Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-9q27g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T23:00:45.886Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Does It Mean to Colonise and Decolonise Philosophy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2023

Lewis R. Gordon
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What does it mean for philosophy to be ‘colonised’ and what are some of the challenges involved in ‘decolonising’ it in philosophical and political terms? After distinguishing between philosophy and its practice as a professional enterprise, I explore six ways in which philosophy, at least as understood in its Euromodern form, could be interpreted as colonised: (1) Eurocentrism and its asserted racial and ethnic origins/misrepresentations of philosophy's history, (2) coloniality of its norms, (3) market commodification of the discipline, (4) disciplinary decadence, (5) solipsism, and (6) appeals to redemptive narratives of colonial practice. The remainder of the article examines conditions for decolonising philosophy, which include unlocking its potential as a liberatory practice, identifying its humanistic dimensions, rethinking metaphysical assumptions, and embracing political responsibility wrought from the production of knowledge.

Type
Paper
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 93: Expanding Horizons , May 2023 , pp. 117 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Inscription of Antef, quoted in Théophile Obeng, ‘Egypt: Ancient History of African Philosophy’, in Wiredu, (ed.), A Companion to African Philosophy (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2004), 35.Google Scholar
Gordon, Jane Anna, Creolizing Political Theory. Reading Rousseau through Fanon (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Gordon, Lewis R., Disciplinary Decadence. Living Thought in Trying Times (London: Routledge, 2006).Google Scholar
Gordon, Lewis R., Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (London: Routledge, 2021).Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund, Cartesian Mediations. An Introduction to Phenomenology, Cairns, Dorion (trans.), (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1960).Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund, ‘Philosophy as Rigorous Science’, in Lauer, Quentin (trans. and intro.), Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Philosophy as Rigorous Science, and Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 71–147.Google Scholar
Kalyan, Gorav and Kalyan, Rohan, Badiou (Documentary Film, 2018): https://www.badioufilm.net/.Google Scholar
Maldonado-Torres, Nelson, Against War. Views from the Underside of Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).Google Scholar
Mignolo, Walter and Walsh, Catherine, On Decoloniality. Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Misch, George, The Dawn of Philosophy. A Philosophy Primer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951).Google Scholar
Monahan, Michael J., Creolizing Practices of Freedom. Recognition and Dissonance (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022).Google Scholar
Nelson, Eric, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought (London: Bloomsbury, 2019).Google Scholar
Nishitani, Keiji, Religion and Nothingness, Bragt, Jan Van (trans.), (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982).Google Scholar
Park, Peter J. K., Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy. Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830 (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Stingl, Alexander, Care, Power, Information. For the Love of BluesCollarship in the Age of Digital Culture, Bioeconomy, and (Post-)Trumpism (London: Routledge, 2021).Google Scholar