Post-Genocide, Post-Apartheid: The Shifting Landscapes of African Philosophy, 1994–2019

This article traces the developments of African philosophy since 1994, a year marked by two events that profoundly impacted Africa: the fall of apartheid and the Rwandan genocide. The article projects a fundamental tension into the history of recent African philosophy: between optimism and idealism, showing in the development of normative concepts and a new philosophical vocabulary for Africa – a “conceptual mandelanization” (Edet 2015: 218), on the one hand, and a critical realism ensuing from the experience of African “simple, that is, flawed, humanity” (Nganang: 2007: 30), on the other. The article identifies prominent trends in African philosophy since 1994, including Ubuntu, the Calabar School of Philosophy, Afrikology, the Ateliers de la pensée, Francophone histories of African philosophy, and Lusophone political and cultural philosophy.


Introduction: Post-Genocide, Post-Apartheid
The seminal work of Dismas Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity (1994), marks a final reflection of a specific type of African philosophy born of colonialism and struggles for independence. This philosophy issued from the "perverse dialogue" (Vest 2009) with the West regarding the rationality of Africans and of black people and concerning the very possibility and existence of an "African philosophy. " Masolo's book was published in a year that was to become a turning point in the history of Africa: the year of the abolishment of apartheid and the year of the Rwandan genocide. These events of the "ambiguous spring of 1994" (Onderka 2004) have profoundly impacted African intellectual developments.
They are also at the root of the tension that characterises contemporary African philosophy: on the one hand, an infectious optimism issues from the culmination of political liberation and ultimate rejection of colonialism and racism, embodied in the political processes in South Africa post 1994; on the other hand, a critical realism derives from the brutal violence witnessed in genocides, wars and armed conflicts concentrated in that same historical span.
Mandela's thought is hailed as a new conceptual vocabulary to theorise the African lifeworld; for instance, Nigerian philosopher Mesembe Edet is calling for a "conceptual mandelanization" (2015: 218). Nelson Mandela, in collaboration with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, supported his plea for a nonviolent transition in South Africa with the "traditional philosophy" of Ubuntu (Kasanda 2018). This concept became an integral part of the South African reconciliation process and was employed in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. These political and legal developments prompted a true burgeoning of philosophical analyses of Ubuntu.
This optimism goes hand in hand with a progressing decolonisation of academia and a renewed interest in African intellectual heritage, for instance, in a rediscovery of the rich tradition of "written erudition" (Diagne 2016: 57, also Diagne 2018 of Islamic scholarship. The collaboration between South Africa and Mali in the exploration of the legacy of Timbuktu (Jeppie and Diagne 2008) is emblematic of these developments; post-apartheid South Africa becomes a philosophical trend-setter in Africa. As Shamil Jeppie put it: "The overall project on Timbuktu -building, conservation, research -is part of this reorientation of South Africa as an integral part of the continent" (Jeppie 2008: 14).
But 1994 was also the year of the Rwandan genocide; an event that affected the African continent and the entire world even more profoundly. On account of its extent and its brutality, but also because of how it exposed the passivity of the world and the total failure of UN institutions to interfere, it gained a metonymical meaning for Africa: "it was the whole of Africa that was at stake on the thousand hills of Rwanda" (Nganang 2007: 25). 1 An inverse image of the philosophy of Ubuntu interpreted as an expression of 1 c' est toute l' Afrique qui a été en jeu sur les mille collines rwandaises. (All translations in this article are mine, unless indicated otherwise.) Pan-African humanism, the genocide of Rwanda is seen as "Africa's violent entry into simple, that is, flawed, humanity" (Nganang 2007: 30).
The present article reads the history of African philosophy during the past quarter of a century as a discourse impacted by this fundamental tension. While many new trends in contemporary African philosophy share the pride and optimism of post-apartheid thinkers (the theorists of Ubuntu, the Calabar School of Philosophy, but also the Ugandan school of Afrikology or many of the Francophone historians of African philosophy), some philosophers adopt a more critical analysis (Nganang, Mbembe, some authors assembled in the Ateliers de la pensée, see Monga 2016). Numerically more thinkers acclaim Africa's intellectual heritage and history; yet the dissonant voices are no less important. In fact, this latter, critical attitude is considered to be the defining or indeed foundational characteristic of Francophone African philosophy since 1990: "Ethnic violence, in Rwanda, ... Congo (DRC), Burundi, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Soudan (sic), forced African philosophers to interrogate not so much the Africanness of Africa as the meaning of humanity" (Fraiture 2015: 157). The focus on "the human" characterizes both prominent tendencies within African philosophy, as identified in this article but, as we shall see, in dramatically different ways.
While listing many philosophers and trends, this article focuses on two thinkers' work in more detail: on the one hand, Patrice Nganang's conceptualisation of African philosophy post genocide; and on the other hand, the theorisation of Ubuntu, with a focus on Puleng LenkaBula's application of the concept to include non-human environment. These two thinkers are seen as representative of the two positions defining what this article identifies as the fundamental tension within African philosophy, and their elaborations well illustrate the standpoints and stakes on each side of the divide.
