In his 1840 translation of the Gospel of Luke from English into Setswana, Robert Moffat transfers Western numerals, geographic words and biblical names to Setswana. In this article, it is argued that in this translation, we see the beginning of the colonisation of Setswana. Furthermore, it is argued that in this translation, Moffat used epistemic privilege and the performance of power to facilitate the process of epistemicide on the linguistic heritage of Batswana and its indigenous knowledge system through an (...) act of colonisation. Contribution: The article applies an intersection of theoretical lenses, namely decoloniality and the Foucauldian notion of power, as its frames of reference in analysing the 1840 English–Setswana Gospel of Luke. (shrink)

As a site of colonial conquest, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced colonialism’s historic and continuing harms. One of the aspects of this harm is epistemic. In the analytic philosophical tradition, this harm can partly be theorised in line with the literature on epistemic injustice, although it does not fit squarely. I show this by arguing for what can be understood as a colonial state’s specific manifestation of epistemic injustice. This manifestation takes into account the historical context of colonisation and the (...) continuing coloniality of sub-Saharan African countries. From this, I argue for an approach to remediating this epistemic injustice that relies on the fair-minded pursuit of knowledge. This approach, I briefly argue, gains valuable insights from African epistemological traditions and can be beneficial to other epistemic injustice instances that result specifically from historical cases of oppression. (shrink)

This chapter addresses Habermas’ analyses of law in The Theory of Communicative Action, in particular, the dilemmatic structure of welfare state lawCommunicative actionand law. Habermas discusses the dilemmatic structure of welfare state law as an example of the system colonisation of the lifeworld. Given the problems of the colonisation analysis, I suggest that there is a need for another way to address the dialectic of law. Taking my cue from Christoph Menke’s analysis of the modern legal form, I (...) discuss how this may be possible and what kinds of reconsiderations of Habermas’ analysis this requires. (shrink)

What is critical theory – and what is it not? This essay attempts a new answer to this old question and examines which normative convictions immanent to social reality can be used to describe, analyse and criticise contemporary, global forms of domination that form blockades of social and political participation. The analysis proceeds in a double step, referring both to the critique of society and to the critique of theory that describes society. The basis of this parallel swing is an (...) analysis in which the author makes revisions to Jürgen Habermas’s colonisation thesis and uses the example of housing to show how these revisions which refer to the global perspective, the demarcation between system and lifeworld, the language of critique and, finally, the theoretical mode of an inherent dialectical critique make possible an analysis of the financial and economic sectors as well as everyday interactions. Reading Habermas more dialectically than he probably would himself also allows the identification of potentials for transforming relations of oppression. (shrink)

Cet article analyse les évolutions des positions de Marx à propos de la colonisation. Il souligne tout d’abord l’invariant de ces réflexions : la dénonciation de la violence coloniale. Au départ, on trouve une interprétation de la colonisation comme processus de modernisation, puis comme dynamique de destruction-régénération, liée à l’« unification du monde ». L’auteur identifie spécialement les inflexions successives de la pensée de Marx – résolument critique –, au sujet des questions coloniale et nationale, du caractère non (...) linéaire de l’histoire, mais aussi de la différenciation des formations sociales. (shrink)

Series Note This paper belongs to the Authentic Spirituality series, a sequence of essays developed from the author's wider work on contemplative phenomenology, inner light, yoga, medical critique, and embodied practice. Across these domains, the central question remains the same: what remains real when hype, projection, ideology, and spiritual theatre are stripped away? Abstract This paper contributes to the series Authentic Spirituality by examining how closed symbolic systems colonise inner space. Through a comparative reading of Jean Lorédan's account of the (...) Gaufridy sorcery trial and Jules Bois' Le Satanisme et la magie (1895), the paper argues that spiritual misdirection does not depend only on belief, coercion, or historical superstition. It operates wherever images, doctrines, rituals, and interpretations occupy the field of experience so completely that no open inner space remains. -/- Lorédan shows the mechanism from the side of the accused, whose lived reality is absorbed by an inquisitorial template already prepared in advance. Bois shows the same mechanism from the side of the investigator, whose prolonged immersion in dark magick gradually draws the observer into the phenomenological atmosphere of the material studied. Together, these cases reveal a single structure, the occupation of consciousness by a closed interpretive field. -/- Against this background, the paper develops a phenomenological account of yoga, not as posture, belief, or spiritual identity, but as the capacity to sustain open, non-interpretive attention. This account is brought into dialogue with Gurdjieff's concept of identification and Jeanne de Salzmann's elaboration of presence as its counterforce. Identification, in de Salzmann's precise formulation, is the structural default of attention without inner ground: consciousness merges with whatever it attends to, leaving no witnessing space. This corresponds directly to the mechanism of closed-system absorption described here, and de Salzmann's practice of presence corresponds directly to what this paper calls inner emptiness. In this convergence, yoga and the Gurdjieff Work point toward the same prior capacity. The paper concludes that authentic spirituality is not defined by exotic imagery, ritual intensity, or metaphysical claims, but by its ability to open inner space rather than occupy it. (shrink)

