Videos by Michael Onyebuchi Eze
presentations and discussions from the 32nd Mind & Life Dialogue, Botho/Ubuntu: A Dialogue on Spi... more presentations and discussions from the 32nd Mind & Life Dialogue, Botho/Ubuntu: A Dialogue on Spirituality, Science, and Humanity, held in Gaborone, Botswana in August 2017. 17 views
Academic Articles and Essays by Michael Onyebuchi Eze
The Monist, 2024
I historicize decolonial theories within the context of epistemic contestations and knowledge pro... more I historicize decolonial theories within the context of epistemic contestations and knowledge production in Africa. I offer a critical appraisal of decolonization as simulated within Western academic institutions and argue that the current tempo of decolonization movements is by no means an accident of history; it is, in fact, a residual narrative of colonial epistemology. I offer internal critique and discuss the limitations of decolonization as an intellectual strategy, before addressing
how Western academics have appropriated the discourse in a manner fitting an intellectual crusade. The decolonial scholar is, at the same time, perpetuating the mandate of colonial epistemology by substituting coloniality with subjective displacement. Finally, I suggest a modest proposal for adopting a new framework that admits the epistemic virtues of decolonization while eschewing its limitations and internal contradictions. My argument is that decolonization studies, as understood
in contemporary African philosophy, has remained afflicted with the same disease it seeks to cure by (i) uncritical affiliation with historical generalizations, (ii) failure to recognize that history is no location of innocence and (iii) recolonization of non-Western ontologies through epistemic imperialism and network legitimation.
Filosofie & Praktijk 43 (2022) 3/4 , 2022
The paper proposes a 'creative adaptation' and epistemic humility as a bare minimum for dialogue ... more The paper proposes a 'creative adaptation' and epistemic humility as a bare minimum for dialogue and indeed, for intercultural philosophy in general. Intercultural encounters unmask the abstractness of dialogue and decenter both moral and subjective hierarchies that make dialogue impossible. This is not to suggest that the other in conversation with us can 'wholly' be known; my position is that dialogue opens space for intersubjective experience. Encounter with the other demystifies our shared strangeness and suspicions, a creative impulse that yields to mutual respect and recognition. I introduce the term ontological turbulence to suggest the precariousness of our knowledge systems and the necessity to transcend our epistemic dogmatism in our dialogue with others. The legitimating processes of interculturality as a desirable moral practice is dependent on this disposition towards epistemic empathy.
JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies
Issues of collective identity discourses and integration in Africa often face competing national ... more Issues of collective identity discourses and integration in Africa often face competing national and primordial identities. We explore multilayered integrative mechanisms that have become constitutive of collective African identity. We examine the nature of this identity taking a modern constructivist view of Africa's encounter with Europe. But we also address basic anthropological concerns, focusing on present and future prospects and seeking to understand how this identity is shaped by international politics or synchronized with local political units.
Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions, 2018
With the revitalization of Aristotelianism in the West in almost fifty years or so, and the commu... more With the revitalization of Aristotelianism in the West in almost fifty years or so, and the communitarianism that flows from Aristotle, Western and African philosophies, it seems, are converging. It is no wonder that there are good reasons to suspect that African philosophy can make an important and significant contribution to understanding the issues at stake in the debate between communitarianism and liberal individualism. The extent to which we will have to revise our ethical outlooks and our social and political theories to accommodate the insights drawn from African philosophy is the subject of intense debates. Many criticisms have emerged with regards to the nature of these debates. The first is on the question of content and the second on methodology. These are hotly contested debates in African political thought. In this collection of essays, we will be having a conversation from both sides of the debates, noticing how both content and methodology mirror and reproduce each other.
Chiedza, Journal of Arrupe Jesuit University, 2018
My purpose herein is to critically examine our dominant conversations on cultural appropriation. ... more My purpose herein is to critically examine our dominant conversations on cultural appropriation. The first part of the essay examines the ideological configuration of what constitutes cultural appropriation (hereafter as CA) first, as the politics of the diaspora and second, within a normative understanding of culture and its diachronic contradictions. This will be followed by a critical reevaluation of our subject theme as primarily a discourse of power with multiple implications. Framed as a discourse of power, CA is equally exposed to ideological distortions, and its critics becoming afflicted with the same virus they set out to cure in the first place. I am interested in the aspect of culture as a constant location of tensions and rupture, yet constitutive of core credential in the making of modern identity. I argue that the failure of dominant criticisms of cultural appropriation is precisely because they do not leave epistemic space for prior commitments: the internal variation of culture. If as critics have argued that CA enables cultural violence, we need to understand the epistemic space where cultural violence occurs in order to make a meaningful proposal for identity discourse and conversation. I will make a case for what may be termed multiple humanity(ies) as a way of transcending the homogenous claims imposed upon cultural memories.