Of course, every broad narrative generalises, and every generalisation is based on a necessary simplification. There are understandably a number of thinkers, even groups or schools of thinkers, who do not neatly fall into one or the other category. On account of the specific history of Portuguese colonialism, the late arrival of independence, and the linguistic links between the former Portuguese colonies and South American countries, Lusophone philosophers stand quite apart from these developments, as do philosophers using African languages -whose thinking constitutes a vast field, up to now largely unexplored in "mainstream" African philosophy (Rettová 2007a). The current article remains within this "mainstream" African philosophy and presents a panoramic overview of philosophical thought in Sub-Saharan Africa using the medium of English, French and Portuguese, with a critical literature review. Contemporary African philosophy remains strictly compartmentalised according to language, with distinct developments in each. While this article follows these divisions, it hopes to establish, through its comprehensive perspective, the possibility of new connections and bridges. 2

Philosophy after Genocide
Can we still seriously think in Africa of these days while avoiding the idea of self-destruction? Can we still write African history from within the cocoon of the culture of innocence? Starting with a genealogy of the mere victim? (Nganang 2007: 24) 3 These questions are raised by Cameroonian writer and activist Patrice Nganang, for whom the Rwandan genocide marks a rupture in African thought. Rwanda is not "a crazy moment of African history: an epiphenomenon" (2007: 41) 4 but "a foundational event of African philosophy" (2007: 41). 5 To Nganang, Rwanda "marks the terrible place of a failure of humanity at the heart of Africa. " 6 It is "a slap in the face of African intelligentsia that was sleepy when the killings took place, a slap whose echo still resonates with force in the depth of the entire African library" (2007: 26). 7 This makes Rwanda into the "philosophema of our time" 8 ; it is the need to "imagine oneself from its heap 2 It is these connections that define African philosophy a discourse, a field of enquiry. Needless to say, African philosophy is not understood here as a single set of beliefs or a specific existing philosophical system. The authors discussed are selected for their participation in and contributions to this discourse. Many of these authors identify as philosophers by profession, but this self-definition is not a key criterion for the inclusion in this survey: political theorists, scholars in religious studies, anthropology, literary studies or critical theory, even novelists or poets may be and are producers of texts that contribute to African philosophy. 3 [P]eut-on encore sérieusement penser en Afrique de nos jours, en excluant l'idée de l'autodestruction? Peut-on encore écrire l'histoire africaine à partir du cocon de la culture de l'innocence? A partir d'une généalogie de la victime seule? 4 un moment fou de l'histoire africaine: un épiphénomène 5 un événement fondateur de la philosophie africaine 6 Rwanda marque le lieu terrible d'une degringolade de l'humanité au coeur de l' Afrique 7 une gifle en plein visage de l'intelligence africaine dormeuse quand les tueries avaient lieu, gifle dont l' écho résonne encore avec éclat dans la profondeur de toute la bibliothèque africaine 8 philosophème de notre temps of corpses " (2007: 27) 9 . Such "brutal awakening of thought" (2007: 28), 10 then, constitutes the "post-genocidal African subject" (Syrotinski 2014).
The genocide, Nganang argues, negates the narrative of Africa's exceptionalism: The tragic paradox is that the genocide makes the African fully human. As a paradigmatic rupture with two hundred years of African, Africanist and Africanizing thought that have for a long time understood "the African" as someone special, extraordinary, it marks Africa's violent entry into simple, that is, flawed, humanity (Nganang 2007: 30). 11 The consequence, for Nganang, is the imperative to make the genocide into a new beginning for African philosophy. African philosophy can no longer develop its self-complacent paradigms which Nganang identifies, with Mbembe (2002), as "secular Marxist-Messianic, revolutionary thought" (la pensée messianique, laïque et marxisante, révolutionnaire) or "Afroradicalism" (afro-radicalisme), on the one hand, and "identitarian thought" (la pensée identitaire) or "nativism" (nativisme), on the other. These are drastically obsolete, because they uphold the logic of "victimisation" (2007: 45) that always finds blame for the atrocities with the former colonial powers while, simultaneously, sustaining the very essentialism that was used to justify the violence. This effort to "find the external origin of a mass extermination inscribed in the Belgian colonial dichotomies and the long genocidal arm of France" (2007: 45) 12 and to "project everything negative onto colonialism" (Syrotinski 2014: 278), effectively, "stymies the possibility of an unconditional responsibility for autonomy" (Syrotinski 2014: 278). Nganang concludes: Identitarian thought, in all its forms, is guilty to have provided the murderers of the Great Lakes with the foundations of their flawed madness. It is not only the theory of the Egyptian origin of African peoples that got a "shower of blood" in the Rwandan genocide; it is not only the theory of race that permeates texts of Egyptologist 9 s'imaginer à partir de son sommet de cadavres 10 le réveil brutal de la pensée 11 Le génocide rend pleinement humain l' Africain, voilà le tragique paradoxe. C' est que, rupture paradigmatique avec deux cent ans de pensées africaine, africaniste et africanisante qui longtemps ont entendu "l' Africain" comme quelqu'un de particulier, d' extraordinaire, il est l' entrée fracassante de celui-ci dans l'humanité simple, c' est-à-dire fautive. 12 trouver l' origine externe d'une extermination de masse inscrite dans les dichotomies coloniales belges et dans la longue main génocidaire de la France Afrocentrism as well as of African nationalism, both becoming explosive in the hateful elaboration of the features of the Tutsi face; it is the very pillar of rationality that supplied the ideological grounding for this form of analysis that has been shattered. Rwanda is without a doubt the graveyard of Negritude, as well as of all of its conceptual corollaries (2007: 46, emphasis added). 13 From this vantage point, Nganang undertakes a critical reassessment of contemporary African philosophy. He is caustically critical to Mudimbe's project of "archeology of knowledge. " He bitterly remarks that "Rwanda is the last station of that African thought whose geography Mudimbe elaborates with such sophistication and patience and which the million of dead people in Rwanda have suddenly rendered obsolete" (2007: 39). 14 Mudimbe, "the most patient of African philosophers, " he bitterly adds, "was sleeping while the dead bodies were adorning his back yard" (2007: 40) 15 . Yet, Mudimbe, who lived in Rwanda as a Benedictine novice before the independence, directly witnessed Rwandan ethnic violence, a point explored in his intellectual autobiography (1994b). 16 By contrast, it is Achille Mbembe whom Nganang sees as a vanguard of the new African philosophy: Except for this philosopher and historian, no one in the long tradition of African thought has as yet had the courage to think Africa starting from a morbid place, from the terrible precipice of destruction and auto-destruction; no one has as yet found the words to think Africa in the "time of misery" that is less that of the ritual of mourning and rather the awakening after the catastrophe: of life after death; no 13 [L]a pensée identitaire, dans toutes ses formes, et coupable d'avoir livré aux tueurs des Grands Lacs les fondements de leurs folies bancales. Ce n' est pas seulement la théorie de l' origine égyptienne de races africaines qui a pris une "douche de sang" dans le génocide au Rwanda; ce n' est pas seulement la raciologie qui traverse les textes autant de l'afrocentrisme égyptologiste que du nationalisme africain qui sont devenus explosifs dans l' élaboration haineuse des traits du visage Tutsi; c' est le socle même de la rationalité qui a donné à cette forme d'analyse son lit idéologique qui en a été secoué. Sans aucun doute, le Rwanda est le cimetière de la négritude ainsi que de tous ses corollaires conceptuels. 2007 14 c' est bien au Rwanda que se trouve la dernière station de la pensée africaine dont Mudimbe élabore si savamment et si patiemment la géographie, le million de morts l'ayant soudain rendue obsolète 15 le philosophe africaine, même le plus patient, était endormi quand les cadavres fleurissaient dans sa cour 16 I thank the anonymous peer-reviewer for this observation. one has had the courage to imagine and to take the mass killing as a foundational event of African philosophy (2007: 41). 17 The task of the philosopher post Rwanda is to find the way out and avoid getting lost in the "epistemology of violence" (épistémologie de la violence) (2007: 49). It is now necessary to "think negatively -to think against oneself " (2007: 35), 18 because this means "to think against that way of life that made the genocide possible" (2007: 36). 19 From the genocide, "African philosophy finds itself and discovers the grammar of its new way of thinking in Africa" (2007: 33). 20 Having proposed an understanding of African history from its "flaws, " its low points (1993,2002) and having devoted major works to theorisations of African response to narratives derived from Africa's historical afflictions such as slavery, racism and colonialism (2001, 2017), Mbembe's response to Rwanda lies in his elaboration of "necropolitics" (2003,2019).