Historical interest in the ideologies behind the ‘first’ British empire have tended, for very understandable reasons, to look towards the colonies of the eastern seaboard of North America and the Caribbean. By contrast, this study of the imperial vision held by the English philosopher and politician Francis Bacon (1561–1626) emphasises a different geography of empire. In an investigation of what Bacon took to be the implications of the union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland in the person of King (...) James VI & I, and in the pacification of Ireland following the conclusion of the Nine Years’ War in 1603 and the Flight of Earls in 1607, it argues that Bacon’s own imperial ambitions were ultimately directed towards the annexation of the Low Countries and the founding of a new British imperium in western Europe. (shrink)

As space travel and intentions to colonise other planets are becoming the norm in public debate and scholarship, we must also confront the technical and survival challenges that emerge from these hostile environments. This paper aims to evaluate the various arguments proposed to meet the challenges of human space travel and extraterrestrial planetary colonisation. In particular, two primary solutions have been present in the literature as the most straightforward solutions to the rigours of extraterrestrial survival and flourishing: (1) geoengineering, (...) where the environment is modified to become hospitable to its inhabitants, and (2) human (bio)enhancement where the genetic heritage of humans is modified to make them more resilient to the difficulties they may encounter as well as to permit them to thrive in non-terrestrial environments. Both positions have strong arguments supporting them but also severe philosophical and practical drawbacks when exposed to different circumstances. This paper aims to show that a principled stance where one position is accepted wholesale necessarily comes at the opportunity cost of the other where the other might be better suited, practically and morally. This paper concludes that case-by-case evaluations of the solutions to space travel and extraterrestrial colonisation are necessary to ensure moral congruency and the survival and flourishing of astronauts now and into the future. (shrink)

La majeure partie des institutions qui nous ont été léguées par la colonisation sont vécues par les peuples comme des structures d’emprunt, étrangères à leur être-au-monde et ne répondant pas à la dialectique de leurs besoins. L’École n’y fait pas exception. En effet, les disciplines qui s’y déploient peinent encore à aligner les savoirs savants sur les activités pratiques. Il en est ainsi de la philosophie dont l’utilité et la place sont de plus en plus discutées par les citoyens. (...) Une des raisons à cette crise de légitimité est que l’activité philosophique en Afrique reste encore trop liée à des individus alors qu’elle doit être inscrite dans des institutions, ce qui aura pour effet de l’internaliser au niveau des communautés. Pour essaimer et projeter dans la société entière une attention à la science, du moins au sens, dont une civilisation entière peut vivre, et pour longtemps, la philosophie doit se repenser comme un travail en commun, une recherche en réseaux qui obéissent aux clauses d’humilité, de sincérité et d’effectivité. (shrink)

This article argues that the contemporary crisis of the public sphere is fundamentally aesthetic. Beyond disinformation or declining trust, the transformation of publicity in digital capitalism involves a reorganisation of the sensible that reshapes how communication is felt, perceived, and shared. Drawing on John Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics and Byung-Chul Han’s critique of psychopower, the analysis interprets algorithmic mediation as an aesthetic regime that converts attention and affect into value, fragmenting the experiential basis of democratic life. The article conceptualises this process (...) as aesthetic colonisation – the absorption of perception into metrics of visibility – and proposes an alternative model of reflective publicity grounded in Dewey’s notion of aesthetic experience as shared meaning and Han’s defence of negativity as a space for reflection. Through this dialogue, the article develops a critical framework for understanding how digital environments transform the formation of publics and argues that democratic regeneration requires an aesthetics of formation. This entails fostering communicative practices that sustain continuity, empathy, and deliberation within the algorithmic public sphere. (shrink)

