Beauty in African Thought

Beauty in African Thought PDF Author: Bolaji Bateye
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793630763
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
A 2023 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Beauty in African Thought: A Critique of the Western Idea of Development investigates how the concept of beauty in African philosophy and related qualitative social sciences may contribute to a richer intercultural exchange on the idea of development. While working within frameworks created in post-colonial and arguably neo-colonial times, African thinkers have reacted against the mainstream view that restricts the meaning and scope of good development to economic growth and western-style education. These thinkers have worked toward a critical self-understanding of the potentials inherent in cultural, spiritual, and political traditions since pre-colonial times. Edited by Bolaji Bateye, Mahmoud Masaeli, Louise Müller, and Angela Roothaan, this collection explores branches of thought from wisdom or oral traditions to political thought and philosophy of culture. This book is urgent reading material for any policy maker, scholar, or student wishing to attend to the voices of African(ist) thinkers who search for alternative approaches to global questions of development in a time of climate change and increasing socio-economic inequality.

Beauty in African Thought

Beauty in African Thought PDF Author: Bolaji Bateye
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793630763
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Get Book

Book Description
A 2023 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Beauty in African Thought: A Critique of the Western Idea of Development investigates how the concept of beauty in African philosophy and related qualitative social sciences may contribute to a richer intercultural exchange on the idea of development. While working within frameworks created in post-colonial and arguably neo-colonial times, African thinkers have reacted against the mainstream view that restricts the meaning and scope of good development to economic growth and western-style education. These thinkers have worked toward a critical self-understanding of the potentials inherent in cultural, spiritual, and political traditions since pre-colonial times. Edited by Bolaji Bateye, Mahmoud Masaeli, Louise Müller, and Angela Roothaan, this collection explores branches of thought from wisdom or oral traditions to political thought and philosophy of culture. This book is urgent reading material for any policy maker, scholar, or student wishing to attend to the voices of African(ist) thinkers who search for alternative approaches to global questions of development in a time of climate change and increasing socio-economic inequality.

Black Aesthetics

Black Aesthetics PDF Author: John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji
Publisher: Africa Research and Publications
ISBN: 9781592219025
Category : Aesthetics, African
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Since its original publication in 2003, Beauty and Culture has remained the only full-length major book contribution to the area of philosophy of art and aesthetics by an African philosopher. This is an area which has had very little or no critical systematic philosophical discussion from an African and African Diaspora perspective to date, either by African or African Diaspora thinkers or, for that matter, by non-African philosophers and intellectuals, leaving the assessment and discussion of African and Diaspora art and artistic experience to Euro-American intellectuals with scant or warped understanding of the sensitivities and sensibilities that under-gird the art they are commenting on. This book which harks back to the ideas of values relating to the concept of beauty in Africana art and aesthetics globally--starting from ancient Africa, the Americas to Europe and to Asia--is predicated on the fact that there is a need for Africana peoples to begin to take a closer look at aesthetics from the Africana perspective or whatever is left of it; especially, the relationship this has to notions of morality, politics, religion, and culture generally. Over the last decade there has grown recognition of the importance of taking African aesthetics into consideration on its own terms, but the nature of the issues discussed in this book has made it necessary to provide non-philosophers a background introduction to the challenge of African philosophy of art. This accounts for the careful effort made in the first three chapters (Introduction, Biographical Details, and The Nature of the Philosophic Enterprise: Initial Issues) to introduce the readers interested in Africana aesthetics, to the rudiments of debates in African philosophy and the nature of scholarship in the discipline, using the experience of the author as illustration. The fourth chapter (Contemporary Scholarship on (Africana) Arts) reviews the discussion of African art in extant literature, while in chapter five (Artistic Expression in Africa) the author explores the nature of art and artistic expression in Africana societies; and chapter six (Philosophy and Artistic Expression in Africa) deals with the problematic of philosophizing the arts and values relating to artistic expression in Africana societies, with chapter seven (Arts, Memory and Identity) considering the critical issues involved in the relationship between art, memory, culture and identity structuring and development in all human societies, but especially in Africana societies. The last chapter (Conclusion) harnesses the inferences of this book, indicating further the challenges which Africana philosophers face in the proper appreciation of Africa and Diaspora art" ABOUT THE AUTHOR JOHN AYOTUNDE ISOLA BEWAJI, is the Jay Newman Visiting Professor of Philosophy of Culture, Brooklyn College and Professor of Philosophy, University of the West Indies; founding President of the International Society for African Philosophy and Studies and John Simon Guggenheim Research Fellow (2010-2011). Publisher's note.