This paper argues that the dominant discourse on cosmopolitanism has largely focused on its const... more This paper argues that the dominant discourse on cosmopolitanism has largely focused on its constitutive character (what the law tells us) while ignoring its substantive essence (human fellowship, subjective good). While recognizing the contribution made by other intellectual traditions, the paper argues that none of the approaches have yet answered basic questions of how to live with the stranger beyond the requirement(s) of the law. The paper is also critical of those versions of cosmopolitanism that privileges subjective preference to members of our community over the stranger, or that advocates eradication of boundaries as key condition for cosmopolitanism. The paper champions subjective equality through dialogue as a key condition for cosmopolitanism. Subjective equality on the other hand defines our terms of global justice.
In this essay, an attempt is made to re-present African Communitarianism as a discursive formatio... more In this essay, an attempt is made to re-present African Communitarianism as a discursive formation between the individual and community. It is a view which eschews the dominant position of many Africanist scholars on the pri- macy of the community over the individual in the ‘individual-community’ debate in contemporary Africanist discourse. The relationship between the individual and community is dialogical for the identity of the individual and the community is dependent on this constitutive formation. The individual is not prior to the community and neither is the community prior to the individual. Contemporaneity explains this dialogic relationship and to argue other- wise threatens the individual’s subjectivity to a vanishing point, or simply, to deny the individual a presence. On this trajectory, the politics of common good within the African value system can neither be described nor represented through consensus or unanimity but through a realist perspectivism or a worldview not held in abstraction from living traditions, cultures, and values that characterize the people(s) of sub-Saharan Africa.
In this paper, the concept of social capital is redefined in the context of identity politics wit... more In this paper, the concept of social capital is redefined in the context of identity politics within contemporary South Africa. A case is made against the fetishism of identity dogmas that thrive upon closed historicity. Any narrative of subjective formation that is beckoned upon closed historicity is a predisposition towards identity ‘commoditisation’. As the term suggests, commoditisation implies that human subjectivity is ‘wholly’ dependent and measured ‘only’ through the compass of social capital. Commoditisation of identity means that human subjectivity is no longer transcendental but an object of possession I am what I have or where I come from. This fixation on subjective acquisition and ‘possesivisms’ as an ethno-subjective repertoire for our overall subjective formation is identity fundamentalism. Although the notion of social capital in South Africa’s context is a residue of South Africa’s history of racialist capitalism, its present pervasiveness has generated a peculiar pattern of identity fundamentalism in which competition over economic resources has become construed as a threat to subjectivity. A reflexive understanding of this problem induces awareness for a healthy humanism.
For many people in the Bantu language countries of Africa, the term Ubuntu/botho encapsulates all... more For many people in the Bantu language countries of Africa, the term Ubuntu/botho encapsulates all the qualities of a respected member of society. But the term is also used by Africanist scholars as a critique of colonialist doctrine and even forms the core of a humanist ideology upon which the new democratic South Africa is constructed.
The socio-political imagination of contemporary Africa is usually beckoned upon a deconstruction ... more The socio-political imagination of contemporary Africa is usually beckoned upon a deconstruction of historiography – usually colonial history. If colonialism flourished through a misrecognition of the native as a historical subject, and by extension, a denial of humanity, the native would have to reassert his humanity through a re-cognition of his own history. At which point, African history would become a history of humanism. The first part of this essay localizes the debate within the historical context for which the debate gained relevance. The context is the Enlightenment and colonial history. I shall link these historicities to the emergent social political imagination in contemporary Africa. The attempt to rehabilitate the truncated African subjectivity would also become a rehabilitation of history by attacking the intellectual roots of colonial historicity.
In this article, I will historicize the socio-political and cultural emergence of Pan Africanism ... more In this article, I will historicize the socio-political and cultural emergence of Pan Africanism as an ideology. In doing so, one is enabled to appreciate its continued relevance and significance as well as its limitations and imposed misrecognition, morass misapplications, and muddled ambiguities within history. Historicizing Pan Africanism as a discourse frees it from an essentialist rendered definition and enables a new understanding in which Pan Africanism is to be understood as a performative-operative discourse. Being performative means that it ceases to be a close-minded rigid ideology proscribed by racial consciousness; it means assuming a new pose of repudiation that is dependent on contemporary socio-cultural tissues of historical experiences. But our concept is not just performative, it is also dis- cursive because it generates a new sense of meaning for our contemporary understanding of Africanity.
