LEWIS GORDON ON AFRICANA EXISTENTIAL THOUGHT

Introduction

            This paper attempts the question: what does Lewis R. Gordon mean by Africana existential thought? Gordon locates the concept of Africana existential thought within the wider frameworks of African philosophy and the philosophy of black existence. In this study, priority of attention is given to Gordon’s seminal work on the subject matter, entitled: Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought.

Conceptual Clarification of Terms

It is pertinent to briefly clarify, at this juncture, what the term, Africana, is, and more clearly, what Africana thought refers to. It would seem that, for Gordon, the term, Africana, is a single word derived from the expression ‘African-American.’ Here, it refers to Africans and their kindred in the diaspora.[1] Furthermore, he maintains that Africana thought is a reference to:

An area of thought that focuses on theoretical questions raised by struggles over ideas in African cultures and their hybrid and creolized forms in Europe, North America, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Africana thought also refers to the set of questions raised by the historical project of conquest and colonization that has emerged since 1492 and the subsequent struggles for emancipation that continue to this day.[2]

Accordingly, Africana philosophy “is a species of Africana thought, which involves theoretical questions raised by critical engagements with ideas in Africana cultures and their hybrid, mixed, or creolized forms worldwide.”[3] From the forgoing, one can safely say that Africana existential thought is embedded in Africana philosophy. However, it is important to investigate into how Africana existential thought, and indeed, Africana philosophy are related to African philosophy.

African Philosophy and Africana Existential Thought

            Perhaps the most disconcerting concern of African philosophy today, and even from its inception in academic and critical discourses is what African philosophy really is. In fact, Kwasi Wiredu notes that “a principal driving force in postcolonial African philosophy has been a quest for self-definition.”[4] Bruce B. Janz articulates this concern concisely thus:

The history of African philosophy has been the history of struggle to find a place, or to claim to place, or to assert the entitlement to a place, in the face of those who have maintained that it has no place. It is not everywhere, nor is it in any particular, privileged place, according to those we have grown accustomed to listen to.[5]

To the question whether there is an African philosophy, some thinkers in the western world, as well as some Africans, who have received western education think that the answer to the question is negative.

It is alleged that African philosophy is non-existent for three reasons:[6] i) its traditional forms, which form its foundation are not in writing, that is, they are oral wisdom passed on through generations. Meanwhile, it is claimed that genuine philosophy is done through writing; ii) its methodology is not critical and evaluative; it is narrative and descriptive while philosophy, properly so called, is evaluative and critical; and iii) its concerns are localized while real philosophical concerns are universal. Lee M. Brown nevertheless, dismisses these charges levelled against African philosophy on the grounds of their being baseless, since all philosophies begin with the oral tradition, involve aspects that are narrative and descriptive, and are localized and localizable.[7]

Furthermore, four trends or approaches have been identified in African philosophy.[8] They are: a) ethnophilosophy, which refers to the descriptive works of sociologists, anthropologists and others who describe the collective worldviews, myths and folklores of African peoples as philosophy. For the most part, ethnophilosophy is considered as the worst form of African philosophy. In fact, its very formulation is from a derogatory context. Barry Hallen notes that:

‘Ethnophilosophy’ is a four-letter word, an intellectual's invective. I don’t know of anyone in African philosophy today who voluntarily identifies themselves as an ‘ethnophilosopher.’ It is a category invoked by a critic when he wants to express disapproval of the work of someone in African philosophy.[9]

 b) philosophic sagacity, which claims that there are independent African thinkers who have not been influenced by western currents of thoughts and who are critical in their outlook on life. According to the philosophic sagacity approach, the thoughts of these individuals collected through interviews make up genuine philosophy; c) nationalist-ideological philosophy, which is a trend based on African humanism and the pursuit of African political theory geared towards building and maintaining free and independent African states; and d) professional philosophy, which claims to be the real African philosophy and which thrives on the claim that African philosophy, properly so called, is what Africans, who have received training in philosophy as it is taught in academic institutions, do when they reflect on philosophical themes.

