of their Gadamer/Derrida inspired reflections on meaning and truth and alternative approaches to the topic as well.
All teachers led a lecture session and an interactive session. We had students of education, of philosophy (different fields), criminology and development. In Renate Schepen’s lecture we learned how Kimmerle learned from a philosopher such as Mogobe Ramose. In Monika Kirloskar‘s interactive session the students were one by one invited to reflect on the connection between the texts read and their own field of study and research. Pius Mosima shared how the Intercultural approach is at work among African philosophers such as Kwasi Wiredu and Henry Odera Oruka.
Together and each for themselves we worked to make our research work more grounded and more informed by insights and events from this postcolonial (and neocolonial) age. The presentations by the students gave ever so many interesting takes and clear analyses of the many texts digested in a short time.
Intense, one week, in the coldest month of the year here in the Netherlands. Still on Zoom, on three different continents, from nine different birth countries – our screenshot photo says it all: rays of intellectual light, warmth of connectedness in collaboration, and the joys of understanding characterised another great week in the VU Winter School. Thanks to all teachers, to all students, and to the people from the VU Winter School team who made things roll smoothly. May the light spread through your work.
This last week I was necessitated to clarify some things for myself. They concerned concepts – colonial, cultural, communal – all in contexts of conversations with colleagues in the international networks of people who struggle to truly decolonize philosophy. The first two will be the topic of this blogpost. I may return to the other another time soon.
Note: decolonizing philosophy is not just an academic matter, to make a career on, as Tuck and Yang warned us scholars of (in their article “Decolonisation is not a Metaphor“). It is also not only about landrights, as they argue it should be. As central as the issue of land is, conceptual matters are also always, even in the struggle for land rights, crucial.
Concepts can heal and concepts can betray. What is nowadays called ‘gaslighting’ is exactly that: betraying people through deceitful use of words. Make them think something is ‘normal’ or is ‘a fact’ when it is not, and you overpowered them without the need for physical violence. The cheapest way to dominate. A domination that is so unvisible it needs long and hard work to be (partly) undone.
Artwork by the author, acrylic on canvas.
The first conversation was brief, but went on in my mind – when a respected scholar from a formerly colonized part of the world said (without further explanation) that the very concept of ‘culture’ was suspicious. Ok. I can see it played a malignant role in colonial discourses of early ethnography – saying that non-white peoples had culture, whereas white ones had civilization. The first was then characterized by myth and folklore, the latter by science and reason. Of course. Later, much later, there were the times of multiculturalism, the 1990s, when thinkers and politicians from the oppressed and discriminated groups tried to let the very concept work for them, saying: ok, if you say we have culture, then we have a right to our culture, you have to respect its limits. It was an understandable move, but of course it didn’t solve oppression, as it left the oppresive conceptual hierarchy intact.
Then, in my reflections, an article passed by – from anthropologist-turned-sangoma-philosopher Wim van Binsbergen, on African contributions to world cultural history. He makes a claim for Afrocentrism, as an invitation to radically de-racialize scholarly understanding of humanity and its shared adventures. One of the important things he says in the article is that continents are a misleading (‘gaslighting’?) way to categorize and understand cultural groups. Cultural historical exchange is the effect of migrations, trading routes, climate changes, that run in divergent directions, on and across continents. Some things ‘African’ for instance may have developed in an exchange with ‘Asian’ societies in the times of the East-West trading routes of old, and vice versa. Some others may be answers to influences from the North, from ‘Europe’ (is Europe even a continent, a cartographer asked recently on Twitter), just as some things ‘European’ may have developed as answers to cultural developments from the South, from ‘Africa’. Van Binsbergen makes an important point there. If we want to do history truthfully, scientifically, the idea of ‘civilization’ may be the one to drop, instead of the one of culture.