Beauty and Culture

Beauty and Culture PDF Author: John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aesthetics, African
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description


African and Diaspora Aesthetics

African and Diaspora Aesthetics PDF Author: Sarah Nuttall
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822339076
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
In Cameroon, a monumental "statue of liberty" is made from scrap metal. In Congo, a thriving popular music incorporates piercing screams and carnal dances. When these and other instantiations of the aesthetics of Africa and its diasporas are taken into account, how are ideas of beauty reconfigured? Scholars and artists take up that question in this invigorating, lavishly illustrated collection, which includes more than one hundred color images. Exploring sculpture, music, fiction, food, photography, fashion, and urban design, the contributors engage with and depart from canonical aesthetic theories as they demonstrate that beauty cannot be understood apart from ugliness. Highlighting how ideas of beauty are manifest and how they mutate, travel, and combine across time and distance, continental and diasporic writers examine the work of a Senegalese sculptor inspired by Leni Riefenstahl's photographs of Nuba warriors; a rich Afro-Brazilian aesthetic incorporating aspects of African, Jamaican, and American cultures; and African Americans' Africanization of the Santería movement in the United States. They consider the fraught, intricate spaces of the urban landscape in postcolonial South Africa; the intense pleasures of eating on Réunion; and the shockingly graphic images on painted plywood boards advertising "morality" plays along the streets of Ghana. And they analyze the increasingly ritualized wedding feasts in Cameroon as well as the limits of an explicitly "African" aesthetics. Two short stories by the Mozambican writer Mia Couto gesture toward what beauty might be in the context of political failure and postcolonial disillusionment. Together the essays suggest that beauty is in some sense future-oriented and that taking beauty in Africa and its diasporas seriously is a way of rekindling hope. Contributors. Rita Barnard, Kamari Maxine Clarke, Mia Couto, Mark Gevisser, Simon Gikandi, Michelle Gilbert, Isabel Hofmeyr, William Kentridge, Dominique Malaquais, Achille Mbembe, Cheryl-Ann Michael, Celestin Monga, Sarah Nuttall, Patricia Pinho, Rodney Place, Els van der Plas, Pippa Stein, Françoise Vergès

Hair Raising

Hair Raising PDF Author: Noliwe M. Rooks
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813523125
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
We all know there is a politics of skin color, but is there a politics of hair?In this book, Noliwe Rooks explores the history and politics of hair and beauty culture in African American communities from the nineteenth century to the 1990s. She discusses the ways in which African American women have located themselves in their own families, communities, and national culture through beauty advertisements, treatments, and styles. Bringing the story into today's beauty shop, listening to other women talk about braids, Afros, straighteners, and what they mean today to grandmothers, mothers, sisters, friends, and boyfriends, she also talks about her own family and has fun along the way. Hair Raising is that rare sort of book that manages both to entertain and to illuminate its subject.

Sankofa

Sankofa PDF Author: Elleni Tedla
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
To prevent the alienation and crisis facing African youth, this book urges the building of a new form of African education that is firmly founded on all that is positive in indigenous thought and education. It also examines the impact of the concepts that underlie indigenous and Westernized education. As an in-depth illustration of African thought and education, traditional Amara (Ethiopian) thought and education is discussed in two chapters. The book underscores the need to understand Africans on their own terms within the context of their culture, and the necessity to be judicious in importing foreign ideas and institutions to Africa. Otherwise, the cultural and spiritual fabric of the African way of life will be torn beyond repair. This book has great implications for African and African American education.