Mbembe is also the founder, together with Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr, of Ateliers de la pensée, an initiative launched in 2016 that aspires to be "a free platform" 21 where African and Afro-diasporic intellectuals and artists "come together to reflect on what Africa is and becomes in the middle of the transformations of the contemporary world" 22 (cover of Mbembe and Sarr 2017). The initiative is driven by the belief that "in the beginning of this century, Africa appears to be one of the main stages where the future of the planet will be played out" 23 (cover of Mbembe and Sarr 2017) and fosters new thinking about Africa. The first meeting took place on 28-31 October 2016 in Dakar and Saint-Louis-du-Sénégal and was preceded by a similar meeting at the prestigious Collège de France, hosted by Alain Mabanckou, who had been appointed Visiting Professor of Artistic Creation there in 2015-2016. 17 Sauf ce philosophe et historien, personne dans la longue tradition de la pensée africaine, n'a encore eu le courage de penser l' Afrique à partir du lieu morbide, du terrible précipice de la destruction et de l'autodestruction; personne n'a encore trouvé les mots pour penser l' Afrique dans le 'temps du malheur' qui est moins celui du rituel du deuil, que du réveil après la catastrophe: de la vie après la mort; personne n'a eu le courage d'imaginer et de prendre la tuerie de masse comme un événement fondateur de la philosophie africaine. 18 penser négativement -de penser contre soi 19 penser contre cette vie-là qui a rendu le génocide possible 20 la philosophie africaine se retrouve, et découvre la grammaire de sa nouvelle manière de penser en Afrique 21 une plate-forme libre 22 se sont réunis pour réfléchir sur le présent et les devenirs d'une Afrique au coeur des transformations du monde contemporaine 23 [e]n ce début de siècle, l' Afrique apparaît comme l'un des théâtres principaux où se jouera l'avenir de la planète

Responses to the History of Philosophy by Francophone Authors
Francophone critical reflection on African history rests on a significant, and ideologically disparate, body of explorations of the history of philosophy. Many of the recent histories of African philosophy by Francophone authors insist on rewriting the history of African philosophy starting from Ancient Egypt, emphasising that African philosophy is an intellectual process whose momentum was determined well before the development of philosophy in Ancient Greece. Grégoire Biyogo's 25 four volumes of Histoire de la philosophie africaine (2006) project African philosophy as a direct continuation of Egyptian philosophy: the first volume describes ancient Egyptian thought while the remaining three trace the history of African philosophy from the movement of Negritude to the present. The same is done by Nsame Mbongo in his La philosophie classique africaine, published in two volumes in 2013. Also, Mbombog Mbog Bassong, a "planetologist and Egyptologist" (Mbombog Mbog Bassong 2021), establishes a direct link between contemporary African philosophy and Ancient Egypt. His publications include La méthode de la 24 A philosopher, anthropologist, and theologian based at the University of Yaoundé I and the Catholic University of Central Africa (UCAC), has conducted philosophical research on metaphysics and African philosophy, on the Mbock system of the Bassa in the south of Cameroon (being and power). 25 Biyogo was born in Oyem in Gabon; he is a poet and writer, Egyptologist, philosopher, and politologist.
The most prolific contemporary author in Francophone African philosophy who establishes connections between contemporary African thought and Ancient Egypt is Théophile Obenga (1990Obenga ( , 1993Obenga ( , 2005. Obenga has summarised his research in his contribution to Kwasi Wiredu's Companion to African Philosophy (2004). He qualifies Egyptian philosophy as a set of teachings (sebayit) and studies the philosophers in the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 B.C.): Imhotep, Hor-Djed-Ef, Kagemni, Ptah-Hotep, Lady Peseshet. Characterising the hieroglyphs as a "complete and systematized conceptualization of all that is" (Obenga 2004: 36), he and focuses on the key concept of maat, which he interprets as "truth, reality, totality, wholeness" (Obenga 2004: 47).
Much like the work of the Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop, who was the first to advocate for a recognition of the cultural influences extending from Ancient Egypt to contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa, Obenga's writings suffer from integrating many unacceptable dogmas. He says, for instance, that in Ancient Egypt "there was no social discrimination between men and women, no human servitude or slavery, no detention in jails, and no capital punishment" (2004: 46). Obenga's arguments rehearse here those advocated earlier by Cheikh Anta Diop (1982). In addition, he supports his conclusions through spurious linguistic evidence, for example, when he traces a relationship between the Ancient Egyptian word maat, the Bantu word moyo "life, soul, mind, " the Yorùbá word mợ "know" and the Chadic Maɗa word mat "genie, goblin" (2004: 48). Captivating as his philosophical elaborations of Egyptian thought are, they are marred by such "bad scholarship" (Imbo 1998: 70). 26 Hubert Mono Ndjana, professor of philosophy at the University of Yaoundé I, also starts his Histoire de la philosophie africaine (2009) with "Egyptian metaphysics" and "Ionian transition, " then covers the Church Fathers around the turn of the millennium: Philo of Alexandria, Florus, Tertullian, Origenes, 26 Anke Graness, a German philosopher who has worked on sage philosophy (Graness and Kresse 1997), on intercultural and African ethics and justice theory (2011, 2015a) and compiled a special issue on Lusophone African philosophy (2015b), is currently working on a history of African philosophy that also starts with Egypt (Graness 2015c). Her meticulous analysis of Egyptian texts is based on a textual comparison between multiple translations and interpretations as well as a solid background knowledge of Egyptian history (2016).
Plotinus and Saint Augustine (4 th -5 th century AD

Makerere: Epistemology and Metaphysics
Intercultural philosophy directly feeds into the process of decolonisation undertaken by a number of universities worldwide. Makerere University in Uganda, the oldest and one of the most acclaimed academic institutions in Africa, is the alma mater of Ngugi wa Thiong' o, who launched the project of the "decolonisation of the mind" (1986) that recent decolonisation campaigns reference. Also Makerere University is currently undergoing a decolonisation campaign, spearheaded by Mahmood Mamdani (African Arguments 2016).