To my view, culture is a world that roots in neolithical experience – it indicates working the earth to create crops that make sedentary life for humans possible. And as water always seeks the lowest possible place, humans have sought the least travel and discovery intensive life: that of the agri-cultural being. As a metaphor (the concept of culture is a metaphor) it indicates that human animals transform their world, and themselves, adorn it and sing about it and reflect on it and build ‘institutions’ in it. They all do, that is their way. European Enlightenment talk of civilization is gaslighting and should be abolished.
The second was in answer to a potential PhD candidate, who approached me some time ago with an interesting proposal. I was writing comments to the first version, and thought her goal – to repair a society damaged by colonialism by articulating its ontology – needed some finer articulation. I wrote her that next to colonial (to describe the life of those oppressed during that age) we needed another concept to repair history, ‘non-colonial’. I wrote: “this term I make up while writing, to indicate that colonized peoples will always have a level in their being where they resist their colonization and live their own ontology – although it may have gone underground because of repression”. Of course this is so. It is apparent, a no-brainer. When colonial ‘civilizers’ claimed they could take the ancient culture out of the people they were doing their work on, they were gaslighting those peoples, and themselves as accomplices of the violent system of inhumanity. They could not succeed in destroying the other’s way to live. Never. Damage yes. But on so many levels of resistance free realities live always on: in creolized languages, in ways to dress, in emotional economies, in secret signs to warn for danger from the enemy. It needs a word to articulate this reality in decolonizing work.
The non-colonial is the denial of the colony – a strong strategy of survival and of protecting truthfulness over gaslighting.
On June 14th, 1996, I saw this scene – the cortege of professors, with the university janitor in front, walking solemnly to their designed seats to interrogate me on my PhD thesis. I was lucky to be able to publish the thesis too, and the day of the promotion was the official day of its release. Following tradition of the University of Amsterdam, the city university, copies were already displayed in the reception room where we would go after the ceremony, in its solemn solid wood book cases, behind glass doors.
I was lucky in many respects. I had fulfilled my childhood desire to write and publish a book. A wide selection of old and new friends had come to support me on this day. Many family members were there. Several colleagues from my new university, the Vrije Universiteit, the ‘other Amsterdam university’, where I had acquired a postdoc position, were present. Good friends had helped to organize an afterparty at my home.
However, next to all the positives a cloud also hung over the event. A cloud reflecting the anxieties I had suffered during the eight years of struggle that was the way to the PhD. Anxieties resulting from hurdles that had almost let me quit the work several times. The competition between universities where I had sought guidance. Financial issues between them over my case, after my first supervisor had died and I had to find a successor for her. A conflict, after promising work before, with my second supervisor. My own financial issues, following bad advice and my stubbornness to not want to ask for an extension of my fellowship.
All these things maybe resulted from a lack of understanding of academic culture on my part. Nowadays people term someone like me a first generation PhD. My father had finished university studies up to the Masters level. In my mother’s family (I later learned) an architect grand uncle had acquired a professorship, but through the merit of his work and without a PhD. For me it often felt as a route through a minefield of expectations of the professors in power of those days, that I had to venture on my own. Not to mention going this road as a young woman in a country where almost no women were professors, and female students were seen as not more than accessories.
Still, somehow, through the cloud, I managed to be aware of what happened. I managed to enjoy every second of my achievement and academic survival. I even changed some rules, having asked to be able to sit during the ceremony, as I suffered problems with standing, being four months pregnant of my second child. The committee members put their questions forward, I replied to them, the cortege left again, they came back, and finally I was awarded the title of Doctor of Philosophy.
Now during the actual promotion, when my third and final supervisor spoke the official formula and thus performatively changed my academic status for the rest of my life, the final sentences impressed themselves on my mind – let me translate them from the Dutch:
“Value the acquired dignity as an honorable distinction and an important privilege, and therefore also never forget the duties that it imposes on you, over against science and society!”
Later I found that different universities have different formulas – and I have always been particularly happy that this one marked my transition to a doctor.
Why? Because it not only speaks of the rights the status entails, but also of the duties. The rights have been a blessing: I was able to stay in academia, an organisation like many others with its pros and cons, but for me the place to be. I was able to progress to postdoc and later assistant professor. It even has allowed me to supervise PhD students myself which is really a privilege!
