How could Muntu, that is the human being in the African condition, initiate a practice of philosophy that assumes and testifies to the singularity of the African situation today and assert himself as subject and object of his parole? Under which conditions can his practice of philosophy be a praxis of liberation? These are the fundamental and existential questions at the heart of 'Muntu In Crisis.'

Franciscan priest Placide Tempels’s 1946 book, Bantu Philosophy, introduced a new discourse about African thought and beliefs, questioning the universality of Western philosophy and establishing paradigms that continue to dominate discussion of the relationships between Africa and the West today. More than 75 years after the publication of this influential text, this volume brings together a wide range of contributors to examine the legacy and impact of Tempels’s work for the study of African philosophy and religion. Reflecting on whether Bantu Philosophy reinforces conflict or convergence between Africa and the West, and its reception within Africa, scholars from both African and Western institutions provide new perspectives on both Tempels’s ideas and ongoing debates in African philosophy and religion.

In October 2016, thirty intellectuals and artists from Africa, its diasporas, and beyond gathered together in Dakar and Saint-Louis, Senegal, to reflect on the present and future of Africa in the midst of transformations that are sweeping through the contemporary world. The aim was to take stock of the renewal of Afro-diasporic critical thought and to discuss the new perspectives emerging from the ongoing projects constructing political, cultural, and social imaginaries for and from the African continent. This book brings together and makes available to the English-speaking world the material presented at the 2016 Ateliers de la pensée – Workshops of Thought – in Dakar. The authors deal with a wide range of issues, including decolonization, the development of social utopias, and the pursuit of new forms of political, economic, and social production on the African continent. Running throughout is a constant concern to interrogate the categories and frames of meaning that have served to characterize the dynamics of the African continent and a shared desire to produce new frames of intelligibility through which to see Africa’s present realities and its future. The contributions also attest to the view that there is no African question that is not also a global question, and that the Africanization of the global question will be a decisive feature of the twenty-first century. To Write the Africa World and its companion volume The Politics of Time will be indispensable for anyone interested in Africa – its past, present, and future – and in the new forms of critical thought emerging from Africa and the Global South.

The Crisis, founded by W.E.B. Du Bois as the official publication of the NAACP, is a journal of civil rights, history, politics, and culture and seeks to educate and challenge its readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color. For nearly 100 years, The Crisis has been the magazine of opinion and thought leaders, decision makers, peacemakers and justice seekers. It has chronicled, informed, educated, entertained and, in many instances, set the economic, political and social agenda for our nation and its multi-ethnic citizens.

Derrida and Africa takes up Jacques Derrida as a figure of thought in relation to Africa, with a focus on Derrida’s writings specifically on Africa, which were influenced in part by his childhood in El Biar. From chapters that take up Derrida as Mother to contemplations on how to situate Derrida in relation to other African philosophers, from essays that connect deconstruction and diaspora to a chapter that engages the ways in which Derrida—especially in a text such as Monolingualism of the Other: or, the Prosthesis of Origin—is haunted by place to a chapter that locates Derrida firmly in postapartheid South Africa, Derrida in/and Africa is the insistent line of inquiry. Edited by Grant Farred, this collection asks: What is Derrida to Africa?, What is Africa to Derrida?, and What is this specter called Africa that haunts Derrida?

In an age of accelerating ecological crises, global inequalities and democratic fragility, it has become crucial to achieve renewed articulations of human commonality. With anchorage in critical theory as well as world literary studies, this volume approaches literature - and modes of literary thinking - as a key resource for such a task. "Universality" is understood here not as an established "universalism", but as a horizon towards which intellectual inquiry and literary practices orient themselves. In the field of world literature, there is by now a wide repertoire of epistemological resources through which claims to universality can be both questioned and reconfigured. If, at one end of the spectrum, world literature confronts us with the spectre of homogenisation and the commodification of difference under a regime of global capitalism, at another end renewed forms of philological, anthropological and ecological attentiveness to the particulars of languages and texts within the crucible of connected histories allow for defamiliarising perspectives both on received historical narratives and aesthetic practices. Vernacularity emerges here as a central point of reference for constructing the universal from within the particular, the idiomatic, and the experiences of social subordination or complicity.

How could Muntu, that is the human being in the African condition, initiate a practice of philosophy that assumes and testifies to the singularity of the African situation today and assert himself as subject and object of his parole? Under which conditions can his practice of philosophy be a praxis of liberation? These are the fundamental and existential questions at the heart of 'Muntu In Crisis.'

In Decolonizing the Social Sciences and the Humanities Bernd Reiter contributes to the ongoing efforts to decolonize the social sciences and humanities, by arguing that true decolonization implies a liberation from the elite culture that Western civilization has perpetually promoted. Reiter brings together lessons learned from field research on a Colombian indigenous society, a maroon society, also in Colombia, from Afro-Brazilian religion, from Spanish Anarchism, and from German Council democracy, and from analyzing non-Western ontologies and epistemologies in general. He claims that once these lessons are absorbed, it becomes clear that Western civilization has advanced individualization and elitism. The chapters present the case that human beings are able to rule themselves, and have done so for some 300,000 years, before the Neolithic Revolution. Self-rule and rule by councils is our default option once we rid ourselves of leaders and rulers. Reiter concludes by considering the massive manipulations and the heinous divisions that political elitism, dressed in the form of representative democracy, has brought us, and implores us to seek true freedom and democracy by liberating ourselves from political elites and taking on political responsibilities. Decolonizing the Social Sciences and the Humanities is written for students, scholars, and social justice activists across cultural anthropology, sociology, geography, Latin American Studies, Africana Studies, and political science.

The first comprehensive examination of the Catholic Church’s role in the genocide against the Tutsi and its attempts at reconciliation From April to July 1994, more than a million people were killed during the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Tutsi men, women, and children were slaughtered by Hutu extremists in churches and school buildings, and their lifeless bodies were left rotting in these sacred places under the deep silence of church authorities. Pope Francis’s apology more than twenty years later presents the opportunity to reimagine the essence of the Church, the missionary enterprise, theology in its multiple dimensions, the purification of memory, and the place of human dignity in the Catholic faith. Reinventing Theology in Post-Genocide Rwanda critically examines the Church’s responsibility in Rwanda’s tragic history and opens the dialogue to construct a new theology. Contributors to this volume offer moving personal testimonies of their journeys to reconciling the evil that has marred the Church’s image: bystanders’ indifference to the suffering, despite their claim as members of the Church. The first volume of its kind, Reinventing Theology in Post-Genocide Rwanda is a necessary step toward the Rwandan Catholic Church and humanity’s restoration of fundamental peace and lasting reconciliation. Catholic clergy, lay people, and human rights advocates will benefit from this examination of ecclesial moral failure and subsequent reconciliatory efforts.

"A disciplinary map for understanding African Catholicism today by engaging some of the most pressing and pertinent issues, topics, and conversations in diverse fields of studies in African Catholicism"--