Africa is not a country! It is neither a homogenous socio-cultural group nor a unanimous ethno- p... more Africa is not a country! It is neither a homogenous socio-cultural group nor a unanimous ethno- political sovereign. How then could we speak of Pan-Africanism without generating an ambiguous vernacular mode of identity formation deeply rooted in questionable intellectual claims grounded in politics of history? To make sense of our discourse, therefore, is to localize it within the context of its emergence. These context(s) are the Trans-Atlantic era and colonial historicity with their associative epochs of subjective domination and shared responses of African peoples to this condition. Among other things, colonialism thrived through a denial of historical culture to non-Western people(s) with a false promise of “civilizing” the barbarian – a strategy that evacuates all possibility of human enterprise. In Africa and in the African Diaspora, the “uncivilized” is also a non-historical being of no consequence; an imposed misrecognition that enabled his/her objectification and domination. Pan-Africanism emerged as a restorative agency in this struggle for freedom and dignity by offering a new pose of repudiation grounded in historical unity of the African experience.
These are major excerpts from an interview that was conducted with Professor Wiredu at Rhodes Uni... more These are major excerpts from an interview that was conducted with Professor Wiredu at Rhodes University during the thirteenth Annual Conference of The International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (April 3, 2007). He speaks on a wide range of issues, such as political and personal identity, racism and tribalism, moral foundations, the golden rule, African communalism, human rights, personhood, consensus, and meta-phi- losophy, among other critical themes.
We are also offered what may be considered Wiredu’s de nition of what constitutes “African Philosophy.” For Wiredu, African philosophy ought not necessarily be put in con- trast to Western philosophy. African philosophy must be understood within the context of its emergence with its associative socio-cultural and political milieu. Philosophy has no borders, by which he encourages a wide breadth of investigation into different intellectual traditions and an openness to learn from other traditions. He emphasized, however, that there are basic human questions concerning a people that can only be answered by embed- ded knowledge within their indigenous thought systems. It is reductionist to conceive of African philosophy as merely “ethnophilosophy” because the body of knowledge of what constitutes African philosophy is a critical investigation that negotiates between a series of intellectual traditions evolving from Africa, including those discarded as mere myths and those considered as products of modernity. The authority of African philosophy is the abil- ity to create meaning for a culturally differentiated society, meanings that are not anach- ronistic but relevant to the sociopolitical and economic condition of the people. African philosophy does indeed have critical resources in dealing with the challenges of democrati- zation, party politics, and nation-building in Africa.
With regards to moral judgment, Wiredu’s leitmotif is the golden rule—a procedural standard to judge what action is right or wrong that is an invitation to a subjective empathy. Here Wiredu argues for a subjective reciprocity when it comes to norms and other certain conventions, and he interestingly sides with Menkiti in the famous Gyekye versus Menkiti debate.
History serves as a predictive guide for those who intend to ply into the future with a lot of br... more History serves as a predictive guide for those who intend to ply into the future with a lot of bright ideals. A review of the history of the African people within their independent and cultural heritage provides a suitable terminus for proper evaluation and measurement of progress and values. The major purpose of this essay is to explore the state of Africa through a historical analysis of Africa’s identity, socio-economic and political structures and development, which today are at a crossroads.
The evolution of soccer has brought a dynamic vitality in the sphere of sports. Humanity on the o... more The evolution of soccer has brought a dynamic vitality in the sphere of sports. Humanity on the other hand has always looked for something fascinating, mystifying, and worthy celebrating. Lost in this wondrous quest, the human person abandons the traditional religious and metaphysical modes of interpretation and evaluation, and leaves a void that neither modern science nor frontline religions could fill in. In an attempt to fill this void, the human person seeks for a reinterpretation of life’s values. It is in this process of reinterpretation that soccer becomes a NECESSARY CONNECTION to an inner fulfillment.