The philosophy school at Makerere was inspired by Dani Wadada Nabudere, a lawyer and minister who launched a learning centre in Mbale, the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan University (MPAU). Nabudere coined the term "Afrikology" for an African epistemology (2011,2012). Nabudere never taught at Makerere, but his effort to establish this new African epistemology had far-reaching influences on other scholars, such as Daniel Komakech, currently based at the Gulu University, who has linked the study of philosophy with "peace epistemology" in the wake of the Ugandan civil war (2012). This research was further developed by the Italian scholar Benedetta Lanfranchi, who produced a thesis in the philosophy of law, with a focus on Acholi understandings of justice (2015). Lanfranchi worked for several years at Makerere after she obtained her doctoral degree from SOAS in London. Wilfred Lajul profiles himself as an expert on African metaphysics and political philosophy (2013). The interest in political philosophy, in particular traditional forms of democracy and government, is shared by his colleague Edward Wamala (2004). 27

Ubuntu
South Africa is currently one of the hotbeds of African philosophy. The pillar of this prominence is the concept of Ubuntu (cf. Yali-Manisi 1952). The concept was introduced to politics by Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1999) in an effort to achieve a peaceful transition towards the "rainbow nation" of the post-apartheid South Africa. The concept was employed in the TRC hearings as a lever towards forgiveness and reconciliation (Cornell and Muvangua 2012, Derrida 2004).
The basic ideas of Ubuntu philosophy are two. Firstly, "humanity" is a normative, not a biological or genetic concept: being "human" carries ethical qualities. For this reason, the concept of Ubuntu is often connected with that of "personhood" rather than "humanity, " being "humane" rather than "human. " Secondly, the community has primacy over the individual: the individual is constituted through the community. This emphasis on the community opposes Ubuntu to a number of Western theories that are based on the premise of the primary constitution of individual subjectivity, with a secondary constitution of community through intersubjectivity (Descartes, Husserl), or to contract theories of the constitution of society (Hobbes). How exactly this primacy of community over the individual is to be understood, is the subject of considerable controversy among African philosophers (Wiredu and Gyekye 1992;Gyekye 2007;Masolo 2010;Matolino 2014).
The word ubuntu comes from southern Bantu languages of the Nguni group, such as Zulu, Xhosa, and Ndebele, and has cognates in all Bantu languages: botho in Sotho, hunhu in Shona (Samkange and Samkange 1980) or utu in Swahili (Kresse 2007). Similar concepts have also been identified beyond the Bantu sphere, as in the Yorùbá term ènìyàn (Gbadegesin 1991) or in what Kenneth Kaunda conceptualised in English through the concept of "Zambian Humanism"; in all of these, "humanity" has a normative meaning (Rettová 2007b). The constitution of the individual through the community, more broadly theorised under the concepts of "African communalism" or "communitarianism" (Bongmba 2005;Etta, Esowe, Asukwo 2016;Eze 2008;Metz 2015;Táíwò 2016;van den Berg 1999;Venter 2004;Wafula 2003), is seen as a feature characterising all African cultures.
Philosophers have elaborated the conceptual content of Ubuntu, with the ambition of presenting it as a pan-African philosophy that characterises the entirety of the continent: Ubuntu is the root of African philosophy. The be-ing of an African in the universe is inseparably anchored upon ubuntu. Similarly, the African tree of knowledge stems from ubuntu with which it is connected indivisibly. Ubuntu then is the wellspring flowing with African ontology and epistemology. (…) African philosophy has long been established in and through ubuntu (Ramose 1999: 49).
Desmond Tutu characterised Ubuntu in these often-quoted words: Africans have a thing called ubuntu. It is about the essence of being human, it is part of the gift that Africa will give the world. It embraces hospitality, caring about others, being willing to go the extra mile for the sake of another. We believe that a person is a person through other persons, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours. When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself. The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. Therefore you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own in community, in belonging (Tutu quoted in Ubuntu Age 2021).
The concept gained much popular appeal, as this connection to New Age philosophies attests: Ubuntu (oo-boon-too, n.) means, "I am because we are. " Ubuntu is a Zulu or Xhosa word, and a traditional African concept. It's a term for humaneness, for caring, sharing and being in harmony with all of creation, the theme of our newly arrived Age of Aquarius. (Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?) (quoted in Ubuntu Age 2021).
Ubuntu philosophy is thus constructed as a highly idealistic, normative philosophy (Battle 2009), with pre-colonial origins (Makaudze 2010) and a pan-African appeal (see the special issue of Quest, 2001). This validity of "Ubuntu for all Africa" is claimed unanimously by most of its theorists. In 2001 Augustine Shutte writes: I am going to present the African ethical vision contained in the idea of UBUNTU. For simplicity's sake I will speak "the" African vision, although I do not want to suggest that there is only one. It must be remembered that I am talking about traditional African ideas rather than contemporary ones, ideas that pre-exist the influence of European culture. I am not writing as an anthropologist. I am not interested in African ideas just because they are African, nor in the whole range of African culture with all its local differences. I am interested only in a central set of ideas because they seem to me to be both true and important, and to supply something that our dominant scientific culture lacks (Shutte 2001: 16, emphasis added).
For Shutte, Ubuntu expresses the idea of a reversal of identity construction, if compared to European philosophy: from "we" to "I. " He sees this captured in the classical formulation of the Ubuntu philosophy, umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (in Nguni languages). Strongly reminiscent of Placide Tempels' "Bantu ontology, " according to which "being is force" (Tempels 1959), Shutte views this philosophy as based on a vision of African life as living energy. The community is a field of forces as the life-force is a fundamental reality in the universe. In this vision, the self is located outside the individual body; the appearance, the acts, the relationships, and the environment are all manifestations of life-forces that make up and identify the individual, that make me "me. " Persons exist only in relation to other persons. Consequently, ethics and politics are ways to integrate the different selves realised in each relationship. Life, then, is a process of becoming a person through building relationships with others and a progressive increase in vital force as the moral quality of life is enhanced.
UBUNTU is the name for the acquired quality of humanity that is the characteristic of a fully developed person and the community with others that results. It thus comprises values, attitudes, feelings, relationships and activities, the full range of expressions of the human spirit (Shutte 2001: 31).
The moral values of Ubuntu are derived, on the one hand, from relationships with others, such as reverence, respect, sympathy, value others like oneself, loyalty courtesy, tolerance, patience, generosity, hospitality, readiness to cooperate; on the other hand, from the relationship to oneself, such as integrity, solidity, wholeness of character and spirit. These show in one's judgements, decisions, feelings, and lead to confidence, endurance, joyfulness, vitality, sense of one's own value and dignity (Shutte 2001: 32).