Dans cet article, l’auteur s’intéresse au regard que le théologien Francisco de Vitoria porte sur la colonisation espagnole. Il s’appuie sur des extraits de la Leçon sur la tempérance et de la Leçon sur les Indiens pour mettre en lumière les interrogations de Vitoria sur les modalités de la présence espagnole en Amérique et sur la légitimité de cette domination. Pour Vitoria, les Indiens sont des hommes comme les autres qui ne manquent pas de ressemblances avec les Européens. Il (...) convient donc de ne pas leur causer de préjudice et de leur apporter des bienfaits matériels et humains en les détournant des sacrifices humains et de l’anthropophagie et en les amenant au christianisme. L’auteur propose ensuite la traduction inédite d’un fragment de la Leçon sur la tempérance où Vitoria se demande s’il est permis de faire la guerre aux Indiens sous prétexte qu’ils se livrent à l’anthropophagie et aux sacrifices humains. (shrink)

This is a critical-hermeneutical and historical-comparative study on Political Economy, Economic History and Social Thought, applied to the American utopias in the 19th century and its role in the colonisation of the United States (US) west. This review is based on a heterodox economic approach, used in the disciplines of Religion and Economics. It gives a general view of religious and ideological utopias, as cooperative enterprises of intentional life in farms and workshop, making a comparative analysis of efficiency and (...) sustainability. This study attempts to explain the colonial paradox of American utopias because the last established, with more inversion, they were the first to fall. This study shapes the development of the western territories, from the Quaker’s Holy Experiment framework and its support for the utopias experiments in the expansion to Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Contribution: This review offers a descriptive and explanatory study on the colonisation of the US west, under the hermeneutical turn from heterodox economic approaches, to deal with some current contradictions and anachronism in the mainstream view. Also, there is a systematisation of the American utopias, divided into religious and ideological experiments, with a comparison. (shrink)

This paper offers a close reading of Merleau-Ponty’s Institution Course Notes to reflect on the history of colonisation as both an event and a structure. On the one hand, colonial invasion is a singular cataclysmic event; on the other hand, it establishes legal, social, economic and psychic structures that seem increasingly inevitable the more they are repeated. Likewise, decolonisation may require a singular liberatory event, but it also calls for the (re)establishment of alternative traditions that issue a different “call (...) to follow.” A critical interpretation of Merleau-Ponty in conversation with abolitionist and decolonial thinkers helps to clarify the temporal and political relation between event and structure, building bridges between phenomenology and radical politics. (shrink)

Collaborer avec les peuples autochtones relève d’un équilibre fragile qui peut basculer du « faire avec » à « faire pour ». Cette réflexion en témoigne alors qu’elle est l’occasion de décortiquer l’ingérence d’allochtones dans l’approbation d’une recherche avec une communauté autochtone. À partir de cette situation vécue lors d’un terrain de thèse anthropologique, des questions associées à la décolonisation de la recherche sont abordées.

Digital platforms shape public meaning in the Philippines, where social media is deeply embedded in political, cultural and religious life and where struggles over truth and visibility are reflected in postcolonial conditions. This study develops a theological account of peace, truth and moral speech for digital public life in response to limited Wesleyan and postcolonial theological engagement with online misinformation. The study is situated in the Philippine digital public sphere as a context for theological reflection on how public judgement is (...) formed through digitally mediated communication. This study uses a constructive public theology research design. The study combines analysis of digital misinformation and postcolonial theory with theological interpretation of Isaiah 32:17, John 8:32 and James 3, and engagement with John Wesley’s writings on holiness and social responsibility. The study finds that misinformation causes moral harm by distorting truth, weakening shared judgement and amplifying unequal voices. These processes are described as digital colonisation, in which digital platforms and organised influence reshape control over public narratives and damage the conditions needed for peace. The study concludes that churches require a formation-centred approach that treats digital participation as a moral practice rather than a technical activity, guiding Christians towards truthful speech, responsible communication and peacebuilding through digital holiness. Contribution: This article interprets misinformation in the Philippine digital public sphere as digital colonisation, develops a biblical–postcolonial–Wesleyan account of peace, truth and moral speech and proposes digital holiness – structured as practices of seeing, discerning, speaking, building, protecting and transforming – as a framework for church formation and peacebuilding in postcolonial digital contexts. (shrink)

