Some Preliminary Remarks

What you read in the following pages is an unrefined capturing of my unfinished thoughts on the politics of language, translation and textuality in philosophical circles, unrefined because it is a rough, impure draft, written in an unpolished ‘Queen’s English’ that pays less attention to the syntactical and semantical expectations of the English Language, and that fails to live up to the structural and analytical expectations of a well-written academic philosophical paper. This first clumsy and long sentence of this draft itself raises questions about the politics of language and textuality in philosophy. Who decides and governs – or has the power to govern – the language of philosophy? If language is the house of being, one of the few dictums one can still comfortably derive from Martin Heidegger (Heidegger 1992) considering… [no doubt, we can fill in the blank space], if we can only think and philosophise within the framework of the language or languages that we speak, what harm is done to the philosophical contents of other languages when academic philosophy as we have it is governed and dominated by a few languages? Can the language of thinking philosophy be different from the language of writing philosophy? After thinking happens, are texts the only legitimate way to store up what has been thought and again, in what language should the storing up be done? What are the dangers associated with the power and governance of texts as repositories of philosophical thought? In this short paper, I intend to pay attention to these interrelated questions from the epistemic standpoint of sub-Saharan African philosophy and how it is impacted by the politics of language cum translation and textuality by examining the way they inhibit indigenous ways of philosophising and indigenous philosophical contents. I will focus on two major challenges: (I,) how the English Language impacts thinking and writing in African philosophy; and (ii.) how textuality leads to the denial of the philosophical contents of non-textual repositories of knowledge in African places. My therapeutic response to these challenges will be to explore the theory of communo-cognition or relational cognition in African places, which showcases relationality in thinking, dialogue, remembering, storing, and producing knowledge.

Thinking and the Politics of Language

Language is indispensable to thinking. We think in and through the languages we are familiar with even before speaking or writing. With specific reference to philosophy, we could not construct reality, understand and analyse value systems, and conceptualise knowledge without reference to and use of the language of a particular tradition of philosophy. It is impossible for me to think, dream, hallucinate, soliloquise, speak, write, memorise and engage in a dialogue in a language I do not know such as Latin, Greek, German, Shona, Chinese, Amharic or Somalian. But I could relatively think about the contents of German, Chinese or Greek philosophies only after those who think in those languages have presented their thoughts in textual and non-textual forms and their presentations are translated into languages in which I can think in. This is often not very successful. I have read a lot of Heidegger and Habermas’ works in the last decade – well, translations of their works – and it is a real struggle to make sense of ideas that were originally thought through in languages you are unfamiliar with. And obviously, a lot happens between the thinking about philosophical problems in a particular language, the presentation of that thought in written, oral or symbolic forms, to the translation of that presentation into other languages. One such problem is the methodological problem of translation which W. V. O. Quine analysed as the principle of the indeterminacy of translation (Quine 1960) which guarantees some form of loss of meaning anytime translation is done. But even more problematic I believe, is the politics of translation itself. For example, if you read Quine’s chapter on translation and meaning in his book, Word and Object (1960), you can easily tell how the English language is expected to syntactically and semantically govern the translation process of the ‘native’ language to the English language. The worry for Quine as it is for many philosophers in Europe and America, is not so much the understanding of the language of the other but much more about how the structure of native languages may make it frustrating and challenging for the English translator. It is about how to make the native language more English in its contents and structure. How do we, for example, find the word ‘Jesus’ in a native language and if we cannot find it, how do we create one that is appropriate? The politics of language and translation explain the logic of binaries in such contexts between English language and native language and between formal language and vernacular language.