According to Shutte, Ubuntu is drastically different from both European socialism and Western capitalism. The latter lead to alienation and to the reduction of a person to a thing on account of their foundation upon a mechanical theory of society. Instead, Ubuntu does not rest on the will of the majority but on the will of the community: the unanimity of an "extended family" (2001: 29). Ubuntu is manifest in the "continuing dissipation of the spirit of apartheid" and in the "extraordinary manifestations of forgiveness during the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission" (2001: 33).
This idea of the foundation of ethics upon community is upheld by African philosophers across the continent and seen as valid for African ethics generally. Kwame Gyekye speaks of the "social character of Akan ethics" (1995: 20) as " [t]he view that the good of all determines the good of each.
Seek the good of the community and you seek your own good. Seek your own good and you seek your own destruction. Mutual aid, interdependence, is a moral obligation" (Gyekye 1995: 20).
Mogobe Ramose sees Ubuntu as a philosophy uniting the continent: [T]he ubuntu philosophy we are about to discuss "goes from the Nubian Desert to the Cape of Good Hope and from Senegal to Zanzibar." However, (...) the Sahara Desert is not the indelible birthmark on Africa. For this reason, the meaning and import of human interaction before the birth of the Sahara Desert must be taken into account (Ramose 1999: 50).
Using the metaphor of a "family" to explain the pervasiveness of Ubuntu across Africa, he states: Apart from a linguistic analysis of ubuntu, a persuasive philosophical argument can be made that there is a "family atmosphre", that is, a kind of philosophical affinity and kinship among and between the indigenous people of Africa. ... the blood circulating through the "family" members is the same in its basics (Ramose 1999: 49).
Ramose used his native language (Sotho) to express the classical formula of Ubuntu: "Motho ke motho ka batho [means] to be a human be-ing is to affirm one's humanity by recognising the humanity of others and ... establish humane relations with them" (1999: 52). The affirmation or negation of Ubuntu ("ke motho -gase motho, " 1999: 53) expresses a "fundamental ethical, social, legal judgement of human worth and human conduct" (1999: 52-53). He spells ubu-ntu with the hyphen in order to express his "linguistic analysis" of the concept, according to which ubu-expresses ontology: "the idea of be-ing in general, " the "enfolded be-ing before it manifests itself in the concrete form or mode of ex-istence [sic] of a particular entity" (1999: 50), while -ntu is "the nodal point at which be-ing assumes concrete form or a mode of being in the process of continual unfoldment [that is] distinctly epistemological" (1999: 50). 28 The philosophy of Ubuntu has been applied to questions of democracy (Zandberg 2010 Puleng LenkaBula's article "Beyond Anthropocentricity -Botho/Ubuntu and the Quest for Economic and Ecological Justice in Africa" (2008) well illustrates the way the concept is explored and redefined by contemporary philosophers. It also shows the potential problems of this body of scholarship, especially the failure to provide credible evidence and the arbitrariness of such redefinitions. LenkaBula sets out to study "botho as a key norm in the quest for ecological justice against exploitative human relations, economic systems and power issues" (2008: 377). Why does she use botho rather than Ubuntu? She argues: "I have chosen to use botho not ubuntu as is currently the vogue, as I am a Sesotho speaker ... ubuntu in isixhosa and isizulu defines or describes a similar concept to botho" (2008: 378). Here, recourse is taken on a native speaker's language competence. However, can the semantics of natural language (to which a native speaker has access) account for what the concept of botho is subsequently tasked to do? This is, namely, no small task: [B]otho is a Sesotho word which describes personhood and humaneness. It has an ontological, socio-political, economic, ecological and religious dynamic. This is because it explains the relationship of humanity to themselves, as well as the embeddedness of human life to the ecological life, thus highlighting that the self can 28 From a linguistic point of view this characterisation this makes no sense: -ntu is the root, the part of the word that carries the semantic meaning, while ubu-is the prefix of the Bantu class 14, expressing an abstract noun formed of the root -ntu. If, with a stretch of imagination, one could characterise the ubu-prefix as a way to organize ontology, perhaps along the lines of Kagame's proposal (Ramose 1955(Ramose , 1976; cf. also Elonga Mboyo 2015), there seems to be little in -ntu that could be linked with "epistemology, " let alone "unfoldment. " never fully be without the ecological systems within which they exist.
Botho is an expression of people's dual identity, that is, in relation to themselves as well as in relation to creation other than human (LenkaBula 2008: 378).
Another issue is that of translation. LenkaBula states: The Basotho of Lesotho and South Africa often make the claim that motho ke motho ka batho ba bang. This literally translates as "no person is complete in him/herself; s/he is fully human in as far as s/he remains a part of the web of life, including creation and the earth" (2008: 378).
The problem here concerns the words "literally translates. " The sentence LenkaBula quotes "literally translates" as "a person is a person through other people. " The concepts of "completion, " "web of life, " "including creation and the earth, " are LenkaBula's additions. They are her interpretations of what botho implies -her philosophical revisiting of the concept. These additions, however, cannot be legitimised through the native competence argument. It would be more appropriate for LenkaBula to say she is taking a concept from her language and culture and developing it philosophically to express the relationality of human and non-human existence. However, she does not do this. Instead, she suggests "it is a concept that is 'difficult to translate into occidental languages'" (2008: 379). The difficulty here is not one of translation. It is of expressing the cultural connotations of the concept, on the one hand, and the philosophical (and theological) reinterpretation LenkaBula herself attempts, on the other.
Another example of a questionable translation is in the following quotation: Sesotho/Setswana saying motho ke motho ka batho ba bangwe, motho ke motho ka boyena, motho ke motho ka tikologo, motho ke motho ka modimo. This literally translates as "a human being is a human being through other human beings, through the human self and through the physical organic cosmic environment and through God" (2008: 383, emphasis added) Again, tikologo does not "literally translate" into "physical organic cosmic environment," an expression loaded with a multitude of philosophical, physical, indeed, cosmological presuppositions. Tikologo, a word expressing the general notion of "environment, surroundings, milieu, context, " does not entail this environment as being "physical, " "organic, " or "cosmic, " but simply "whatever is around that person" -which is fundamentally open and unspecific. 29 Botho is tasked to carry a vast load of concepts and connotations: it "promotes social and individual wellbeing and wholeness" (2008: 379); it "implies at minimum a sensible acknowledgement of the rights of others .... recognises the relevance of equality, self-respect, health, opportunities, income, wealth and relations with the cosmos, the planets and creation" (2008: 379); botho is humanity, solidarity, "embraces diverse aspects of relationality" (2008: 383), it is "underpinned by communalism" (2008: 385), it is "the embodiment of reciprocity and justice" (2008: 388) as well as equality, wisdom, and it "also emphasises inter-generational aspects of sustainable ecology" (2008: 389).
