International Review of Social History

Gama L.B.

Abstract This article critiques Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe’s “Ontology, Realism and the Persistence of Ancestral Persons” response to Katrina Flikschuh’s “The Arc of Personhood” argument on the theoretical grounding of ancestors in Ifeanyi Menkiti’s work. Flikschuh argues that ancestors are uncertain and redundant such that one can only account for them practically. Contrastingly, Oyowe defends Menkiti’s concept of ancestors as social kinds in his innovative attempt to theoretically ground them. The article argues that the dialogue between these thinkers reflects an exogenous reading of African experiential reality, effectively lending itself to epistemic erasure. In the end, the existence of ancestors is ambiguous at best in both their accounts. The article first questions Flikschuh’s view and suggests that it is paradigmatic of white solipsism. Thereafter, the article contends that while Oyowe’s social ontology injunction challenges Western realism, he fails to account for mind-independent ancestral persons. In the end, he only partially captures African experiential reality, thereby reflecting Western ways of being.

Masaka D.

Abstract This article reacts to Oyowe’s understanding of the personal existence of ancestral persons as real mind-dependent entities. The article’s author’s contention is that Oyowe has not managed to rule out the alternative that the author is sympathetic to, namely, that ancestral persons are real mind-independent entities that continue to exist even when, through forgetfulness, they cease to exist in the memory of humans. This article calls Oyowe’s mind-dependent alternative the “safe” one, as it appears easier to defend than the “unsafe,” mind-independent alternative, which the article’s author has yet to develop convincing reasons for.

Nwosimiri O.

Nwosimiri O.

Abstract The subject of personhood has received substantial discussion in contemporary African philosophy where communitarianism happens to be the dominant approach. In his new book Menkiti’s Moral Man, Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe enters this discussion as a repentant critic of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s version of communitarianism, the plausibility of which he attempts to defend with compelling arguments and interpretations. In this book, especially in chapter 4, Oyowe addresses the subject of women’s social recognition and inclusion in the African community. In view of this, this article extends the discussion of the subject of social recognition and inclusion to the LGBTQ+ people. Therefore, this article critically engages the place of LGBTQ+ people in the contemporary African community and argues for their inclusive recognition. The article contends that the nonrecognition and exclusion of LGBTQ+ people within the African community constitute a social and epistemic injustice. The article also argues that, since, like other recognized community members, LGBTQ+ people duly discharge familial and communal obligations, display good conduct in the community, and share in the responsibility to respect nonpersons, humans, and nonhumans alike, they deserve social recognition.

Ikuenobe P.

Abstract This article examines two issues raised and addressed by Oyowe in his book, Menkiti’s Moral Man. The first involves two of Oyowe’s criticisms of Menkiti: One criticism is that his conception of personhood is unfairly gendered; the other is that Menkiti’s view involves the priority of the community over individuals. The second issue involves Oyowe’s criticisms of Ikuenobe’s analysis of some aspects of Menkiti’s view in the context of the above criticisms. Oyowe indicates that, although he is “a repentant critic” of Menkiti, he does “not deny the merits of these criticisms.” On page 15, He indicates that he is “convinced that there are resources in Menkiti’s general account for tackling them [criticisms].” This article highlights how his criticisms of Ikuenobe indicate his failure to appreciate fully the relevant robust resources in Menkiti for addressing these criticisms that Ikuenobe’s analysis highlights.

Oyowe O.

Abstract In this article, Oritsegbubemi Oyowe responds to seven critics of Menkiti’s Moral Man on a range of issues and questions and, along the way, clarifies further some of the ideas and proposals in the book. Some of these issues and questions concern what it means to interrogate other cultures, what social recognition really entails, whether persons are social kinds, and, by extension, whether Oyowe’s appeal to a special social ontology is superfluous, whether Oyowe’s account of the existence and persistence of ancestral persons is plausible, and finally, whether and to what extent the terms of these engagements exemplify exogenous discourse.

Metz T.

Abstract In Menkiti’s Moral Man, Oritsegbubemi Oyowe aims to provide a sympathetic interpretation of the works of Ifeanyi Menkiti as they address personhood, community, and other facets of morality. This article maintains that while Oyowe’s Menkiti is more plausible than the way Menkiti has often been read, there are still respects in which the account of personhood advanced invites criticism. One criticism is that it is implausible to think that personhood is constituted by others recognizing one as a person. Instead, insofar as community constitutes one’s personhood, it is insofar as one has lived up to norms of interpersonal morality. A second criticism is that there are intuitively some dimensions of personhood that are not constituted by the community or other-regard at all. In particular, this article argues that there are moral duties to oneself that exist and that are not well captured by any sensible understanding of the view that community alone constitutes personhood, such that part of what it is to be a full person is to treat oneself in certain ways. In sum, personhood, while admittedly social, is not as social as Oyowe’s Menkiti believes.

Flikschuh K.A.