Drafts by Michael Onyebuchi Eze
Book Chapters by Michael Onyebuchi Eze
Rick Turner's Politics as the Are of the Impossible, 2024
Rick Turner's political philosophy and his subjective location as an agent of transformation mirr... more Rick Turner's political philosophy and his subjective location as an agent of transformation mirror in certain ways, Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). Even as Turner’s dream of a free South Africa was cut short, one wonders, and for very good reasons, what impact his work might have on the political unconscious of contemporary South Africa where it concerns emancipatory decolonisation. This chapter historicizes the ideological crossroads in terms in which both Turner and Biko’s philosophies mirror and critique each other. Like a man who saw the future, Turner anticipates Biko’s critique of “white” liberalism where it concerns the fractured decolonization status in post-apartheid South Africa. For Biko and Turner, decolonizing resistance goes beyond the material asymmetries of culture or as simply the overcoming of negative freedom. The residual legitimation of this claim has become more relevant in the context of the fractured decolonization status in contemporary South Africa. The new black bourgeoisie's entrenchment is central to this critical thesis on the weakness of the ‘liberal program’ . As Turner (and later Biko) anticipated, the failure of the current decolonization programs is only because it succeeded to ‘induct a few blacks into the privileged class while leaving intact the real mechanism of oppression, exploitative capitalism’. The chapter draws lessons from both Turner and Biko for a new way of thinking of resistance that is neither racialized nor encumbered by asymmetries of material culture.
Fragmented Identities of NIgeria:Sociopolitical and economic crisess, 2022
The purpose of this chapter is to bring to light the hidden pressures of struggle for national id... more The purpose of this chapter is to bring to light the hidden pressures of struggle for national identity, where "national" in this sense is primarily a reflection of ethno-religious and cultural identity. I investigate the dominant character of Nigeria's ethno-religious nationalism and the devastating consequences for Nigeria's national character. Where contemporary Nigeria is a mirror image of imperial geography, the sense of national imaginary is induced by way of coercion and not self-will. In the absence of an imagined shared national identity, ethno-religious nationalism fills in the vacuum. What we call "Nigeria" is, therefore, a collective of protonationalism(s). Using the example of Boko Haram and Pentecostal Christianity as proto-nationalist move- ments, I argue that the socio-political and historical features leading to the emergence of these movements mirror different aspects of the same African dilemma: (i) the failure of secular nationalism; (ii) non-decolonization of the civic public; (iii) the prodigious preservation of the ideological legacies of colonial statehood; and (iv) the state's arbitrary monopoly of violence. The failure of secular nationalism demands a populist rejection of the civic public, which both Christian and Muslim faithfuls equate as the location of the most reprehensible exploitation and abuse.
Handbook of African Catholicism, 2022
In this chapter, I offer a brief historical description of Africa’s encounter with medieval Catho... more In this chapter, I offer a brief historical description of Africa’s encounter with medieval Catholic Christianity. A history of Catholicism’s encounter with Africa is not just about the past but is also about the future of African Catholicism. But why is this study important? The church we inherited is, after all, a faith experience. Does not subjecting this experience to a historical review constitute a challenge to the fundamentals of our faith? How, then, should we write about our faith in a way that achieves all of the following: (1) escaping the trap of writing about Africa as a residual memory of European historical experience; (2) not undermining the reception of the faith or the experience of conversion; and (3) maintaining the apostolic spirit of the faith we have received without the ideological baggage of racist Christianity ... The chapter is divided into three major sections. The first section uses the example of Ethiopia the Kingdom of the Kongo for a historical illustration and contextual evidence. Moving beyond the Kongo, the second section addresses the church’s relationship with sub-Saharan Africa within the secular structures created by the Enlightenment. Historicizing the Enlightenment opens spaces toward an understanding of whether the church was in fact complicit with or merely indifferent to the institutional structures of slavery and colonialism. Historicization also allows us to draw lessons from the past, revealing in the third section what the contemporary African church can learn from its experiences.
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Videos by Michael Onyebuchi Eze
Academic Articles and Essays by Michael Onyebuchi Eze
how Western academics have appropriated the discourse in a manner fitting an intellectual crusade. The decolonial scholar is, at the same time, perpetuating the mandate of colonial epistemology by substituting coloniality with subjective displacement. Finally, I suggest a modest proposal for adopting a new framework that admits the epistemic virtues of decolonization while eschewing its limitations and internal contradictions. My argument is that decolonization studies, as understood
in contemporary African philosophy, has remained afflicted with the same disease it seeks to cure by (i) uncritical affiliation with historical generalizations, (ii) failure to recognize that history is no location of innocence and (iii) recolonization of non-Western ontologies through epistemic imperialism and network legitimation.
