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Do We Need African Canadian Philosophy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2013

CHIKE JEFFERS
CHIKE JEFFERS*
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
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Abstract

I ask whether we need African Canadian philosophy and attempt to provide an answer by considering a series of other questions that can be understood as alternative versions of the initial question. I ask (1) whether we need African Canadian philosophers; (2) whether we need philosophy focused on the African Canadian experience; (3) whether we already have African Canadian philosophy; (4) whether anybody of any background can do African Canadian philosophy; and (5) what African Canadian philosophy will do for us. I conclude that we do need African Canadian philosophy.

La présente étude pose la question suivante: est-ce la philosophie africaine-canadienne nécessaire? Afin d’essayer de fournir une réponse, nous considérons une série de questions additionnelles qui peuvent être comprises comme des versions alternatives de la question initiale. Nous demandons (1) si nous avons besoin de philosophes africains-canadiens; (2) si nous avons besoin de la philosophie qui porte sur l’expérience africaine-canadienne; (3) si nous avons déjà la philosophie africaine-canadienne; (4) si qui que ce soit peut faire la philosophie africaine-canadienne; et (5) que rendra-nous la philosophie africaine-canadienne. Nous concluons que la philosophie africaine-canadienne est en effet nécessaire.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 2012 , pp. 643 - 666
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2012 

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References

Notes

1 It is worth being explicit at this point about the fact that I am treating “African Canadian” and “Black Canadian” as synonyms. Some non-black Canadians (especially certain white, Arab, or South Asian Canadians) might fit a different usage of the term “African Canadian” (i.e., a usage determined by whether or not one came to Canada from Africa) but I will be referring to people of African descent racially classified as black. Compare the notes on usage in Carl James, David Este, Wanda Thomas Bernard, Akua Benjamin, Bethan Lloyd, & Tana Turner, Race & Well-Being: The Lives, Hopes, and Activism of African Canadians (Black Point, NS: Fernwood, 2010), 3.

2 On black disadvantage in Canada, see Joseph Mensah, Black Canadians: History, Experience, Social Conditions, 2nd ed. (Halifax, NS: Fernwood, 2010), especially 90-92, 98-99, 150-159, 170-183, and James et al., especially 4-6, 33-54, 64-140.

3 I speak here specifically about the situation at universities. I have discovered that the number of black philosophers working at CEGEPs in Quebec is, by comparison, impressive—the list as I have been able to reconstruct it thus far includes Fréderic Abraham (Ahuntsic), Paule Brizard (St-Jean-sur-Richelieu), Lucie Kla (Vieux-Montréal), Elizabeth Maboungou (Montmorency), and Tchakie Thomas Sekpona-Medjago (Saint-Jérôme). This perhaps makes it all the more striking that there are, to my knowledge, no black philosophers at universities in Quebec. I have also not yet been able to locate black philosophers at colleges outside Quebec.

4 Edwin Etieyibo taught at the University of Alberta before leaving to take a job at the University of Witwatersrand.

5 See Françoise Baylis, “Black as Me: Narrative Identity,” Developing World Bioethics 3 (December 2003): 142-150. It is worth noting that Tracy Isaacs, a philosopher at the University of Western Ontario, would count as black under certain definitions and might even be perceived as black by some, but I refrain from classifying her here as such, partly in deference to the fact that she does not self-identify as black. As she explains in the CBC radio production, “According to Form” (originally aired on the program Outfront on September 4, 2007), she and her parents are from South Africa, where they were officially classified as “Coloured.” She, however, finds it difficult to fit herself into any racial category. Were she very obviously black in appearance or by standards of classification in either South Africa or Canada, then I would not allow her reluctance to stop me from counting her as black. That, however, is not the case.

6 See Statistics Canada, “Canada’s Ethnocultural Mosaic, 2006 Census: National picture.” <http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-562/p6-eng.cfm>.

7 For examples of the use of Quebec in political philosophy, see Allen Buchanan, Secession: The Legitimacy of Political Divorce From Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991) and the discussions of Quebec in a number of the essays in Robert McKim and Jeff McMahan (eds.), The Morality of Nationalism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997).

8 For an in-depth account of the destruction of Africville, see Jennifer J. Nelson, Razing Africville: A Geography of Racism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).

9 Exceptions include Leslie Armour (University of Ottawa, emeritus) and Elizabeth Trott (Ryerson University), authors of The Faces of Reason: An Essay on Philosophy and Culture in English Canada, 1850-1950 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981). For more recent work on the idea of Canadian philosophy, see G.B. Madison, Paul Fairfield, and Ingrid Harris, Is There a Canadian Philosophy? Reflections on the Canadian Identity (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2000).

10 For the pioneering usage and theorization of the term “Africana philosophy,” see Lucius Outlaw, “African, African American, Africana Philosophy,” The Philosophical Forum 24 (Fall-Spring 1992-93): 63-93.

11 For examples of pioneering texts in these three fields, see Alexis Kagamé, La Philosophie bantu rwandaise de l’être (Brussels: Académie Royale des Sciences Coloniales, 1956); the essays in the special issue “Philosophy and Black Experience” of The Philosophical Forum 9 (Winter/Spring 1977-1978), especially Cornel West’s “Philosophy and the Afro-American Experience” and William R. Jones’ “The Legitimacy and Necessity of Black Philosophy: Some Preliminary Considerations”; and Paget Henry, Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2000).