Meaning and Truth in African Philosophy

Meaning and Truth in African Philosophy PDF Author: Grivas Muchineripi Kayange
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030019624
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
This book offers a new way of doing African philosophy by building on an analysis of the way people talk. The author bases his investigation on the belief that traditional African philosophy is hidden in expressions used in ordinary language. As a result, he argues that people are engaging in a philosophical activity when they use expressions such as taboos, proverbs, idioms, riddles, and metaphors. The analysis investigates proverbs using the ordinary language approach and Speech Act theory. Next, the author looks at taboos using counterfactual logic, which studies the meaning of taboo expressions by departing from a consideration of their structure and use. He argues that the study of these figurative expressions using the counterfactual framework offers a particular understanding of African philosophy and belief systems. The study also investigates issues of meaning and rationality departing from a study on riddles, explores conceptual metaphors used in conceptualizing the notion of politics in modern African political thought, and examines language and marginalization of women and people with disabilities. The book differs from other works in African philosophy in the sense that it does not claim that Africans have a philosophy as is commonly done in most studies. Rather, it reflects and unfolds philosophical elements in ordinary language use. The book also builds African Conception of beauty and truth through the study of language.

A Discourse on African Philosophy

A Discourse on African Philosophy PDF Author: Christian B. N. Gade
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498512267
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
Many have argued that ubuntu was a formative influence on the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), South Africa’s famous transitional justice mechanism. A Discourse on African Philosophy: A New Perspective on Ubuntu and Transitional Justice in South Africa challenges and contextualizes this view in a way that not only provides new findings and reflections on ubuntu and the TRC, but also contributes to the field of African philosophy. One of Christian B. N. Gade’s key findings, founded on qualitative interviews in South Africa, is that some former TRC commissioners and committee members question the importance of ubuntu in the TRC process. Another is that there are several differing and historically developing interpretations of ubuntu, some of which have evident political implications and reflect non-factual and creative uses of history. Thus ubuntu is not a shared cultural heritage, in the ethnophilosophical sense of a static property characterizing a group. In fact, throughout this book Gade argues that the ethnophilosophical approach to African philosophy as a static group property is highly problematic. Gade’s research presents an alternative collective discourse on African philosophy (“collective” in the sense that it does not focus on any single individual in particular) that takes differences, historical developments, and social contexts seriously. This book will be of interest to scholars in African philosophy, transitional justice, politics and cultural heritage, and law in South Africa.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought

The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought PDF Author: Abiola Irele
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195334736
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1025

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Book Description
From St. Augustine and early Ethiopian philosophers to the anti-colonialist movements of Pan-Africanism and Negritude, this encyclopedia offers a comprehensive view of African thought, covering the intellectual tradition both on the continent in its entirety and throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas and in Europe. The term "African thought" has been interpreted in the broadest sense to embrace all those forms of discourse - philosophy, political thought, religion, literature, important social movements - that contribute to the formulation of a distinctive vision of the world determined by or derived from the African experience. The Encyclopedia is a large-scale work of 350 entries covering major topics involved in the development of African Thought including historical figures and important social movements, producing a collection that is an essential resource for teaching, an invaluable companion to independent research, and a solid guide for further study.

African Philosophy and Thought Systems

African Philosophy and Thought Systems PDF Author: Mawere, Munyaradzi
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
ISBN: 9956763012
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The once acrimonious debate on the existence of African philosophy has come of age, yet the need to cultivate a culture of belonging is more demanding now than ever before in many African societies. The gargantuan indelible energised chicanery waves of neo-colonialism and globalisation and their sweeping effect on Africa demand more concerted action and solutions than cul-de-sac discourses and magical realism. It is in view of this realisation that this book was born. This is a vital text for understanding contextual historical trends in the development of African philosophic ideas on the continent and how Africans could possibly navigate the turbulent catadromous waters, tangled webs and chasms of destruction, and chagrin of struggles that have engrossed Africa since the dawn of slavery and colonial projects on the continent. The book aims to generate more insights and influence national, continental, and global debates in the field of philosophy. It is accessible and handy to a wider range of readers, ranging from educators and students of African philosophy, anthropology, African studies, cultural studies, and all those concerned with the further development of African philosophy and thought systems on the African continent.