Our heritage : the past in the present of African-American and African existence

In this compelling and engaging work, Tsenay Serequeberhan discusses recent attempts to define African philosophy and the practice of hermeneutics for articulating a philosophy that is distinctively African. Pressing into service insights derived from Marx, Nietzsche, Levinas, Fanon, and others, Serequeberhan analyzes the question of how we relate to our past (i.e., our heritage) and the open possibilities of our future. He carefully examines the variety of approaches to African philosophy and argues for a historically engaged and existentially attuned paradigm shift. The result is an approach that explores the contemporary situation of African and African-American existence in view of emancipatory struggles that have established the confines of the present. In this compelling and engaging work, Tsenay Serequeberhan discusses recent attempts to define African philosophy and the practice of hermeneutics for articulating a philosophy that is distinctively African. Pressing into service insights derived from Marx, Nietzsche, Levinas, Fanon, and others, Serequeberhan analyzes the question of how we relate to our past (i.e., our heritage) and the open possibilities of our future. He carefully examines the a variety of approaches to African philosophy and argues for a historically engaged and existentially attuned paradigm shift. The result is an approach that explores the contemporary situation of African and African-American existence in view of emancipatory. struggles that have established the confines of the present. Our Heritage 1 Contents 9 Preface: Existence and Heritage 11 Introduction: Africans and African Americans in the Present 13 1 Heritage and Its Transmission: A Reading of Frantz Fanon 17 2 Identity and Race in the Black Experience: Reflections on W.E. B. Du Bois 29 3 Master and Slave: African American Slave Narratives and G. W. F. Hegel’s Dialectic of Recognition 41 4 Africa and Identity: Kwame Anthony Appiah and the Politics of Philosophy 51 5 African Philosophy? Looking behind the Question 63 6 The Heritage of the Idea: Violence, Counterviolence, and the Negated 75 Conclusion: The Postcolonial Sensibility 89 Notes 93 Index 113 About the Author 119 In this work, Tsenay Serequeberhan discusses attempts to define African philosophy and the practice of hermeneutics to articulate a philosophy that is distinctively African.