12 Lewis R. Gordon, An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 91. Some of those whose credentials were acquired at Canadian universities are: Bernard Boxill (M.A., University of New Brunswick), Charles W. Mills (M.A., Ph.D, University of Toronto), Clarence Sholé Johnson (M.A., Dalhousie; Ph.D, McGill), Olufemi Taiwo (M.A., Ph.D, University of Toronto), and Nkiru Nzegwu (Ph.D, University of Ottawa).

13 See, for example, Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1995) and Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 25-73. For another example of a Canadian philosopher who has made a major impact on the debate, see James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

14 See, for example, the numerous discussions of Canada in Brian Barry, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2001), indexed on 374-375.

15 M. Nourbese Philip, “Why Multiculturalism Can’t End Racism,” in Frontiers: Essays and Writings on Racism and Culture, 1984-1992 (Stratford, ON: Mercury Press, 1992), 186.

16 Ibid.

17 Cecil Foster, Where Race Does Not Matter: The New Spirit of Modernity (Toronto: Penguin, 2005), ix.

18 Ibid.

19 I shall cite the more recent edition of Walcott’s text, as it contains Walcott’s biting response to critical comments by Clarke on his work, thus allowing readers to see more of the heated debate between these two seminal figures. See Rinaldo Walcott, Black Like Who? Writing Black Canada, 2nd revised ed (Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2003) and George Elliott Clarke, Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002).

20 See, for example, Dionne Brand, Bread Out of Stone: Recollections, Sex, Recognitions, Race, Dreaming, Politics (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1994); Althea Prince, Being Black: Essays (Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2001); Lawrence Hill, Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada (Toronto: HarperFlamingo, 2001); Mensah, op cit.; Wayde Compton, After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region (New York: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011); Anthony Stewart, You Must Be a Basketball Player: Rethinking Integration in the University (Halifax, NS: Fernwood, 2009); and Afua Cooper, The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2006). This is a very partial list, focused mostly on single-authored collections of essays of a general sort (Cooper’s book is perhaps the least general and essayistic—I have taken the opportunity here to celebrate her becoming the James Robinson Johnston Chair, given the Chair’s uniqueness and importance). Also, while I have focused here on recent African Canadian writing, another way in which one might argue that we already have African Canadian philosophy is to focus on the entire tradition of African Canadian writing which, as Clarke argues in Odysseys Home, stretches all the way back to the 18th century autobiographical narratives of Black Loyalists like John Marrant, David George, and Boston King. See Clarke, 107-108.

21 Cecil Foster, Blackness and Modernity: The Colour of Humanity and the Quest for Freedom (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), 27.

22 My thoughts here have been influenced by the position on what ought to be counted as African philosophy developed by Kwasi Wiredu. See Kwasi Wiredu, “On Defining African Philosophy,” in Tsenay Serequeberhan, African Philosophy: The Essential Readings (New York: Paragon House, 1991), especially 92-93.

23 We might also plausibly refer to such an article, however, as anti-racist philosophy, which leads us to a useful analogy: on many accounts, anyone can produce feminist philosophy, but it would be strange to say that men can produce women’s philosophy, and it is the latter that would be analogous to African Canadian philosophy in being a type of philosophy classified by reference to a social identity.

24 Will Kymlicka, “A Crossroads in Race Relations,” in Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998), 80. A revised version of the essay can be found in Kymlicka’s Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 177-199.

25 Whether the essay should be counted as an example of doing African Canadian philosophy is debatable, since on my account, deciding whether to count it as such involves evaluating the extent to which it recognizes and engages with philosophical perspectives arising from within the African Canadian community. I will not attempt to resolve that matter here. It suffices to point out that, as the only instance of philosophy focused on the African Canadian experience by a professional philosopher (of which I am aware), it is clearly a work of foundational importance for African Canadian philosophy.

26 See note 20 above.

27 Important (but smaller) waves of immigration previous to these changes include the arrival of African American homesteaders in Alberta and elsewhere in the West in the early 20th century and Caribbean coalminers in Cape Breton, also in the early 20th century.

28 This paper was presented at the Friday Afternoon Philosophy Colloquium at Dalhousie University, where it received a special introduction as part of the activities of the James Robinson Johnston Chair of Black Canadian Studies. I would like to thank the members of the audience for their helpful feedback and Afua Cooper, holder of the Johnston Chair, for her introduction. I would also like to thank Prof. Cooper, Charles Mills, Christine Daigle, Tracy Isaacs, Shirley Tillotson, and Françoise Baylis for reading drafts of the paper and giving me useful comments, and Richmond Campbell for useful correspondence following the colloquium presentation. I would like to thank Axelle Karera for her help in editing my French translation of my abstract. Finally, I would like to dedicate this article to the memory of William R. Jones (1933-2012). Anyone who reads Jones’ article on the legitimacy and necessity of African American philosophy, referenced in note 11 above, will immediately recognize the great extent to which I have followed in his footsteps here. I regret having never gotten the chance to meet him.