In sum: Its core message is about the essence of being human in relation to other people and to creation. People are human and humane because they belong to a community and a network of life-forces. In order to be human, people must be born into a community, into a specific area, within eco-systems that shape their identity and choices of their community (2008: 379).
Clearly, a vast number of qualities are attached to botho, ranging from self-respect and equality, to rights, income and wealth, and culminating in "relations with the cosmos, the planets and creation, " adding a distinctly theological, more precisely creationist, reading to the concept. This wider relationality is expressed through the word "eco-systems, " added in order to harmonise the concept with concerns of environmental protection and ecological theories.
These are, as it were, surreptitious insertions of concepts and meanings, making it appear as if they are present in the simple semantics and cultural connotations of the word botho. Effectively, the effort is to redefine a fundamentally humanistic and, I agree with Horsthemke (2015;2017a), anthropocentric view of humanity and community ecologically in order to involve the environment. This is an interesting expansion and re-reading of the concept of Ubuntu; but it would be good to be clear about the origin of these new meanings. A major problem of contemporary African philosophy is its impressionistic and quite random approach to African cultures: a scholar feels s/he has an understanding of an African culture, be it based on native language competence, on being an insider to that culture, or on reading anthropological literature, and develops a philosophy on the basis of this understanding -without confirming how relevant, how correct, how complete this understanding is. African cultures are interpreted and reinterpreted according to the needs of individual philosophers and are often simplified or grossly misrepresented in the process.

The Calabar School of Philosophy: Ontology, Logic, Normative and Applied Ethics
The philosophers who call themselves "the Calabar School of Philosophy" also claim a connection with the philosophy of Ubuntu. However, they suggest that Ubuntu in fact emanates from their own philosophical activity, which they term "conversational philosophy": The theories of the school often have both English and Igbo names, or names that mix Greek, Latin and Igbo roots and they often span logic, ontology, epistemology, with ramifications in applied philosophy (ethics, gender theory, ecological theory).
Innocent Asouzu is the spiritual father of the Calabar School of Philosophy. He named his philosophy "Ibuanyidanda, " or "Complementary Reflection. " The Igbo term goes back to the Igbo proverb ibu anyi danda "no load is too heavy for the danda ants" (Asouzu 2011(Asouzu , see also 2007a(Asouzu , 2007b(Asouzu , 2013Edet and Chimakonam 2014;Ekent 2016;Kanu 2016). The ontology, method and "scientific paradigm" (Asouzu 2011: 21) of ibuanyidanda philosophy imply that "being is that on account of which anything that exists serves a missing link of reality -this translates to Igbo language as: ihe di nwere isi na ọdụ -or i di bu ihe nwere isi na ọdụ" (Asouzu 2011: 29). 30 The philosophy expresses the belief in a fundamental complementary nature of all that is, with the result that "with an ibuanyidanda mind-set ... in spite of its diverse modes of determination [being] remains harmonised" (2011: 30).
Jonathan Chimakonam is arguably the most active and versatile philosopher from the group. He initially worked on logic (2012b), a field to which he has recently contributed a full-length book (Chimakonam 2019). Logic is the foundation for a new method and style of African philosophy which he calls "Arumaristics, " or "Conversational Philosophy" (see also Chimakonam 2017aChimakonam , 2017b, defined in the following way: 30 Yvonne Mbanefo, a teacher of Igbo, has clarified: "ihe di nwere isi na ọdụ means 'the thing that is (available) makes sense' , literally 'has a head (isi) and tail (ọdụ)' . When used as a figure of speech, ihe nwere isi na ọdụ is something that you can fathom, something that makes sense because you can see where it starts and ends (hence the head and tail). " The other phrase, i di bu ihe nwere isi na ọdụ, to her, "literally doesn't make sense [and] needs to be reframed. " (E-mail from 14 January 2019.) 31 The printed book has no page numbers.
Arumaristic is derived from the Igbo notion "arụmarụ-ụka, " which roughly translates to: "engaging in doubt in a conversational way" [and it] has two senses; (1) as a noun, "the act" [but not the state] of engaging in doubt conversationally; and (2) as a noun, "the mechanism" for engaging in doubt conversationally. Both senses of the word describe a form of semi-dialectic relationship called conversational between or among parties in which the sustenance of the critical engagement is prioritized over the emergence of a synthesis (Chimakonam 2018c: 156, endnote 54).
The theory has been critically interrogated by Bruce Janz (2016), who asks about the distinctions between "conversation" and what has been developed in Intercultural Philosophy as "(intercultural) dialogue" and about the "limits of dialogue" (2016: 41-42; cf. Chimakonam 2016). The similarity (and unclarified links) of "conversational philosophy" with several other philosophical trends -Gadamer's hermeneutics, Habermas' discourse theory (Anke Graness, personal communication, June 2018), but also the very basic self-reflexivity and critique inherent in any philosophy -have been pointed out by African philosophers. 32 In recent years, Chimakonam has edited and co-edited volumes on gender and environment (Chimakonam 2018a;Chimakonam and du Toit 2018).
The Calabar School has produced a great number of concepts, and it sees this as a major virtue (cf. Chimakonam 2016). Yet, this practice should be viewed critically. The concepts do not always correspond to a clear need for conceptualisation. Many of these concepts are introduced, never to be used by anybody else, not even by the author him/herself. A "new African philosophy" cannot be projected simply by introducing Igbo words, while failing to do the hard philosophical labour of critiquing existing positions. The proliferation of ontological theories, without properly relating them to similar or identical theories, results in mere renaming of earlier anthropological, theological and philosophical work. What is the difference between "Harmonious Monism" and the metaphysical theory of John S. Mbiti? How is "Complementary Reflection" different from Tempels' ontology of vital forces? How is "Consolationism" distinct from existentialism? Often, concepts adopted from Western philosophy are rebranded with Igbo words 32 A rich and nuanced debate about this topic was developed following the presentations by the members of the Calabar School of Philosophy, including Chimakonam, at the Third Biennial African Philosophy World Conference at the University of Dar es Salaam, 28-30 October 2019.