P. O. Bodunrin, a foremost member of the professional school of thought in African philosophy, notes that “African philosophy is the philosophy done by African philosophers whether it be in the area of logic, metaphysics, ethics or history of philosophy.”[10] In this way, Bodunrin advances a universalist conception of philosophy as against a particularist notion which the other three trends or approaches would seem to suggest. G. Salemohamed argues against Bodunrin that philosophy cannot be divest of its ultimate provincial underpinnings. Hence, “when Bodunrin speaks of philosophy he has in mind only the British-American philosophical tradition.”[11] Polycarp Ikuenobe advances a more modest position that unifies the universalist and particularist positions. Thus he avers that:

There are both universalist and particularist elements in African philosophy. In other words, although there are culturally determined philosophical ways of constructing meaning, these ways are not incommensurable. As such, we can use the ‘known’ universal (?) philosophical concepts and methods of one ‘culture’ to analyze and make understandable the philosophical beliefs and worldviews of another culture that may ‘appear’ arcane.[12]

Be these objections as they may and the polemics that they generate, and the meta-philosophical question into the nature of African philosophy notwithstanding, this paper accepts that African philosophy exists. Furthermore, Brown maintains that African philosophy refers to that philosophy which “reflects the philosophical concerns that are manifested in African conceptual languages.”[13] More so, Tomaz Carlos Flores Jacques takes a different angle and characterizes African philosophy as a negritude; a response to the some in the west who have claimed that Africans are incapable of rigorous rational thinking. Thus, by negritude he means “a critique of European-Western racist colonialism and its many permutations and ramifications for African and peoples of African descent…the emergence of a ‘distinctive consciousness,’ of a black collective identity, positioned in relationship to the rest of the world.”[14]

It is perhaps in the light of this tangent in African philosophy of considering it as a negritude that one can situate Africana existential thought. It is important to recall that as we noted earlier, Gordon maintains that Africana thought encompasses questions regarding philosophical thoughts that interest and touch on the lived situation of Africans in Africa and in peoples of African descent in the diaspora.

Lewis Gordon’s Notion of Existentia Africana

            To begin with, it is important to note that the central content of Existentia Africana is, for Lewis Gordon, simply: Africana existential thought, as the subtitle of the book indicates. It is essentially the claim that there is something as Africana existential thought. So, Gordon’s attempt is both to validate the claim that African existential thought exists, and to express what the content of this thought is or might be. For him, and looking at the historical existence of Africana thinking, though not largely in written form,[15] Africana existential thought involves raising questions that fundamentally touch on the cultural African wherever she may be found on earth and questions about the condition of the African as a victim of conquest and colonization. Hence, it also focuses largely on the necessity of emancipation of the African from manipulation and oppression wherever she may be found, whether this oppression be physical or mental. In this way, it refutes and rejects the claim that being human is being westernized and positively asserts the humanness and historicity of the African. In this way, it seems safe to state that even non-Africans can be involved in the discourse.

However, this project is also self-critical and metatheoretical. Thus, it equally is Africans and people of African descent asking fundamental questions about the existence of the African and her existential situation. In this connection Gordon notes that:

On the one hand, there is the identity question. Who, in a word, are Africana peoples? And then there is the teleological question: For what ought such people be striving? This latter concern often takes a liberatory form: How might the peoplehood of dehumanized people be affirmed? There are also metatheoretical identity and teleological concerns: What is Africana thought and what should be its methodology?[16]

Accordingly, the existence of the black African person, who the Africana is, raises the question of otherness in relation with western life and culture. Gordon notes that for W. E. B. Du Bois, this poses the challenge of developing a humanistic sociology that does not deny the humanity of oppressed peoples, a situation which was prevalent in the American society of his day, and perhaps still is today. Indeed, Du Bois was an African-American, schooled in western culture and lifestyle, yet struggling to make positive meaning of the being of the African within the context of western life and culture.[17] Frantz Fanon is also recognized as having had to suffer this alienation in a western society that ‘seemed’ to have accepted him. Fanon’s existence in western civilization, was in Gordon’s language “as in theodicy, a reminder of injustice in a system that is supposed to have been wholly good.”[18]

In this way, it becomes clear that the central existential concerns of Africana existential thought is essentially the issue of cultural alienation that has fueled racism and intensified questions of race. To this concern, Gordon observes that:

The racial problematic for Africana people is twofold. On the one hand, it is the question of exclusion in the face of an ethos of assimilation. On the other hand, there is the complex confrontation with the fact of such exclusion in a world that portends commitment to rational resolutions of evil.[19]

Accordingly, questions of this nature, having the bent of the racial considerations of the Africana is and has been the pressing preoccupation of Africana existential thinkers. These thinkers give time to so much discourse on Africana liberation and Africana critical race theory.[20]

