HUMA African Epistemologies Advanced Seminar Series

Speaker: Jared Sacks (MESAAS, Columbia University) 

Introduction: “An isolated individual can resist understanding an issue, but the group, the village, grasps it with disconcerting speed” - Frantz Fanon 

In 1972, Odera Oruka launched the sage philosophy project, a spirited challenge to the colonial assumption that Africans lacked didactic philosophical thought. In doing so, he not only went after his own colleagues in the ultraconservative Department of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Nairobi, but he also took on Western philosophical orthodoxy and its counter programme of ethnophilosophy. The driving force behind Oruka’s project of African philosophic sagacity is the political commitment to proving that on the African continent there exists a culture of philosophical thought that is derived, not from a professional Western genealogy, but from one that is non- professionalized and indigenous. By seeking out individuals within communities who can be considered sages, he was able to show how they would interrogate popular wisdom and use unconventional didactic reasoning to help us understand society and the world. At the core of Oruka’s project, in other words, is the foregrounding of the individual sage as a thinker in their own right. However, if we are to critique the Cartesian separation of body and mind, is it even possible to think outside of society? If all people, including philosophers, live, are influenced by, and think within a social context, should we not begin with evaluating the ability of the collective to engage in philosophical thought? If sagacity is relational, should we not consider rethinking the sage philosophy project towards a real decolonial turn? 

About the speaker: Jared Sacks is an activist and researcher who has worked with many of South Africa's most prominent social movements including the Anti-Eviction Campaign, Abahlali baseMjondolo, Reclaim the City, Singabalapha, among others. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University. He is the compiler of the anthology No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way, the founder of a children's non-profit organisation, and has worked as an investigative journalist and  as a monitor for the South African Human Rights Commission

Convenor: Dr. Sanya Osha

More about HUMA African Epistemologies Advanced Seminar Series

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