The colonisation of mathematics is engraved in the version of the history of mathematics that presents it as a Western achievement. As part of the process of colonisation, Eurocentrism developed into an all-dominating perspective on the world, and the white-supremacy ideology became part of the modern outlook. The European colonisation of mathematics was accomplished by cutting away the non-Greek roots of mathematics, and by describing Greek culture as European. The Eurocentric presentation of the history of mathematics is, (...) however, a myth that has transformed into an unquestionable given, repeated in many mathematics textbooks, including brief sketches of the history of mathematics. Ethnomathematical studies have contributed profoundly to the recognition of the multiplicities of the enculturation of mathematics. For a critical philosophy of mathematics, it is crucial to acknowledge this multiplicity and to recognise mathematics as being indefinite with respect to culture. (shrink)

Conceptions of democracy can be discerned in Jürgen Habermas's writings on Europe. In an article on the Constitution written before 9/11, the sluice gate model of Between Facts and Norms (BFN) was suggested. Habermas's favourable account of the mass protests in Europe against military intervention in Iraq recalled the siege model of The Theory of Communicative Action (TCA), with civil society exerting an influence on the state from outside. One outcome of lifeworld colonisation identified by Habermas is the 'withdrawal (...) of legitimation' from the state. It is widely cited as a consequence of the European Union's 'democratic deficit', evident in the widespread decline of the 'permissive consensus', a perception of European integration as an innocuously technical, rather than political, endeavour. Other signs of lifeworld colonisation/the democratic deficit can be discerned in the spheres of personal and cultural life. (shrink)

In this paper we apply Anscombe’s account of human linguistic practices and of intentional action in a novel way—to the acts, by members of the Ngāi Tahu tribe in colonial-era Aotearoa New Zealand, of writing Letters to the Editor of local and regional newspapers. We identify the salient contexts of those acts and then draw on Anscombe’s work to identify intentional and moral actions that otherwise risk going unnoticed. Our analysis exemplifies Anscombe’s and Wittgenstein’s view that we can read off (...) intentional action from behaviour in context and also yields a rich historical and conceptual account of the letter-writers. We argue that this approach has theoretical advantages for Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies. (shrink)

Cette contribution est consacrée à la critique post-coloniale de la Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen de 1789. L’octroi des droits dépend-il de certaines conditions, comme le développement de la raison – ce qui supposerait un processus préalable de « civilisation »? Il conviendra également de faire droit à l’idée selon laquelle l’« individualisme possessif » a imprégné l’esprit des Déclarations au point de justifier la dépossession des nations sans Etat ni droit de propriété. Enfin, l’article tentera de (...) réfuter la thèse selon laquelle la philosophie des droits de l’homme, développée au sein de grandes puissances coloniales esclavagistes, est ipso facto illégitime. (shrink)

Souvent abordée par sa « micropolitique du désir », l’œuvre commune de Deleuze et Guattari est rarement sollicitée lorsqu’on s’interroge sur les problèmes classiques ou contemporains de la pensée politique : la forme-État, la souveraineté, le rapport de la violence et du droit, la guerre, le paradigme de la Nation et les recombinaisons qu’il a entraînées entre les idées de peuple, de citoyenneté et de minorité. En suivant la trajectoire conduisant du premier tome de Capitalisme et schizophrénie (1972) au second (...) (1980), ce sont pourtant tous ces problèmes qui se trouvent réélaborés, au fil d’une conjoncture de transition historique marquée par la fin des guerres de décolonisation, la transformation du capitalisme mondial, les recompositions aussi profondes qu’incertaines des forces de résistance collective. Encore faut-il, pour mesurer les prises de la pensée guattaro-deleuzienne sur les bouleversements de son temps, la confronter à ce qui fut son interlocuteur principal, le marxisme, à son champ épistémique (le matérialisme historique), à son programme critique (la critique de l’économie politique) et à sa grammaire politique (la lutte des classes). De ces pourparlers, trois hypothèses nouvelles se dégagent : celle d’un « Urstaat », incarnant un excès de la violence souveraine sur l’appareil d’État et sur ses investissements politiques ; celle d’une puissance de « machine de guerre », que les États ne peuvent jamais s’approprier que partiellement, et à laquelle ils peuvent eux-mêmes se subordonner ; celle d’un excès du « destructivisme » de l’accumulation capitaliste sur son organisation productive. Dans ce triple excès, la pensée politique de Deleuze et Guattari trahit le spectre de l’entre-deux-guerres qui la hante, mais qui la fait aussi communiquer avec les penseurs actuels de l’impolitique. S’y donnent à lire non seulement une nouvelle théorie politique, mais aussi un tableau de la pluralité des voies d’ascension à l’extrême-violence susceptibles de détruire la politique même et auxquelles les luttes contemporaines ne peuvent s’épargner de faire face. (shrink)