Notwithstanding, Gordon brings a very significant concern to fore when he notes that there are some thinkers, who, like P. O. Bodunrin in African philosophy, deny the reality of African existential thought, and who therefore claim that existential thinking is purely a European phenomenon addressing the experiences of Europeans. For him, European existential thinking is a response to a human way of being in the world, interpreted in their own cultural context, in the face of certain facts that confront the human person like freedom, anguish, human agency, etc that confront the European. Accordingly, he notes that Africans have, since they are human beings too, always raised questions about such facts of human existence, and their folklores and proverbs reveal these.

More so, he avers that even if considering folklores and proverbs as sources for philosophical analysis, as ethnophilosophy would have it, is too basic, there are thinkers in the Africana movement who are raising these same questions in the in the contemporary world. Hence, it is curious why some people should deny that there is something like Africana existential thinking. Perhaps the much more important question should be why it is the case that the many in the western tradition of thought almost always dismiss philosophical thinking in Africa mainly because there are no written documents of traditional thought in Africa on which such thinking can rest as foundation.

Furthermore, Gordon acknowledges that European, nay, Sartrean existentialism has had a great influence on Africana existential thought. Africana philosophers including William R. Jones, Noel Manganyi, Angela Davis, and Anthony Bogues have been heavily influenced by Sartrean thought. But for Gordon, it would amount to “an error to construct Africana academic existential philosophy as a fundamentally Sartrean or European based phenomenon.”[21] To argue that Africana existential thought is European or Sartrean, essentially, is to assume that the latter is the cause of the former. But, Gordon argues, as we have indicated earlier, that conditions of racial oppression in the forms of the transatlantic slave trade and European colonization of the African continent, already provided raw material for reflection on the existential situation of the Africana. He argues that: “What those events brought about was not only a period of intense suffering for black peoples, but also the hegemonic symbolic order of Western civilization itself, a symbolic order whose “place” for “the black,” if we will, has been fundamentally negative since the Middle Ages and antiquity.”[22] And so, it could not have been that Africana existential thinking began only after Sartre raised questions as to the humanity of all human beings, black and white alike.

Additionally, Gordon makes the claim that there is a distinction between existentialism and philosophies of existence or existential philosophies. In his view, existentialism, as it is popularly known and named is a fundamentally European historical phenomenon. Whereas, philosophies of existence or existential philosophies involves raising questions that border on issues of freedom, anguish, responsibility, liberation, sociality and embodied agency in whatever lived context, and can be found in every human society. From this then, it follows that Africana existential thought, or philosophy is a valid philosophy of existence, since there have been situations within the live experience of the Africana peoples that have led to such deep questionings. This very much follows from the fact that “philosophy of existence is…always a conjunctive affair; it must, in other words, be situated.”[23] More so, there have been reflections on such existential questions in Africana critical theory. Gordon notes in this connection the likes of David Walker who authored Appeal to All Colored Citizens of the World.[24]

Since the most fundamental question in Africana existential thought is the question of the race of the Africana people, their existence as black is the issue. Gordon notes that the discrimination meted out against Africana peoples, and which renders them alienated in a world where all are supposed to be humans, is the racist simply asking for the justification of the Africanas’ continued existence as a colored race. Hence, the issue is not really that they are black, but why they choose to feely continue to live as such. No one, of course, choses to be born into any particular racial background. Everyone, as it were, is existentially thrown into such givens. But, while the Africana is born into the black race, those who do not like her are angry at her choice to continue living as black. The consequence of this choice is evidently, the readiness to bear the responsibility that accrue to it. To illustrate the racist sentiments of so many against the Africana, Africana thinker, Anna Julia Cooper, quotes one Henry Ward Beecher as saying that:

Were the Africans to sink to-morrow [sic], how much poorer would the world be? A little less gold and ivory, a little less coffee, a considerable ripple, perhaps, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans would come together – that is all; not a poem, not an invention, not a piece of art would be missed from the world.[25]

It is against the backdrop of such strong and negative views of Africana existence that Africana existential thought is imperative, and hence, its existence. And that is what it is about: it is a form of humanism that seeks to improve the life situation of the Africana person wherever she may be.