The duties have never been out of my mind: to give back to society, by disseminating knowledge and insights acquired; but even more: to foster critical reflection – in a never ending process to check accepted ideas and outcomes of research. In an age of mistrust of science (and in my first language, Dutch, this means all systematic research: humanities, natural sciences as well as social sciences) to dedicate oneself to work in its garden – always weeding out prejudice and tending to the conditions for good research, makes for a wonderful never-ending adventure.
This is the third and last (for now) of this little series of students’ papers from my course Diversifying Philosophy, the 2nd edition. This time you can read the work of Jasmine Campbell, who took the original (and relevant) approach to read the work of Fanon from an eco-philosophical perspective. Postcolonial critique and ecological philosophy are understood more and more in connection with each other, and this paper is a way in which this is practiced. I hope you will find this a fascinating piece. Here it is:
Postcolonial Sustainable Development. An Ecocritical Reading of The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Introduction
The way in which countries are categorised or ranked is very often in terms of their level of development. Development is seen as the most important factor determining how well a country is doing, this often being with a very economic focus. We speak of developing and developed countries, or the third world and the first world, although these are often coined outdated and offensive.
Sometimes too the phrases less developed and more developed countries, or LEDCs (less economically developed countries) and MEDCs (more economically developed countries), are used. This distinction very much divides the world into what people perceive as better and worse countries. Better in this sense is almost synonymous to richer and worse to poorer. This division was once made by colonisers between the colonial powers and the colonies, and this division is still very much one that the West imposes on the rest of the world. Of course development is important, but why should all countries have to live up to this very economically focussed definition of development?
Further, what has in more recent times become of more and more importance is sustainable development. With global climate change a development that can be sustained for generations to come and that is more environmentally friendly is deemed to be of utmost importance. We can see this in the change from the UN’s Millennium Development Goals to their Sustainable Development Goals1 and the introduction and many signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement in 20162. However, many ask whether all countries should have to develop as sustainably as possible. For one, it is argued that only few countries, such as China, the United States who are the biggest polluters and together generate 44% of worldwide emissions3, so arguably contributing most to global climate change. It is also argued that the West got the opportunity to develop it’s industries unsustainable without caring for how much they were polluting to get to the point at which they are now and, therefore, developing countries should have this same opportunity. So, this view suggests that only the biggest polluters should be more sustainable as they are the cause of the problems and that developing countries should have the right to emit carbon without restriction to ‘catch up’. But this again reinforces that developing countries should ‘catch up’ with the West and that they would want to use the ‘western method’ in the process.
In this paper I would, thus, like to explore sustainable development and environmentalism in postcolonial thought. I have chosen to look at Frantz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ and take an ecocritical reading of his work. I will be looking at how this ecocritical reading of Fanon fits into the broader field of ecocritical postcolonial thought. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a psychiatrist and philosopher from Martinique. He wrote particularly influential works in the field of postcolonial studies, such as ‘Black Skin White Masks’ (1952) and ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ (1963)4. Fanon’s work was more human centred than environmental and focused on the way in which history can be seen in terms of oppression of colonisers and struggle of colonies5.
Fanon on Development and the Environment
In the conclusion of ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ Fanon seems to express his views on development and how decolonised countries should approach developing. The central idea of the conclusion is to avoid ‘the European way’, in all senses, to avoid their violent manner, genocide, slavery and exploitation. Fanon writes that they must “Leave this Europe”6 and “Shake off their heavy darkness”7. More importantly, he writes to abandon the ‘European method’, writing “We today can do everything so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe.”8. He advocates the creation of a new method of growth and development. This development can also be said of Europe’s treatment of the land. Fanon does not explicitly write this but it does in a sense point towards this. The ‘western mentality’ or “European spirit”9, as Fanon puts it, being focussed on rapid growth no matter the consequences has led to exploitation of people but also very much of land in the process. Therefore, when Fanon says to abandon the European way, this can also be said of the treatment of land and the environment when developing, as well as of people.