Hungarian right-wing populists have been applying decolonial rhetoric in their conspiracy theories over the past three decades. Understanding their resistance against the ‘civilising' mission of ‘the West' – or recently ‘Brussels' – needs specific tools. By applying standpoint theory, our interest is in the domestication of globally existing conspiracy theories. Instead of imposing an external rationale upon conspiracy theory thinking, we seek to understand the conspiracy thinking from its' own epistemological standpoint/positioning. Extending our analysis of the recently successful political party (...) Mi Hazánk Mozgalom (Our Homeland Movement) we analyse their election program, titled Virradat (Dawn), and how an East-Central European, semi-peripheric standpoint can be revealed from the text through the conspiracy theories utilized by the party. Our claim is that the utilisation of conspiracy theories in East-Central Europe can be interpreted as discursive tools of the resistance of a well-planned colonisation. We show how decolonial rhetoric is present in their election program and how it is tied to conspiracy theories which may be globally known, yet having their own, specific Hungarian features, deeply embedded in the country’s history and its radical- and far-right, populist political culture. (shrink)

What does decolonial justice require in response to the epistemic devastation of colonisation? Recent work proposes restoring lost epistemic status or compensating victims with epistemic goods. I argue that neither restitution nor compensation is a viable response to the destruction of Indigenous knowledge systems. Drawing on international law and reparations theory, I show that these frameworks neglect the role of proportionality as a normative constraint on adequate redress. Once this constraint is taken seriously, it becomes clear that the logic (...) of repair is incompatible with the aims of decolonisation. (shrink)

This paper is a section in an analytical swathe that re-orients the role of criticism in inscribed Filipino identity, Philippine Literatures in English, and Critical Pedagogy of Literature. Re-examining Philippine short stories in English through a de-westernised lens, the paper offers a comprehensive analytical and critical backbone for anyone who reads and teaches Philippine Literatures in English, especially those during the American colonisation. By revealing overlooked aspects of Filipino consciousness and challenging traditional literary analysis coming from the usual Western-oriented (...) paradigms, the treatise provides not only a conceptual provocation, but a framework for reinterpreting colonial-era literature and promoting a more nuanced understanding of national identity. Ultimately, the critique contributes to decolonising scholarship in the Philippines, aiming to rebuild local, native, and national consciousness through critical literary examination, allowing peripheral signifying practices and significant principles of Filipino consciousness to be revisited and re-viewed. (shrink)

This paper sets out to accomplish two goals. First, drawing on the Irish perspective, it reconceptualises one of the enduring legacy-based harms of epistemic colonisation, in this case, ‘linguicism’, in terms of ‘hermeneutical injustice’. Second, it argues that otherwise well-meaning attempts to combat epistemic colonisation through the inclusion of marginalised testimony can, in certain circumstances, lead to cases of ‘epistemic exploitation’, which, in turn, can result in ‘ontic burnout’. Both linguicism and epistemic exploitation, this paper theorizes, have the (...) potential to bring about ontic burnout. Here is the plan: to set the scene, section I briefly surveys some key arguments supporting the call for higher education institutions (HEIs) to engage in epistemic decolonising, focusing on the importance of striking a balance between two extremes: (i) abandoning all forms of Eurocentric/colonial knowledge through the elimination of inherited thinking and conceptual schemes which result from colonization, in particular, those which remain in our thinking “owing to inertia rather than to our own reflective choices” (Wiredu 2002, p.56); (ii) the other—pursuing a more positive project where we seek to, “exploit as much as is judicious the resources of indigenous conceptual schemes” (Wiredu 1996: p.136). From here, it moves to consider harms associated with a subset of ‘epistemicide’, that is, ‘linguicism’—a phenomenon where the language and culture of the colonizer become part of the ‘civilising project’ and, in more extreme cases of linguicide, forcibly replaces indigenous languages. Section II then explores the subtleties of harmful by-products deriving from ‘inclusion’, namely that which scholars refer to as ‘epistemic exploitation’. Situations where marginalised scholars are finally ‘at the table but still on the menu’ arise when privileged persons, compel marginalised knowers to educate them [and others] about the nature of their oppression (Berenstain, 2016). Habitual requests to turn themselves inside out for emancipatory principles give rise to a phenomenon known as ontic burnout (Dunne and Kotsonis, 2022, p.9)—“a form of dissociative explanatory fatigue culminating in oppressed persons engaging in a conscious or unconscious decoupling from their socially constructed identity, from the burdens and injustices associated with being a member of a certain social kind”. This harm is, I argue, rarely discussed in the literature and worthy of further analysis. (shrink)