We are also offered what may be considered Wiredu’s de nition of what constitutes “African Philosophy.” For Wiredu, African philosophy ought not necessarily be put in con- trast to Western philosophy. African philosophy must be understood within the context of its emergence with its associative socio-cultural and political milieu. Philosophy has no borders, by which he encourages a wide breadth of investigation into different intellectual traditions and an openness to learn from other traditions. He emphasized, however, that there are basic human questions concerning a people that can only be answered by embed- ded knowledge within their indigenous thought systems. It is reductionist to conceive of African philosophy as merely “ethnophilosophy” because the body of knowledge of what constitutes African philosophy is a critical investigation that negotiates between a series of intellectual traditions evolving from Africa, including those discarded as mere myths and those considered as products of modernity. The authority of African philosophy is the abil- ity to create meaning for a culturally differentiated society, meanings that are not anach- ronistic but relevant to the sociopolitical and economic condition of the people. African philosophy does indeed have critical resources in dealing with the challenges of democrati- zation, party politics, and nation-building in Africa.
With regards to moral judgment, Wiredu’s leitmotif is the golden rule—a procedural standard to judge what action is right or wrong that is an invitation to a subjective empathy. Here Wiredu argues for a subjective reciprocity when it comes to norms and other certain conventions, and he interestingly sides with Menkiti in the famous Gyekye versus Menkiti debate.
Drafts by Michael Onyebuchi Eze
Book Chapters by Michael Onyebuchi Eze
how Western academics have appropriated the discourse in a manner fitting an intellectual crusade. The decolonial scholar is, at the same time, perpetuating the mandate of colonial epistemology by substituting coloniality with subjective displacement. Finally, I suggest a modest proposal for adopting a new framework that admits the epistemic virtues of decolonization while eschewing its limitations and internal contradictions. My argument is that decolonization studies, as understood
in contemporary African philosophy, has remained afflicted with the same disease it seeks to cure by (i) uncritical affiliation with historical generalizations, (ii) failure to recognize that history is no location of innocence and (iii) recolonization of non-Western ontologies through epistemic imperialism and network legitimation.
We are also offered what may be considered Wiredu’s de nition of what constitutes “African Philosophy.” For Wiredu, African philosophy ought not necessarily be put in con- trast to Western philosophy. African philosophy must be understood within the context of its emergence with its associative socio-cultural and political milieu. Philosophy has no borders, by which he encourages a wide breadth of investigation into different intellectual traditions and an openness to learn from other traditions. He emphasized, however, that there are basic human questions concerning a people that can only be answered by embed- ded knowledge within their indigenous thought systems. It is reductionist to conceive of African philosophy as merely “ethnophilosophy” because the body of knowledge of what constitutes African philosophy is a critical investigation that negotiates between a series of intellectual traditions evolving from Africa, including those discarded as mere myths and those considered as products of modernity. The authority of African philosophy is the abil- ity to create meaning for a culturally differentiated society, meanings that are not anach- ronistic but relevant to the sociopolitical and economic condition of the people. African philosophy does indeed have critical resources in dealing with the challenges of democrati- zation, party politics, and nation-building in Africa.
With regards to moral judgment, Wiredu’s leitmotif is the golden rule—a procedural standard to judge what action is right or wrong that is an invitation to a subjective empathy. Here Wiredu argues for a subjective reciprocity when it comes to norms and other certain conventions, and he interestingly sides with Menkiti in the famous Gyekye versus Menkiti debate.
https://ubuntudialogue.org/ubuntu-philosophy-of-dialogue/
Een keerpunt in het leven van Michael Onyebuchi Eze was de periode dat hij verbleef bij een kolonie van mensen met de ziekte lepra. Lepra gold als sociaal stigma; mensen met die ziekte kon je maar beter mijden, anders zou je ook lepra krijgen. Eigenlijk wilde Eze niet gaan, maar hij volgde het advies van een oom, die hem ¬– vanuit de ubuntu-gedachte – adviseerde om dat wél te doen.
“Dat was een moment waarop mijn ego werd gebroken. Ik kwam erachter: die mensen zijn net zoals ik. Ze lachen, zijn gelukkig, boos, jaloers, worden verliefd. Het zijn mensen. En ik vergat dat ze deze ziekte hadden. Die ontmoeting haalde het stigma weg, liet zien dat het een mythe was. Deze mensen hebben me veel geleerd. Ik veranderde door die ontmoeting, en wist vanaf dat moment: dit is mijn idee van humaniteit.”
https://www.npostart.nl/de-boeddhistische-blik-food-for-thought/30-06-2019/KN_1707189