Fanon, further describes how Europe, in their need for continuous growth, power and wealth, are “running headlong into the abyss”10. This can be seen by the damages and pollution the West’s economic growth has caused. In their growth they have caused for global warming, mass extinction, rising sea levels, and many more disastrous effects11. If they keep going at this rate this will quite literally lead to a fall “into the abyss”, as scientists have warned us about the negative effects and the American Association for Advanced Science also has said that climate change is “is a growing threat to society”12. Fanon then writes that it is the task of the ‘third world’ to do better, to solve the problems Europe has created by not following this same mentality and extreme focus on economic growth. He writes “to resolve the problem to which Europe has not been able to find the answers […] what matters is to stop talking about output, and intensification, and the rhythm of work.”13. This can be said of the way the West is keen on mass production, over consumption, the living of very materialistic lifestyles, and in general the capitalist system, that in only being focussed on money exploits people and land.
Photo by Angela Roothaan
Fanon, in the chapter ‘On Violence’ in his The Wretched of the Earth, also describes a trait of the Europeans, or the West, that in decolonisation is discovered to not apply to the previous colonies. He describes a trend in the change of mentality from very individualistic to community oriented. He writes about how the ‘colonised intellectual’ follows the ‘coloniser bourgeois’ in their individualism, but then “witnesses the destruction of all his idols: egoism, arrogant, recrimination, and the idiotic, childish need to have the last word”14. He will see the strength of community, of village assemblies and caring for one another. Fanon describes how he will move away from the ‘every man for himself’ thinking and the economic growth oriented thinking. Fanon writes about a movement from “personal interests [becoming] the collective interest”15. This difference in mentality can also be regarded in terms of a relation with the environment. The ‘western individualism’ Fanon describes, or the ‘every man for himself’ concept, focuses on personal growth regardless of others and regardless of the land. This individualism can also be said to be a cause for capitalism. The ‘Westerner’ is much more prone to exploiting the land in his quest for wealth, which has led to the global climate change we see today. This focus on personal growth also does not consider the future generations and is not sustainable.
The importance the ‘third world’ places on community that Fanon describes shows a respect for others and for the land. It respects the homes of others and the environment. This community oriented thinking may also be much more prone to considering future communities or generations and their lives, and is this way much more sustainable. Coming back to the conclusion of Fanon’s work, this difference in mentality also would very much affect how these decolonised nations may go about their development and points at a much more sustainable development.
Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Sustainable Development
Coming back to more current thought on development and environmentalism, as was mentioned in the introduction, there seems to be a discussion going on on how non-western countries should ‘catch up’ in terms of development with the west. In 1986 the UN introduced the Right to Development to its Universal Declaration of Human Rights16. The UN describes how this right applies to people, it should be human centred but state led17. They do recognise that historically development has very much been considered a “primarily economic process measured by growth in gross national product”, and that this understanding still very much persists among many18. The UN considers the Right to Development to be closely linked to the fundamental right to self-determination and the right to sovereignty over natural wealth and resources19. The Right to Development, the UN writes, is also included in the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention [No. 169], in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indegiounous Peoples and in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights20. It can thus be seen this right, and, therefore, also the importance of development in general, is widely recognised, not only by the west. But, of course, not necessarily in its focus on economies but the human centred notion of development, which is also described by Fanon in his ‘The Wretched of the Earth’. The UN does note that development should be sustainable and highlights the importance of sustainability in their Sustainable Development Goals, in particular when it comes to development in goal 11: ‘Sustainable Cities and Communities’21. However, the question still goes to what extent sustainable development is required from, or in other words a duty of, developing countries.