The 19th-century missionary literary genre provides us with a window into how the missionaries viewed African cultural systems, such as polygamy. In their minds, polygamy was one of the obstacles to converting Africans to Christianity. Baptism functioned as a theatre of power and submission. To access baptism, a convert had to abandon and strip themselves of that which made them Africans and adopt Western colonial Christian norms and principles. In this article, we argue that the condemnation of polygamy by missionaries (...) was a wielding of power within the colonial matrix of power. We further maintain that the decolonisation of Christianity cannot be achieved without a critical analysis of the impact of the missionaries in the deformation and labelling of African cultural identities as heathen and uncivilised. Contribution: The cultural transfer that was achieved through Christianisation, civilisation and colonisation has led to what Biko referred to as the flight from the black self and what Du Bois referred to as double consciousness. The article applies the intersectionality of theoretical lenses of Africana critical thought, Foucauldian notion of power, negritude and decoloniality. (shrink)

This article argues that the concept of translation is central to the work of Bruno Latour, starting before ANT, with the group working on the sociologie de la traduction at the École des Mines. As one of his translators, I reflect on the extension of his identity via translation, then on the idea of translation as ‘political labour’ across social discontinuities, including those in colonisation contexts where certain languages can become hegemonic. Finally, with Latour’s major project, the Inquiry into (...) Modes of Existence, translation continues its descriptive task, but carries so much weight over the various modes of existence that it qualifies as a key philosophical concept of considerable analytic value. (shrink)

This essay examines the sanitary policies for the protection of overseas communities that Italian fascism employed during the empire. From 1935–1936, the vast scale of the Ethiopian campaign, as well as intensive colonisation programmes, gave new political visibility to the issue of safeguarding Italian settlers from the risks of the tropical climate. In this period, the problem of how Italians could adapt to overseas environments moved beyond the boundaries of scientific discussion to become a major concern of colonial rule. (...) Analysing both the medical literature and archival sources, this essay examines the concepts and practices that underpinned the fascist project for the “reclamation” of the empire: from the intensification of hygienic propaganda, to the redefinition of the medical-geographical boundaries of tropical risk, and to the expansion of social security benefits, which were extended to harms caused by tropical diseases. Finally, it investigates how the notion of acclimatisation was transformed within the context of the regime's imperial ideology, showing how the conception of the tropics as a pathogenic space remained widespread, fuelled by the regime's organicistic vision and its concerns for upholding the racial prestige of Italians in the colony. (shrink)

Solastalgia is the emotional response elicited by ecological degradation, originating from the concepts of solace, desolation, and pain. Climate change has profound societal and health impacts especially for marginalised communities who face food shortages, poverty and forced displacement. Indigenous peoples have deep relational ancestral connections with the land that are beyond connection to place, and experience unique intensified forms of distress resulting from environmental degradation. For Indigenous peoples, connections with land are disrupted through extractive politics such as colonisation and (...) now climate emergency, legacies that leave deleterious effects on wellbeing. In collective Indigenous cultures, distress is embedded within wider contexts of community, history, and the earth itself. This paper critically reviews solastalgia from Māori and care ethics perspectives to demonstrate the power of adding relational, contextual, and embodied elements to the concept. This paper argues for the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge in the conceptualisation of climate-related distress. Māori notions of voice and place inform research approaches that are in solidarity with Indigenous voice to examine the impacts of climate degradation. (shrink)

This text presents a conversation between two long time philosophical and educational friends reflecting on the field of philosophical education and childhood. The discussion began as a part of a shared experience of an intensive teacher education workshop held at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It covers themes including teacher education; philosophy as inquiry and a way of life; methodological issues on philosophical inquiry with children; educational and philosophical time; philosophy for children; questioning, reasonableness; colonisation and (...) counter-colonisation. The conversation affirms the philosophical and educational force of beginning. The conversation ends with a coda after the two friends meet again during the traditional annual Mendham teacher education seminar in New Jersey, USA. (shrink)