The politics of language and translation has effectively defined the crisis of identity of African philosophy since its postcolonial, academic history (since about the 1950s). African philosophers are expected by the gatekeepers of academic philosophy not only to (i.) speak and write philosophy in the language of their colonizers (primarily English and French) but to also (ii.) think philosophy in these languages. Concerning the first, a deceptive form of linguistic governmentality, African philosophers in the postcolony mostly speak and write African philosophy in English and in French as I am right now doing. There are several legitimate reasons as well as disturbing reasons for this. I am a Nigerian, from the Benin Kingdom, the land of the bronze sculptures scattered all over museums in Europe [and I will deliberately avoid digressing into the multilayered issues of reparation, decolonisation, resistance, objectification and so on associated with the be-ing of the bronze sculptures in Europe]. In the Benin Kingdom, there are three major languages: the Edo language spoken largely by people in the ancient city of the Kingdom (known today as Benin City), the Esan language developed and spoken by people in the Sothern part of the Kingdom since the 1400s and with huge similarities with the Edo language, and the Etsako language spoken by people in the eastern part of the kingdom and with huge dissimilarities from the Edo language. As an Esan person, I speak, hear and write the Edo language and Esan language. But as someone born into the postcolony, I am expected to hear, speak and write fluently the English language in formal settings such as at work and in writing, which I do – or try to do. In the Nigerian postcolonial context, as it is in many sub-Saharan African places, my language (Esan) would be referred to as the vernacular language spoken by ordinary unpolished, uneducated people, while the English language would be seen as the language spoken by educated, professional people. An interesting bridge in this binary is the Nigerian lingua franca, the Pidgin English – ‘Pidgin’ being yet another problematic word – that serves as a form of linguistic resistance in the postcolony in the way it blends words from different languages in Nigeria into the English language and creates new words effortlessly, humorously and collectively. There is more to be said about Nigerian Pidgin English in this context but perhaps, in a more robust version of this paper. At the moment, let us return to why speaking and writing philosophy in the formal English language is desired in African philosophy. As an African philosopher whose voice and views have been suppressed, disregarded and misinterpreted for a long time, I want my voice to be heard globally. In the dominant episteme of academia, only a few languages can effectively be useful in achieving this. Using Esan language to write will disadvantage me in at least two ways: drastically minimise my audience and expose my writing and speech to the problems associated with translation, if eventually a translation is done. So, it does seem that I am part of a linguistic governmentality and I am wilfully deploring my agency to use the English language as the medium of communicating the philosophical contents of African traditions. But it is not this simple since I really do not have a choice but to deplore my agency this way. The Kenyan literary scholar and philosopher, Ngugi wa Thiong’o life and history is a case in mind here. As one who wrote in both the Kenyan Gikuyu language and English language, and who got severely punished for resisting the English language, an examination of his lived experiences showcases the difficulties and dire consequences of not deploring one’s linguistic agency in this particular way (c.f. wa Thiong’o 1987).  

A more problematic level of the politics of language and translation is the second one: thinking in the colonizer’s language. When writing about indigenous philosophical concepts of personhood, beauty, knowledge, mind, moral permissibility, gender, and other philosophical issues, I think in my local language Esan, as well as in other languages I am familiar with such as Yoruba and Igbo. After the thought process, I then find ways to express myself in spoken and written English what I have thought about as the authentic indigenous perspectives on these philosophical themes and issues. This is quite akin to what wa Thiong’o did with Devil on the Cross (1987) – well, he did it better. He began by thinking in Gikuyu, then writing in Gikuyu, and then translating what he wrote himself into English in such a careful manner that the authenticity of his thought was largely preserved. For example, if I were to write about the Edo understanding of evening as the period of time at the end of the day, I would think very carefully about what the Edo word for ‘evening’ means, the word ‘akota’ I would realise that a direct translation of akota to evening would lead to a fundamental loss of meaning because while akota does refer to evening, it means much more than evening. It literally means ‘let’s talk together’ (ako meaning together and ta meaning talk). It carries with it the idea that people in the community have gone for their daily business and have returned in the evening to have conversations and dialogues about all sorts of topics and issues. And in earnest, this is what happens in communities in many parts of Africa; evenings are for coming together for polemics, discussions, conversations, humorous arguments and so on. Thus, an African philosopher who think s solely in the colonizers language has a lot to loose in terms of the philosophical contents of what that thought produces.  