Abstract This article examines Oyowe’s highly distinctive socio-ontological account of ancestral existence. According to Oyowe, ancestors are intentional objects. Ancestors thus constitute a social kind and are ontologically distinct from natural kinds. The article critiques and rejects Oyowe’s distinction between social and natural kinds. The article then goes on to outline a possible alternative approach that draws on quasi-materialist and pan-psychic metaphysics to argue that ancestors exist as a natural kind—more specifically, ancestral existence consists in the this-worldly survival of the mentalistic aspects of a human person’s biological death. Throughout, the article is concerned with the rationality of belief in ancestral existence rather than with their de facto existence as such.

Beck S.

Abstract In Menkiti’s Moral Man, Oyowe argues that Menkiti’s persons are “soft persons.” They are different in kind from human beings in that they find their existence in a social ontology, whereas humans find theirs in a natural ontology, but this does not make them any less real. This understanding, Oyowe contends, is consistent with Menkiti’s texts and allows for a satisfying explanation of a possibly problematic relationship between human being and person. He acknowledges that their placement in social ontology makes them (at least partly) conventional entities and so opens Menkiti’s account to some of the threats that face conventionalism, but he goes on to argue that these can be overcome. This article argues against Oyowe that Menkiti’s persons are resistant to the interpretation as soft entities. Though Menkiti continually stresses the importance of the community to personhood, much of what he has to say suggests he ascribes neither to the distinction between social and natural ontology that is central to Oyowe’s interpretation nor to the conventionalism that comes with it. This article argues that the soft-person reading does not solve problems of conventionalism as neatly as Oyowe hopes but that Menkiti’s view is not vulnerable to those problems.

Goumegou S., Nana L.

Abstract This article examines figurations of returning to the community in two of Léonora Miano’s novels. These novels offer an opportunity to broaden the notion of returning to community that, in philosophical debates, tends to be essentialist and abstract. In Les aubes écarlates and La saison de l’ombre, two clans find themselves confronted with the abduction of community members who become child soldiers or slaves. The physical or spiritual return of those abductees to their communities is at the core of the novels, and it is closely linked to questions of memory. Understanding the dynamics of return as a figuration—both in the literary sense and in Norbert Elias’s process sociology sense—helps us look at the concrete interactions that make up a community. This article analyzes the physical, mnemonic, and spiritual dimensions of returning to community and looks at the significance of inventing new rituals and forms of community.

Chimakonam J.O.

Abstract The concept of belongingness is fast generating interest among scholars of African philosophy. Several scholars articulate and promote various concepts that relate to belongingness. Some of these concepts include communality, solidarity, relationality, integration, harmony, and complementarity. A common thread among these concepts is that they represent an agglutination of parts for mutual identity, enrichment, and survival. This article focuses on the contributions that members of the Conversational School of Philosophy have made toward the development of the concept of belongingness in African philosophy. Specifically, it briefly highlights the ideas of certain scholars, showing how each animates the concept of belongingness. Though their conceptual framings might vary, each speaks, this article argues, to the idea of belongingness.

Akiode O.

Abstract The task of reconstructing African identity and community is made particularly difficult by, among other things, the fact that African countries are not homogeneous and the fluidity, relationality, and contextuality of the concept of identity. In light of this complexity, the challenge of such a reconstruction is engaging in an in-depth critical assessment of African cultural values, beliefs, goals, and aspirations, restoring what needs to be restored, jettisoning what is irrelevant, and adding what is truly beneficial from other communities. As a response to this challenge, this article argues that, to be complete and viable, the process of reconstruction must be gendered. It illustrates the process of gendered reconstruction by underscoring what that entails in the areas of women’s lived experience, the home, the workplace/marketplace, and scholarship.

Weidtmann N.

Makwinja S.M.

Abstract This article underscores the dilemma posed by the exclusivist view of the tradition-modernity contrast for anyone interested in the project of returning and belonging to the African community. On the exclusivist view, tradition and modernity are irreconcilable. After discussing the tradition-modernity contrast in the fields of sociology and academic African philosophy, this article adopts an eclectic view of tradition as an alternative to the exclusivist view. The alternative view enables those interested in the project of returning and belonging to retrieve those elements of tradition that have enduring values in order to utilize them creatively in various development projects. It is argued that this creative synthesis of traditional and modern elements is necessary to build viable contemporary African societies in which individuals feel a sense of belonging and identity.

Attoe A.D.

Abstract For a long time, some African thinkers have sought to project communalism—or, more specifically, ubuntu—as the face of social life in African thought. Unfortunately, rather than emphasizing ubuntu, the reality of things in Africa portrays contextualization and exclusion in some of its most destructive form. One of the more prominent examples of this is the Afrophobic sentiments that have pervaded and continue to pervade the continent. Often, ubuntu is touted as the solution to these types of problems since it emphasizes belongingness and a certain camaraderie that involves mutual caring and sharing. However, this article proposes conversationalism as an alternative to ubuntu, which is too bordered, in one sense, or too utopic, in another. It begins by properly mapping out a general overview of the sociopolitical and existential context in which most Africans live today. It then shows how the current iteration of ubuntu fails. Finally, borrowing from conversationalism, it proposes arumaristics (or creative struggle) as the more viable solution to the problem of Afrophobia and other related forms of exclusion.