Some would rather say that in order to ‘catch up’ with Europe, as Fanon strongly rejects the need for, European methods would have to be adopted and so developing countries should be exempt from reducing carbon emissions as western countries are being obliged to to respond to the threats that climate change brings for our future. Professor Zewei Yang adopts this view, writes about how reducing carbon emissions may inhibited China’s ability to further develop and describes “the right to carbon emission as a new right to development”22. Another such thinker, that Professor Yang also quotes in his paper, is Professor Albert Mumma of Nairobi University in Kenya, who states “the emission entitlements, in effect, are a proxy for the right to develop and meet the needs of one’s nation and the well-being of its people.”23. Yang goes on to describe how this right to carbon emissions represents the right to use the Earth’s resources in order to develop and that this should particularly be the case for developing countries24. Further, Yang describes how in the second article of the Copenhagen Accord also states that “. bearing in mind that social and economic development are the first and overriding priorities of developing countries”25.
Photo by Angela Roothaan
This view seems to require carbon emissions for the development of a country. It would seem that this is then also following the ‘European method’ of development, and opposes Fanon’s view.
This obsession ‘to catch up with Europe’26 Fanon writes of, is somewhat present in the idea that developing countries ought to have the right to carbon emissions to reach the same level of development as Europe and before they should consider environmentally friendly or sustainable development. Fanon, on the other hand, insists that it is the aim of developing countries to come up with new solutions to European problems, these problems here being pollution levels from carbon emissions, and can be said to thus recommend sustainable development in developing countries. This would also avoid the ‘running headlong into the abyss’27 that Fanon describes Europe’s method of development.
Many postcolonial thinkers would, like Fanon, disagree with Yang and Mumma’s stance. In the field of postcolonial ecocriticism the central task, as described by Helen Tiffin and Graham Huggin, is to contest and provide alternatives to western conceptions or ideologies of development28. Some thus hold that development as a whole is a European construct that is imposed on the rest of the world in order to keep Europe first. Sustainable development, in this view, is just a new version of this imposing development with a ‘pretty cover’, so to speak. It is made to look more attractive and good for the earth, but is just used to keep Europe ahead and in charge. German sociologist Wolfgang Sachs also states “what development means depends on how the rich nations feel” and that development is “at best a form of strategic altruism”, it is used as a reason for countries to give other countries aid to make these self-describe developed (and in their views thus also better) countries look good and is aimed at their concerns of their own politics and economies29. Development has also been described as adapting to the “needs of those who use it” and being used to self-congratulate and condescend, being based on Western presuppositions30. Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin also describe in their ‘Postcolonial Ecocriticism’ (2006) the perhaps more extreme view held by Oswaldo De Rivero of
how “the myth of development, taking false support from ideas promiscuously linked to the Enlightenment ideology of progress and the Darwnian survival of the fittest” urging the ‘developing’ Southern countries to catch up with ‘developed’ Northern countries and so aso implementing a capitalist growth model that is damaging to the environment and unequal31. These views often extend to sustainable development. Wolfgang Sachs describes sustainable development as giving new life to development and covering up the criticism of development and its “destructive tendencies”32.
Sustainable development being said to be an effort to save the planet Sachs sees as “little more than a political alibi” to justify state intervention because the West wants to implement their methods of environmental management which very much concentrate on the survival of the industrial system33.
The rejection of the idea of catching up with Europe here by implementing its method of growth, being capitalism, can be very closely compared to what Fanon writes in his conclusion of ‘The Wretched of The Earth’ (1963). As stated before, Fanon very much rejects the need to ‘catch up’ with Europe and Europe’s methods, and would agree with this. Fanon also does not explicitly write about development, this is the term I chose for what he describes. Fanon describes “moving forward… in the company of all men” and of wanting to advance humanity34, which I would call development, not in the economic-centred sense of the term but rather a very human-centred development. However, Fanon may well have agreed with De Rivero’s notion of development as being a myth made up by the West, as it would be in line with his rejection of any inspiration from Europe. However, if we look at development as simply describing growth and increased well-being, this is very much what Fanon describes in his text. Sustainable development, in Fanon’s view may well be very important as previously described, but Sachs’ view here introduces the element of the Western notion of sustainable development versus other versions of sustainable development. It can thus be said that Fanon would rather advocate a sustainable development that does not follow or take inspiration from the western model of sustainable development.