Bernard Stiegler’s theory of consciousness claims: consciousness is cinema. The invention of the technological dispositifs of photography, phonograph, and cinema, have made this structure visible. He develops the thesis of the cinema of consciousness in Technics and Time, where it leads to a deconstruction of Husserlian consciousness and of the Kantian I. This theory also orients Stiegler’s large-scale criticism of contemporary cinematic capitalism that engages with the works of Adorno, Horkheimer, and Debord. This article presents and critically examines Stiegler’s theory (...) of consciousness as a nonconscious power of dreaming that is not based on the imagination hidden in the the unconsciousness but on collective technical image-objects. While Stiegler criticizes the colonisation of the imagination by the cinematic industry, this article looks for its creative potential. The article also presents a theory of mimesis that is presupposed but ignored by Stiegler and that explains the pharmacological nature of cinematic consciousness. (shrink)

The world is reeling from the direct and indirect effects of racist political and economic ideologies that have been central to the reckless plunder of the earth and creation, resulting in the climate crisis that is being felt the world over. The racist ideology of white supremacism and its culture of whiteness that accompanied European colonisation of the world were also central in driving the economic racist-capitalist system that saw the wants and needs of people of European heritage, especially (...) of central and western European heritage, as of primary concern, leading to the economic exploitation of other lands’ resources. The racist ideology and culture led to widespread racial discrimination of Africans, Asians and Indigenous people. Using discourse analysis, this chapter analyses the meaning and effect of white supremacism and whiteness before doing the same with Ubuntu. What do we know about the discourses around these concepts and what do we need to unlearn and unbecome as well as what we need to learn and become? This chapter contends that white supremacism and whiteness were and remain divisive perspectives on humanity, choosing to divide humanity into classes and categories to justify the exploitation of one by the other. On the contrary, Ubuntu, without being perfect, offers the best escape from the implications of white supremacism and whiteness because of its communal focus, seeking to see the one only as an integral part of the whole. (shrink)

This chapter argues for the importance of studying prejudice and the challenge this provides for social researchers. The history of prejudice is briefly reviewed within a framework of colonisation and the physical and cultural genocide associated with ‘new’ settlers in countries such as the USA, Australia and New Zealand. In yet another bleak chapter of human history the colour-coded prejudices that enabled trading in human slaves are also reviewed. Traditional social psychological approaches to studying prejudice and discrimination are discussed. (...) These accounts variously locate the sources of prejudice as faulty thinking, faulty personality traits, and as a function of group psychology. Critical approaches to the study of prejudice, grounded in social constructionist epistemology, are introduced and the importance of examining everyday talk and text as a site of social action is posited. For social constructionists, language is not simply a route to interior cognitions, but provides the very building blocks on which prejudicial assumptions rest. Thus, prejudice is inextricably involved with language and the challenge for critical scholars is to interrogate the linguistic resources which enable prejudice. The chapter concludes with a discussion of two areas of research which build on the history of critical engagement and point towards future research possibilities. (shrink)

Ce texte explore la figure de Fausto Castilho – homme d’études, professeur, traducteur, philosophe et penseur du concept de Brésil – à travers le prisme de l’anthropophagie, concept clé du modernisme brésilien élaboré par Oswald de Andrade, pensé ici comme une expérience philosophique née au Brésil. L’anthropophagie devient, chez Castilho, un geste méthodologique : penser, c’est digérer, ruminer et transfigurer ce qui vient de l’autre. Elle devient aussi un geste critique et créateur, à la fois local et universel, transformant la (...) pensée brésilienne en une force active de décolonisation. (shrink)

Au cours d’une conversation avec Camilla Zani, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro retrace et interroge son lien intellectuel avec Bruno Latour et ses principales lignes intellectuelles, en écho à un précédent entretien publié par la revue avec la théoricienne Donna Haraway, toujours sur l’héritage latourien. L’anthropologue brésilien défend la perspective d’une décolonisation et d’une dé-modernisation de la pensée par l’attention à d’autres cosmologies, notamment à partir des communautés indigènes du continent latino-américain.