or words that integrate Igbo roots. "Structural ratiosusuism, " from the Latin ratio and asusu, "language" in Igbo, is defined as "inseparability of language and rationality" (Chimakonam 2018b: 14). What then is the difference between "structural ratiosusuism" and "linguistic relativity hypothesis"? How is "Ezụmezụ logic" (Chimakonam 2014(Chimakonam , 2019 distinct from the number of existing non-Aristotelian logics? In his recent book, Jonathan Chimakonam presents "Ezumezu logic" as a three-valued logic and suggests that "[t]he logic tradition in Africa is ... a variant of three-valued logic" (2019: 6). 33 Theorising a three-valued logic as a foundation of non-European thinking is a valid project, one that has been undertaken by a number of scholars even beyond the discipline of logic itself. 34 The Bolivian philosopher Javier Medina (2008Medina ( , 2011 suggests that native Latin American thought systems -such as those expressed through the concepts of suma qamaña or suma jaqaña (in Aymara), sumak kawsay or allin kawsay (in Quechua), ñande reko or tekó porã or tekó kaví (in Guaraní) or the established translation into Spanish, buen vivir ("good life") or vivir bien ("live well") -, operate on a logic that rejects the Aristotelian Law of the Excluded Middle, hence on a three-valued logic. Medina takes great care to outline resemblances between suma qamaña and other manifestations of non-binary thought, including Far Eastern philosophies, Jewish and Christian religious mysticism, deep ecological thinking, quantum mechanics 33 By contrast, Oluwole and Gyekye identify, respectively in divination poetry of the Yorùbá and in Akan proverbs, "a direct expression of the law of the Excluded Middle" (Oluwole 1999: 93) or a "formulation of the principle of noncontradiction" (Gyekye 1995: 7), suggesting African thought is in fact based on the same principles as Aristotelian logic. 34 The existence and employment of such logics is one of the key propositions of the project of "epistemologies of the South, " which strives to redefine epistemology relying on two sources: indigenous knowledge and recent developments in science, such as quantum physics, post-Euclidean geometries and non-Aristotelian logics. Boaventura de Sousa Santos's seminal work Epistemologies of the South. Justice against Epistemicide (2014) presents four observations: 1) foundation of natural science in social science, 2) foundation of global knowledge in local knowledges, 3) all objective knowledge is knowledge of subject/self, 4) all scientific knowledge must be transformed in common-sense knowledge ("life wisdom") (cf. de Moraes Gomes 2012: 43, de Sousa Santos 2012, de Sousa Santos and Meneses 2009). De Sousa Santos has also edited a volume in English, presenting with confidence "another knowledge is possible" (2007). The search for "another knowledge" and "epistemologies of the South" is related to recent studies on epistemology (Fricker 2007), in particular such that factor in race (Sullivan and Tuana 2007) and culture (Mudimbe 1988, 1994, Hamminga 2005, Hountondji 2007, Udefi 2014, Cooper and Morrell 2014, Comaroff and Comaroff 2012. African philosophers have contributed to this debate in questioning the possibilities of understanding African thought systems within their "own rationalities" (Mudimbe 1988: x) and of "Africa-centred knowledges" (Cooper and Morrell 2014, Kresse 2005). and non-Aristotelian logics. 35 It is here that Chimakonam's book leaves much to be desired. The actual presentation of Ezumezu logic in this book does not go beyond the author's theorisation of it in a paper in 2014, and the contextualisation of Ezumezu logic within other forms of three-valued logics is shallow. Chimakonam's discussion with other proponents of threevalued logics is limited to two pages (2019: 135-136) while in the remaining he merely lists names of other proponents of non-Aristotelian logics (2019: 110), without clarifying how Ezumezu relates to or is different from their theorisations. The themes of the libertarian paradigm include (1) theories of contractualism (political and cultural contractualism, social contract theory, poverty reduction, redistribution of wealth), (2) search for the best government (elections, power-sharing, majority/consensus, forms of political representation and participation), and (3) deconstruction of the discourse on modernity and globalisation in Mozambique (critique of neo-colonialism, homogenisation of cultures, exploitation of natural resources, cultural relativism, standards of democracy, etc.) (Castiano 2015: 38).

Lusophone Philosophy: Politics, Interculturality and South-South Dialogue
By contrast, the culturalists believe that "the fundamentals of African philosophy should be located in Old and Middle Ages in Africa" (2015: 39). According to E. N. Ondó (2001): [T]he foundation of African philosophy can be found in the prephilosophical abstractions of the Ishangos (people around the Lake Edward, today Republic of Congo); in geometry, in mythological cosmogonies and agriculture from Egypt; in the knowledge of the ancient Dogon (who possessed theories about the celestial orbitre and the planet Sirius) and Fang people (who grasped the first speculations about the origins of the universe with similarity to the big-bang theory). (quoted from Castiano 2015: 39) The historical inspirations of the culturalists are "negritude, the ideas of an African authenticity and personality, ethno-philosophies, forms of Afrocentrism (like Molefi Kete Asante), and, lately, the ubuntuism as outlined by Mogobe Ramose" (Castiano 2015: 39-40). They engage with anthropology and produce contributions to African metaphysics, cosmology, ontology, epistemology, and ethics. Their themes are religion, myths, customs, law and jurisprudence, local/indigenous knowledge, practices and values. As Castiano concludes, "culturalists seek to re-position African epistemology to the place it deserves in the intellectual history of the world ... criticize the tendency of libertarians to victimize Africans, that is, to display Africans as an 'object'" (Castiano 2015: 39).
Castiano ranks Severino Elias Ngoenha (b. 1962)  Ngoenha has also conceptualised "Mozambican philosophy" which, to him deviates "from the splits between the French rationalists and English empiricists inherited by African philosophy developed by African speakers of French and English, " leads "beyond borders methods themes, and languages, " and extends "the space of historiographical research (including South American liberation and intercultural philosophies, African-American literary thought, and African literary thought, etc.)" (Ngoenha 2013: 39, cited in Mucale 2015 (Castiano 2015: 42). It is clear how the culturalist paradigm needs complementing through insights from the libertarian paradigm in order to account for the philosophical and social challenges of today's world.

Conclusion: The Shifting Landscapes of African Philosophy
The preceding sections have covered some exciting new developments, mainly taking place on the African continent. A number of philosophers are based at US institutions. Mostly well-established authors, they continue publishing on African and general philosophy, political philosophy ethics, globalisation, history, and other topics. The names of Kwame Anthony Appiah (2005,2006,2010), Dismas Masolo (2010), Valentin-Yves Mudimbe (1994a), Kwasi Wiredu (1996, cf. Osha 2005, Souleymane Bachir Diagne (2011Diagne ( , 2016 or Paulin Hountondji (2002), who currently lives and works in Benin, should not be missing from this survey. These thinkers enjoy a high level of mobility across lines and boundaries and inhabit a truly "Afropolitan" 36 identity: they travel physically, but also in languages (English, French, African languages) and, to an extent, in disciplines (literature, philosophy).
