Africa's quest for a philosophy of decolonization / / Messay Kebede.

• Superior document: Value Inquiry Book Series ; 153
• VerfasserIn: Kebede, Messay,
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam, Netherlands ;, New York, United States : : Rodopi,, [2004]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2004
• Language: English
• Series: Value Inquiry Book Series ; 153.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.
• Notes: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

This book discovers freedom in the colonial idea of African primitiveness. As human transcendence, freedom escapes the drawbacks of otherness, as defended by ethnophilosophy, while exposing the idiosyncratic inspiration of Eurocentric universalism. Decolonization calls for the reconnection with freedom, that is, with myth-making understood as the inaugural act of cultural pluralism. The cultural condition of modernization emerges when the return to the past deploys the future.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Western Discourses on Africa -- Between Evolutionism and Pluralism: Tempels's Path to HumanSameness -- The Holy Grail of Otherness -- Sameness Versus Otherness -- Particularism Versus Otherness -- The Future as Forward Movement into the Past: The ConstructednessOf Identity -- Colonization Without Colonizers:The Phenomenon of African Elitism -- Ethnicity and State Formation: The Mystical Root of Nationhood -- Harnessing Myth to Rationality -- Notes -- Bibliography -- About the Author -- Index -- Value Inquiry Book Series.