Ubuntu is an old African concept, a way of life that was like a religion in African societies - long before the days of colonisation. Ubuntu means to sacrifice for others selflessly, caring and protecting your fellow human beings. Applying ubuntu in the workplace is not always understood. Ubuntu: Shaping the current workplace with (African) wisdom looks at how we can improve workplaces by using the old values and wisdom of our forebears. Msila illustrates how leaders and managers can (...) use the wisdom of this ancient African philosophy to create more humane and productive workplaces. In Ubuntu: Shaping the current workplace with (African) wisdom Professor Vuyisile Msila presents the five P's of ubuntu which contain the elements to enable organisations to thrive. (shrink)

Over the next ten years, the United Nations has invited the global community to think about, and make decisions concerning, the future of our oceans in a way that has not been afforded to other significant revolutions in our human development. Within the profoundly anthropocentric aims and methodologies of this ocean decade, it is negligent to not more explicitly consider our human narrative shared with our oceans as an essential component to understanding a more complete picture of coastal and ocean (...) sustainability. Our human narrative shared with the ocean is essentially immersed within a particular world view which provides the very framework and context to this global endeavour. In the face of plundered and acidified oceans, we ought to be asking whether a continuation of this paradigm is in our best interest at all? I reflect on how the current state of our oceans is a direct reflection of our colonising relationship with the ocean as a mere resource. This paper comprises my mediations concerning the colonisation of our oceans even when our aims are toward a sustainable development. I have chosen to draw on a number of feminist philosophers to appropriately reflect the undeniably gendered cultural narrative we have shared with our Mother ocean. I go on to propose a blue ecofeminism as a possible emerging perspective within the established scholarship in feminist environmental philosophy to more wholistically contribute to the Decade of Ocean UN discourse. (shrink)

Il ne suffit pas d'attribuer une âme aux plantes et aux animaux pour soigner les ravages de l'extractivisme. Encore faut-il élargir le spectre des non-humains au-delà du visible. Dragons et êtres souterrains, lieux des rêves ou réalités ultimes tiennent une place centrale dans les traditions vivantes qui peuplent cette terre. Pour vraiment les écouter, il est temps de rompre avec toute une série de présupposés qui encombrent l'anthropologie, à commencer par l'idée que les 'indigènes' demeureraient inconscients des structures qui régissent (...) leur vie collective. Afin de mettre en œuvre une 'décolonisation des savoirs,' ce livre invite à assumer la part métaphysique de la pensée et du réel. Seul un contact philosophique avec l'invisible, une pensée de ce qui se trouve au bord des mondes, permettra une double critique féconde--aussi bien des limites de la modernité que des traditionalismes qui s'exercent au nom de Dieu. Et s'il fallait à nouveau visiter le ciel pour réhabiliter la terre? Cet essai propose une perspective novatrice qui bouleverse les lieux communs de la pensée écologique et des sciences sociales.."--Back cover. (shrink)

This chapter offers a very brief overview of non-Western anarchisms (while criticising that very terminology), touching upon historical and contemporary manifestations of anti-authoritarian movements in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, closing with a consideration of two comprehensive liberation projects in progress in Chiapas and Rojava. In analysing manifestations of anarchism and related formations across various contexts, it’s necessary to map power relations and relevant forms of oppression, exploitation and hierarchy as they manifest in each specific context, and (...) their corresponding histories of resistance and alternative-making, drawing on cultural repertories which practitioners may or may not choose explicitly to identify as connected to the modern genealogy of anarchist tradition. Although each example is unique, one important factor shared by most non-Western anarchisms is a history of colonisation, foreign occupation or intervention. This adds an additional layer of complexity to the analysis of power and resistance, requiring a systemic awareness of where a given society is located in relation to global structures of capital and empire, dispossession and extractive industry, as these intersect or collude with locally rooted forms of domination, hierarchy and authority. Looking beyond “the West” for radical alternatives, this exploration alights on a note of hope. (shrink)

À la différence de ses voisins, très tôt, le Dahomey, rebaptisé Bénin en novembre 1975, s’est ouvert à l’école et au catholicisme emmenés dans le sillage de la colonisation française. Les lettrés ainsi formés investissent les pays francophones d’Afrique de l’Ouest. Dès les années 1950, le Dahomey compte un grand nombre de personnels qualifiés disséminés dans les services publics des pays de l’Afrique de l’Ouest. Comme pour conjurer ses petites dimensions, le pays a développé une puissance intellectuelle qui le (...) signale comme le « quartier latin de l’Afrique ». À l’inverse du mouvement diasporique des intellectuels béninois en poste un peu partout dans le monde, Paulin Hountondji a pris régulièrement des initiatives qui ont fait converger vers le Bénin, notamment vers l’Université de Cotonou et le Centre des Hautes Études de Porto Novo, des dizaines d’intellectuels de haut vol. D’une certaine manière, il a fait suite au label du « Bénin quartier latin ». À un niveau plus personnel, ses recherches et ses publications remarquées ont offert à l’histoire de la philosophie et de son enseignement en Afrique un de ses moments décisifs. (shrink)