Another postcolonial ecocriticism is also very present in criticism of neocolonialism. This can be seen all over the world where multinational companies can be said to replace colonial power by taking control of a country’s resources and industries and exploiting people for cheap labour. An example of this would be oil companies in Nigeria. Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995), was a Nigerian environmental activist and writer35, who stood up against these oil countries and wanted them to be held accountable for the destruction of his home36. The oil company was stealing their natural resources and prohibiting the inhabitants of the land from benefiting themselves from the resources and building their own industries and economies around them and was also exploiting the land. Ken Saro-Wiwa’s advocacy and writing on this subject makes him an important figure not just as an environmental activist but also very much in postcolonial ecocritical thinking. Although, he is often left out of the field as ecocriticism, according to Rob Nixon, often focuses much on American-based writers and postcolonial criticism has concentrated “on a handful of ‘representative’ writers”37.
Similar are development projects in India that are introduced inspired by the West and a need to catch up. An example would be the Narmada Valley Development Project, which was a project to build dams in the Narmada river in order to provide electricity and safe drinking water to people in India38. The project is described by Arundhati Roy (1961-present), an Indian author and political and environmental activist39, as being “India’s Greatest Planned Environmental Disaster”40. The project caused mass protests and was found to use more energy than it produced41. The project caused for hundreds of thousands of local people to be displaced with a complete change to their daily lives, culture and economic self-sufficiency42. It can be seen that this western idea of development is being implemented but it does not contribute positively to the well-being of people, it is not human-centred development and focuses only on economic growth. The costs of the project were for a large part funded by the World Bank, which has also caused for India into an “economic bondage” which overcoming seems impossible43. It further contributes towards the increasing privatisation of natural resources and of energy sources, all in an effort to catch up with the West.
Conclusion
In conclusion, many links can be found between Fanon’s work and postcolonial ecocriticism. Taking an ecocritical reading of Fanon shows many similarities with ecocritical postcolonial thinkers and brings an interesting addition to discussions on environmentalism and sustainable development and critiquing western ideologies of sustainable development and development in general. We can clearly see Fanon’s disregard of the European method and the need to catch up with Europe are very present in postcolonial ecocritical writing such as that of Sachs, De Rivero, Saro-Wiwa and Roy. The aim of developing countries that Fanon describes as being finding new and better solutions for the problems Europe has created is very much in line with the project of postcolonial ecocriticism, being to contest and provide alternatives to the western ideologies of development. These problems Fanon describes can be seen as being, at least partly, to do with the environmental consequences of western development and so alternatives to this would be the solutions Fanon calls for developing countries to find. Fanon’s thinking would, thus, still also be very applicable in response to and as critique of neocolonialism as when it comes to multinational companies taking on the role of colonial powers this is very closely tied to a western notion of development and the imposing of this development on other countries.
22 Yang, Z. (2012). The Right to Carbon Emission: A New Right to Development. American Journal Of Climate Change, 01(02), 108-116. doi: 10.4236/ajcc.2012.12009
23 ibid
24 ibid
25 ibid
26 Fanon, F. (1963). The Wretched of The Earth. New York: Grove Press.
27 ibid
28Huggan, G., & Tiffin, H. (2010). Postcolonial Ecocriticism (pp. 27-46). New York: Routledge.
29 ibid
30 ibid
31 ibid
32 Huggan, G., & Tiffin, H. (2010). Postcolonial Ecocriticism (pp. 27-46). New York: Routledge.
33 ibid
34 Fanon, F. (1963). The Wretched of The Earth (p. 315). New York: Grove Press.
Yang, Z. (2012). The Right to Carbon Emission: A New Right to Development. American Journal Of Climate Change, 01(02), 108-116. doi: 10.4236/ajcc.2012.12009
angelaroothaan 