Thinking Freedom in Africa
Toward a theory of emancipatory politics
Author: Michael Neocosmos
Foreword: Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba
Previous ways of conceiving the universal emancipation of humanity have in practice ended in failure. Marxism, anti-colonial nationalism and neo-liberalism all understand the achievement of universal emancipation through a form of state politics.
Thinking Freedom in Africa conceives emancipatory politics beginning from the axiom that ‘people think’. In other words, the idea that anyone is capable of engaging in a collective thought-practice which exceeds social place, interests and identities and which thus begins to think a politics of universal humanity. Using the work of thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Sylvain Lazarus, Frantz Fanon and many others, along with the inventive thought of people themselves in their experiences of struggle, the author proceeds to analyse how Africans themselves – with agency of their own – have thought emancipation during various historical political sequences and to show how emancipation may be thought today in a manner appropriate to twenty-first century conditions and concerns.
Thinking Freedom in Africa: Toward a theory of emancipatory politics is a 2017 Frantz Fanon Outstanding Book Award winner of the Caribbean Philosophical Association.
Subjects: African Philosophy, Politics, History, Democracy and Governance studies
Print ISBN
978-1-86814-866-0
Epub
978-1-86814-867-7
PDF ISBN
978-1-86814-869-1
