Decolonizing Childhoods. Liebel, Manfred

of the liberation movements understood themselves also as political philosophers or writers, and that their political programmes, similar to Senghor, have been laid down in writings for the period after independence. In this context, mention may be made of Amilcar Cabral (Cape Verde), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Ahmed Sékou Touré (Guinea), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania) or Nelson Mandela (South Africa). Most of them were influenced at times by Marxist ideas, but they always sought to establish a form of ‘African socialism’ in their own way, which takes up African traditions and connects them with forms of state and society that are understood as modern. In the Pan-African movement, with Nkrumah as main protagonist (see Nkrumah, 1964; Lundt and Marx, 2016), the national boundaries that the colonial powers had left had been struggled. Today the efforts for an African socialism have been almost entirely replaced by the orientation of the African power elites to the capitalist world market.¹³

      The first anticolonial concepts and theories were passed on in various aspects by authors who were not satisfied with the revival of the precolonial past, but who also attempted to decipher the current situation in the African countries as a conglomerate of colonial and precolonial influences. After independence, postcolonial thinking in Africa developed mainly in the context of political philosophy, supported by thinkers who were temporarily employed at European or North American universities, but eventually went back to the universities of their African homelands. They represent different positions, but agree that the decolonization must include a decolonization of mentality and thought, also called ‘conceptual decolonization’ by the Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu (1996). In the introduction to a critical reader on Postcolonial African Philosophy, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (1997b: 4) characterizes this challenge by saying:

      The simple and important factor that drives the field and the contemporary practice of African/a Philosophy has to do with the brutal encounter of the African world with European modernity – an encounter epitomized in the colonial phenomena.

      Insofar as political philosophy is postcolonial, it attempts to arrive at normative positions without surrendering to Eurocentrically impregnated universalism. The Cameroonian philosopher Fabien Eboussi Boulaga (2015: 121–2) emphasizes the need to deconstruct the development ideology of the West:

      We have adopted the term ‘development’. If we accept this concept, we are lost. It is a substitute for other concepts such as ‘civilization’ and ‘progress’. The underlying philosophy of ‘development’ is that of the superiority of modern Western civilization. Development is the successor to those ideologies that define the ultimate truth of humanity in their lifestyle – whether it be religion, culture, science or technology. As such, it also has the right, indeed the duty, to spread, if necessary by force. It is a conversion mission.¹⁴

      Kwasi Wiredu (1996: 5) is somewhat more reserved. He distinguishes ‘cultural universals’ from ‘cultural particulars’, which can apply only within a (local-speaking) context, as they are language dependent. The task of conceptual decolonization is to examine colonial ways of thinking critically and thus to override reflexively the consequences of the mental domination of colonialism. The decolonization of thought is also the concern of some African writers, such as the Kenyan theatrical author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986), who oppose the dominance of the colonial languages by writing their works in African languages.

      Wiredu also points out that the reference to African knowledge archives, such as consented practices of political decision making, was collapsed, delegitimized or modified according to the interests of the colonizers during the colonial period. One can therefore not simply return to the ‘origins’. According to him, their critical reconstruction is inherent in the potential for self-assurance and the historization of political thought. At the same time, however, they are at risk of ignoring the traditional hierarchies, exclusions and forms of oppression, and of legitimating their influence in actual African societies as an African way of life. Such a variant of self-assertion is often based on a dichotomy between Africa and Europe. To overcome this, the philosopher Paulin Hountondji (1994), from Benin, considers it important to distinguish between ‘endogenous’ and ‘indigenous’ knowledge. According to him, indigenous knowledge is, first of all, unchecked, traditional knowledge, which often contradicts the knowledge of modern sciences. As endogenous knowledge, on the other hand, he describes the practices, concepts and experiences that can be used to solve contemporary problems.

      Most philosophers who want to postulate their thinking in the postcolonial context and contribute to conceptual decolonization assume that political decision making in African cultures has been dialogue- and consensus-oriented and that these have been asserted in the everyday practice of the people, but are in competition with imported ideas and practices of state organization.¹⁵