            It is instructive to note that Gordon takes time to identify some notable Africana existential philosophers and their relevant contributions.[26] He however, notes that there is a problem identifying them. This problem, for him, is as a result of there been contributors to Africana existential philosophy who are not Africana existential philosophers, properly so called. He identifies the likes of Jean Paul Sartre, David Theo Goldberg, and Patricia Huntington, in this group.  More so, not all Africana thinkers who have contributed to Africana existential thought are existentialists as such. In this group is Frank Kirkland, Charles W. Mills, Katie Canon, Josiah Young, and Jacquelyn Grant.

            However, among those who may be called Africana existential thinkers proper, there are some whose philosophical thoughts, like Martin Heidegger’s in Western thought, only include the existential as a dimension amongst other dimensions. In this category we have Anna Julia Cooper, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Cornel West, bell hooks, Alain Locke, et al. For Gordon, the list of Africana existential philosophers qua Africana existential philosophers, who have come out to identify with that appellation, include Richard Wright, L. S. Senghor, Frantz Fanon, William Jones, Lucius Outlaw, Naomi Zack, Tsenay Serequeberhan, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Lewis Gordon himself. For these individuals, the enhancement of the Africana person is their topmost priority. They are all humanists.[27]

Conclusion

            Africana existential thought is the central concept contained in Lewis Gordon’s Existentia Africana. Africana existential thought raises fundamental questions about the lived experience of the Africana person. The most fundamental question is the question of race. Why are Africana people, knowing fully well that they are black, living? Why do they make the choice to live? Many in the West would rather have them dead. This is because they are considered as subhuman. As a result, the Africana raises questions about her freedom, her anguish, and her alienation from the community of humanity, amongst other such questions. In the final analysis, we note that Africana existential thought exists as a humanism to tackle these questions and encourage the Africana to take up her existence and give meaning to it. It involves therefore, leading her out of the bondage (slave trade, colonization, western imperialism, and neo-colonization) that the negative views about her resulted into.

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_______________ Existentia Africana. New York: Routledge, 2000.

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[1] Lewis R. Gordon, An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p.1

[2] Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana (New York: Routledge, 2000), p.1

[3] Lewis R. Gordon, An Introduction to Africana Philosophy, p.1

[4] Kwasi Wiredu, “Introduction: African Philosophy in Our Time,” in Kwasi Wiredu (ed.), A Companion to African Philosophy (Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2004), p.1 (pp.1-28)

[5] Bruce B. Janz, Philosophy in an African Place (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009), p.1

[6] Cf. Lee M. Brown, preface to Lee M. Brown, African Philosophy: New and Traditional Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p.v

[7] Lee M. Brown, preface to Lee M. Brown, African Philosophy: New and Traditional Perspectives, pp.v-vii

[8] Cf. P. O. Bodunrin, “The Question of African Philosophy,” Philosophy, vol.56, no.216 (April, 1981), pp.161-163 (pp.161-179)

[9] Barry Hallen, “Indeterminacy, Ethnophilosophy, Linguistic Philosophy, African Philosophy,” Philosophy, vol.70, no.273, (July, 1995), p.382 (pp.377-393)

[10] P. O. Bodunrin, “The Question of African Philosophy,” p.162

[11] G. Salemohamed, “African Philosophy,” Philosophy, vol.58, no.226 (October, 1983), p.536 (pp.535-538)

[12] Polycarp Ikuenobe, “The Parochial Universalist Conception of ‘Philosophy’ and ‘African Philosophy,’” Philosophy East and West, vol.47, no.2 (April, 1997), p.190 (pp.189-210)

[13] Lee M. Brown, preface to Lee M. Brown, African Philosophy: New and Traditional Perspectives, p.vi

[14] Tomaz Carlos Flores Jacques, “Philosophy in Black: African Philosophy as a Negritude,” Sartre Studies International, vol.17, no.1 (2011), p.4 (pp.1-19)

[15] As in the social emancipation moves made by the like of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X, etc, for the sake of the African and African-American, who lived in oppression, and under the manipulation of colonization and western imperialism.

[16] Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana, p.4

[17] Cf. Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana, p.4

[18] Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana, p.5

[19] Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana, p.8

[20] Cf. Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana, p.

[21] Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana, p.9

[22] Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana, pp.9-10

[23] Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana, p.11

[24] Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana, p.10

[25] Anna Julia Cooper,  A Voice from the South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p.228

[26] Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana, pp.15-21

[27] Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana, p.21