HUMA African Epistemologies Advanced Seminar Series

Speaker: Prof. Jonathan Okeke Chimakonam, University of Pretoria

Introduction: The contemporary African condition is here identified as communialysis – a trauma-induced obsession that compels its victims to mentally run back to the ancient communal fortress, from the safety of which they can rebel and collectively fight off oppressive ideologies and ideologues as common threats. I identified ‘Negative Solidarity’–the tendency to work together only when there is a common threat to fight, as a mindset that drives communialysis and traced it to two important historical moments: the formation of the first African community in ancient times and the experiences of racialism, slavery and colonialism in modern Africa.  This presentation will attempt an ideological solution to the contemporary African condition – communialysis. What is this new ideology to be proposed? Why does the strategy have to be ideological? And how can the new ideology address the recalcitrant issue of Negative Solidarity, the marginal mentalities created by communialysis, and their social disruptions thereof?  

About the speaker: Prof Jonathan O. Chimakonam, teaches at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.  He taught at the University of Calabar, Nigeria, for several years. He was a senior research fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Philosophy, Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen, Germany (2021-2022). He was a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg (2017-2018). He is a Research Fellow at both UNISA and Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (Stias). His teaching and research interests include African Philosophy, Logic, Environmental Ethics, Epistemic justice and Decolonial thinkingChimakonam has contributed several concepts and principles to African philosophy and thought. His articles have appeared in refereed and accredited international journals. He is author, co-author, editor and co-editor of several books that include Atuolu Omalu: Some Unanswered Questions in Contem. porary African Philosophy (2015); African Philosophy and Environmental Conservation (2018); African Philosophy and the Epistemic Marginalisation of Women (2018).

Convenor: Dr. Sanya Osha

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