This philosophy is distinct, yet it is close to African American philosophy, called "Africana Philosophy" (Gordon 2008), which has a strong focus on race (e.g. Outlaw 1996;Sullivan and Tuana 2007) and is closely related to political activism, such as the Black Lives Matter movement of 2013. A branch of Africana Philosophy is Black Existentialism (Gordon 1997;. 37 It has to be noted that female philosophers are still relatively few among African philosophers. As Pierre-Philippe Fraiture notes, "African philosophers ... have been slow to take onboard the gendered aspects of this 'human' issue" (i.e. of the "return to the human" characterising the period of African philosophy since 1990, see Fraiture 2015: 161). While the present article has not specifically focused on African or Africana feminist and womanist thought (see Graness, Kopf and Kraus 2019), attempt has been made to balance its perspective on African philosophy in giving prominence to a female philosopher, Puleng LenkaBula, as a voice representing recent developments in the philosophy of Ubuntu.
To conclude, I would like to present some general observations on the basis of the survey caried out. Since the 1990s the field of African Philosophy has seen a steady growth of literature. Following Masolo's magisterial work (1994), several introductions to African philosophy (Bidima 1995;Imbo 1998;Obenga 2015, Nichodemus 2014, anthologies (Mosley 1995;English and Kalumba 1996;Eze 1997Eze , 1998Roux 1998, 2003;Karp andMasolo 2000, Brown 2004), historical overviews (Masolo 2000;Hallen 2009), edited volumes (Chimakonam 2015 The geography of African philosophy is changing, with shifting centres of knowledge both across the globe and within the field. In terms of spatial geography, the centres of African philosophy are slowly moving from Western (chiefly American) institutions to institutions within Africa itself; Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Uganda and South Africa have a strong institutional presence of African philosophy. Centres are shifting also within the field itself, redefining "margins" and "periphery, " or African Philosophy's own "nonphilosophy" (Janz 2018, cf. Janz 2009. The "periphery" reconceptualises the whole. The topics addressed in African philosophy are many. Next to the general fields of metaphysics and ontology, epistemology and logic, thinkers have delved into a range of topical issues, such as development (Kebede 2004a;2004b;Keita 2011;Njoku 2004 . In political philosophy, the focus is shifting from slavery, colonialism and the post-colonial dynamics to reflections on recent events: genocides, civil wars, refugee crises, post-war traumas, dictatorship, authoritarianism, corruption, civil society, democracy, and other subjects (Kasanda 2018).
An exciting new development in African philosophy is the emergent field of African phenomenology, with key figures such as Malesela Lamola (Lamola 2019(Lamola , 2020, who also works on 4IR and technology, and Abraham Olivier (Olivier 2007, forthcoming). An international colloquium was held in Chintsa, South Africa, on 5-6 March 2020, entitled Contributions to African Phenomenology, which brought together prominent scholars such as Paulin Hountondji, Lewis Gordon and Achille Mbembe, and which will produce an edited volume of foundational reflections on African phenomenology. Philosophy of science is becoming a strong branch of African philosophy (Paulin Hountondji, Helen Lauer), and an African philosophy of language was inaugurated at the recent UCLA conference (held online 18-19 February 2021), with prominent keynote lectures by Olufemi Taiwo and Souleymane Bachir Diagne (UCLA African Studies Center 2021). A text-based approach, straddling philosophy and literary studies, is being developed by a group of philosophers at the University of Bayreuth, in collaboration with the University of Warwick (Rettová 2021).
This vast body of scholarship has, at long last, made the old, "perverted" (Vest 2009) question of the existence of African philosophy obsolete (Osha 2011). Still, the questioning of the nature of African philosophy is not over. There are several meta-philosophical issues that continue being of interest. These concern in particular the question of resources in African languages (Rettová 2007a;Kresse 2007;Diagne 2016;Kane 2012 andNgom 2016;Kayange 2019). Text-critical work with African sources is almost entirely missing and many philosophical works remain deplorably limited in their understanding of the nature of language and translation.
This lack is related to a general lack of methodology in African philosophy.
There is no clarity about the field's access to African cultures -from which it purports to draw its insights. Much philosophical reasoning relies on intuitive understandings of African cultures, with little empirical support and unacceptable generalisations. The ultimate argument tends to be the understanding of an insider or native speaker of a language, but an insider is not necessarily an expert in his/her culture nor are the semantics of a language identical to philosophical elaborations of concepts. These methodological issues are among the urgent tasks African philosophy needs to address in the future.
This article has attempted to present a history of recent developments within African philosophy from 1994 on and to provide a critical review of the field's contemporary literature. It has framed this history in an overarching narrative of the tension between a philosophy built on the reflection of the Rwandan genocide with the optimism or even utopia present in South African Ubuntu philosophy, as two emblematic historical events that have marked a rupture in Africa's recent history. Clearly, this narrative is not applied or applicable to all the works covered here. Yet the basic split of trends within African philosophy among those who celebrate Africa's history and heritage and those who insist on a critical perspective on the continent, appears to characterise most of the contemporary philosophical production in or about Africa. The former attitude is present in works of the Francophone genealogists of African philosophy who, in the footsteps of Cheikh Anta Diop, trace its origins to Ancient Egypt, in the schools of Afrikology of Uganda, the Ubuntu philosophy of South Africa and the projects developed by the Calabar School of Philosophy. On the other hand, a critical position is developed by Patrice Nganang and the philosopher he presents as the only counterpoint to the celebratory trends, that is, Achille Mbembe, and many of the thinkers who take part in the Senegalese Ateliers de la pensée. Several Lusophone authors transgress this binary too, especially with works on political philosophy and their effort to dialogue with thinkers from the Global South, beyond the African continent.
I am well aware of the limitations of this article. It has looked at Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone African philosophy; the gap is, of course, philosophies in African languages and philosophy expressed through channels that are not necessarily associated with global academia (Rettová 2007a). The coverage of the individual trends in Europhone African philosophy in this article has inevitably remained superficial and commands additional studies. Nevertheless, I would still argue it is important to present these developments in a panoramic overview of the kind offered here, even if only through modest surveys and bibliographic overviews, in order to overcome the compartmentalisation of contemporary African philosophy, which has its roots in the infamous colonial "scramble for Africa. " New connections and relations among these ideas and trends need to be projected and pursued in future research in order to establish a comprehensive philosophical discourse in the African continent.