HUMA African Epistemologies Advanced Seminar Series
V.Y. Mudimbe’s The Invention of Africa is an articulate interrogation of the assumptions and presumptions of the humanities and social sciences insofar as they sought to study various aspects of African cultures almost three decades after most African countries gained their formal political independence. Nevertheless, it is regrettable that a substantial number of scholars in so-called Anglophone Africa are unaware of this groundbreaking work. Consequently, in this paper, I seek to answer the following three questions: Does anything remain of the concept of “African Studies” after Mudimbe’s critique of the essentially Western theoretical underpinnings of this field of inquiry? To what extent does Mudimbe’s The Invention of Africa contribute to the creation of meaningful links among Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone scholarship in the African context? How can Mudimbe’s critique of scholarship on Africa illuminate future directions in the humanities and social sciences within the African context?
About the speaker: Dr Reginald M.J. Oduor holds a PhD in political philosophy from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He is the first person with a total visual disability to be appointed to a substantive teaching position in a public university in Kenya. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Nairobi. Over the past thirty-one years, he has lectured philosophy in five universities (two full-time, three part-time). He has special interests in African philosophy, political philosophy, ethics, the rights of persons with disabilities, and philosophy of religion. He has published several journal articles and book reviews. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the New Series of Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya from 2009 to 2015. He has co-edited with Drs. Oriare Nyarwath and Francis Owakah the volume Odera Oruka in the Twenty-First Century (Council for Research in Values and Philosophy – CRVP, 2018).