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The Nonhuman in African Philosophy

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Handbook of African Philosophy

Part of the book series: Handbooks in Philosophy ((HP))

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Abstract

This chapter interrogates the conceptualizations of the nonhuman in African thought. To do this, it draws on a Swahili Sufi poem entitled Al-Inkishafi, by Sayyid Abdallah bin Ali Bin Nassir (1720–1820). The poem presents a distinct notion of the nonhuman as “the world”, constructed in opposition to the human understood as fundamentally antagonistic to humanity. The world is characterized as worthless, impermanent, deceptive, and destructive. Such a view of the world is not isolated in African cultures, but is indeed ubiquitous in regions with a strong influence of Sufi Islam, and even beyond these regions. Based on the philosophical assertion about “the world” in Al-Inkishafi, the chapter then traces the developments of this notion of “the world” in two postcolonial African texts: a Swahili novel by Euphrase Kezilahabi, Dunia Uwanja wa Fujo (1975), and a Wolof novel by Boubacar Boris Diop, Doomi Golo (2003). It suggests that reading these novels against the background of Al-Inkishafi’s conceptualization of “the world” dramatically changes their interpretation. In the case of Dunia Uwanja wa Fujo, an intellectual continuity between Sufism, existentialism, and socialism makes it possible to attribute the failures of socialism in Tanzania to the very nature of the world. Doomi Golo presents a world where the ephemeral nature of human existence is taken as a point of departure and where deception belongs to the basic setup of all reality.

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  1. University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Alena Rettová

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  1. Alena Rettová
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  1. Department of Religions and Philosophies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, London, UK

    Elvis Imafidon

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Mpho Tshivashe

  3. Independent Scholar, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Bjoern Freter

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Rettová, A. (2023). The Nonhuman in African Philosophy. In: Imafidon, E., Tshivashe, M., Freter, B. (eds) Handbook of African Philosophy. Handbooks in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77898-9_42-1

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