Therefore, it is difficult but not impossible to present thinking done in one language in written or oral forms in another language. What is really problematic is that many Africans claiming to do African philosophy are thinking African philosophy in purely European languages and non-Africans doing African philosophy are not paying much-needed attention to language as the vehicle of thought. Thinking is a mental cognitive process and I am in no way claiming to be a mind reader. But that cognitive process that trivialises te African languages leads to action and the action speaks for itself in at least two ways with reference to African philosophy: mimicking European philosophy categories and debunking indigenous forms of thinking as not real philosophy but ethnophilosophy. There is a lot of scholarship in African philosophy today (particularly since the 1960s and 1970s) that spends so much time to think and to write about how African philosophy is like European philosophy, and how we can find the same categories in European philosophy in African philosophy. To be sure, this is not in itself bad – comparative philosophy often finds its roots in the search for similarities and differences in thought and categories of thought. But this way of thinking philosophically in terms of the categories of another can stifle African philosophical thought such that it fails to look within, to see and explore the inner beauty of the self, to discover, explore, analyse, construct and reconstruct authentically indigenous categories. There is also the danger of reducing the self to the expectations of the other, to think, for example, epistemologically only in the Cartesian sense of the subject and with the categories of the first, second, third and fourth conditions (JTBX). On the extreme side of the glaring evidence of thinking African philosophy only in terms of European languages and categories, are those African philosophers who completely reject any claim to indigenous African philosophy and hold that philosophy is a Greek, European, Western discipline and Africans who do it must do it as such – it is European philosophy in the service of Africa (e.g., what does John Rawls’ theory of justice contribute to understanding injustice in Africa). This school of thought within African philosophy is often called the professional school and they treat any reference to indigenous African philosophy as merely ethnophilosophy, cultural studies or at best a reference to African thought. But I always worry why such ones are quick to use ‘thought’ but very hesitant to use ‘philosophy’ in describing African philosophy. What is the difference between thinking and philosophising? Isn’t the latter subsumed in the former? Isn’t the latter a specifically methodological way of doing the former?

Two interrelated ways of dealing with the challenges of the politics of language in African philosophy that I have tried to explicate above are those suggested by Ngugi wa Thiong’o in Decolonising the Mind (1986) and by the Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu in one of his most important essays, “Conceptual Decolonization as an Imperative In Contemporary African Philosophy: Some Personal Reflections” (2002). For wa Thiong’o, one of the effective means of continuous colonisation in Africa is the dissociation of a people from their language. This is often done in a way that the language becomes useable only in informal settings (e.g., at home, in the market, etc.) but never in formal settings such as at school or at work. I recall my dad telling me how much you get punished in secondary school if you spoke your local language in the 1950sff – you were flogged publicly and sent home on suspension for two weeks. Thus, this dissociation results in alienation from the raw materials one could properly think in, with and about. This is precisely why wa Thiong’o advocates for the decolonisation of the mind which does away with the alienating effects of colonisation and he sees the mastery of one’s own language as a fundamental key in doing this. Wiredu similarly asks for caution in using English or French concepts and categories. While there is nothing wrong in doing this, care must be taken that the concepts and categories are decolonised in ways that ensure there is no loss of meaning in using them to present African philosophical thought.

Questioning Textuality as the Repository of Thought

And speaking about presenting and preserving thought, perhaps it is crucial to say a few things about the problem of textuality in the presentation and representation of African philosophical thought. Texts are important repositories of thought. In fact, it is a central defining feature of a philosophical tradition in European philosophy (Scharfstein 1998). The idea is that you must think, speak and then write. Of course, this raises several questions in relation to the speech-writing debate in logocentrism that I will try to avoid at this time.  But the prioritisation of texts as repositories of thought has negatively impacted the flourishing of African philosophy. The denial of, and the defence of, the existence of African philosophy preoccupied academic discourses on African philosophy in the first quarter of the second half of the 20th century (Masolo 1994; Bodunrin 1981). In this heated and protracted debate about the existence of African philosophy, African philosophers of the professional school of thought defended the idea that African philosophy did not exist until texts were produced mainly in the colonizers’ languages and categories and until there were individual authors identified as African philosophers. One of the cardinal proponents of professional African philosophy, Paulin Hountondji writes,  

By ‘African philosophy’ I mean a set of texts, specifically, the set of texts written by Africans and described as philosophical by their authors themselves… African philosophy is a body of literature whose existence is undeniable, a bibliography which has grown constantly over the last thirty years or so.” (Hountondji 1983, p.20).  

This centring of text in contemporary academic African philosophy in line with the expectations of European philosophy has been uncritically sustained in academic African philosophy to date to the extent that the contemporary textual history of African philosophy has been described as ‘forward looking’ while any engagement with non-textual repositories of philosophical knowledge in Africa prior to this textual age is regarded as ‘backward looking’ (Kwame 2017). But interestingly, in this seeming embrace and centring of text and the decentring, exclusion and marginalisation of non-textual forms in African philosophy, the texts produced by individual African philosophers in this ‘age’ of textual academic African philosophy are saturated and profusely permeated with references to the non-textual oral and symbolic components of a more enduring African philosophical tradition consisting of philosophical thoughts stored up in African languages, folklores, proverbs, storytelling, adages, statues, artefacts, textile materials, symbols and the like. When we as African philosophers write in texts about the concept of the mind, the idea of personhood, the understanding of reality, the idea of community, the critique of doubt, the notion of virtue, and other issues and problems in philosophy, we draw heavily on the non-textual repositories of thoughts in African places and we deliberately or non-deliberately acknowledge the collaboration with collectives and communities of selves in thinking and knowledge production and this challenges the idea of individual authorship. When we make such claims in our texts about the Akan concept of truth, the Yoruba concept of virtue, the Shona concept of knowledge, the Zulu notion of person, and so on, we are in effect affirming the power of collective agency in producing philosophical knowledge and rethinking the idea of individual authorship.  

So, the is a clear danger in the centring of texts and the marginalisation of non-texts in African philosophy for at least four reasons: the danger of exclusion, the danger of misrecognition and non-recognition of knowledge producers; the danger of dehumanising knowledge production, and the poverty of philosophical knowledge. Concerning the first, exclusion and marginalisation always happen in all cases of accents and centring. For example, the core problem of Eurocentrism, Asiancentrism and Afrocentrism in philosophy is the margins of philosophy they create. Whether we are vehemently defending the Greek origin of philosophy as in Eurocentrism or the Egyptian origin of philosophy as in Afrocentrism, we create the problem of ignoring the global traditions of philosophy. In the context of African philosophy, the centring of texts immediately marginalises and excludes other repositories of philosophical thought, or at the very least, fails to give other repositories the acknowledgement due to them. It trivialises the diversity in the ways humans think, produce, store and transmit knowledge and in an age of legitimate emphasis on equality, equity, diversity and inclusion, this produces different levels of epistemic injustices. Concerning the second, the focus solely on texts and their individual authors results in the non-recognition or misrecognition of other non-individual producers of knowledge, the collective self which is central in African philosophical traditions, further perpetuating the coloniality of knowledge. Concerning the third, the lack of acknowledgement of other human modes of producing, storing and transmitting knowledge beyond text dehumanises knowledge production systems because it ignores the diverse, rich and inclusive ways in which humans have done so in human history. The culmination of these three dangers is the poverty of knowledge. If in doing African philosophy we focus our attention solely on textuality and individual authorship, we are bound to de-historicise the field of inquiry leading to unprecedented poverty of philosophical knowledge emerging from African places. This invariably reinforces epistemic colonisation as African philosophy becomes an addendum in the history of European philosophy that only came to light under the academic systems and structures of Europe and America.

Thinking Together: the Idea of Relational Cognition

I would like to conclude by drawing attention to a methodological and epistemological experience in sub-Saharan African places that can be aptly termed relational cognition, or as I have coined it elsewhere, communo-cognition (Imafidon 2023),  that I believe is crucial in dealing with the various challenges that African philosophy face due to the politics of language, the problem of translation, and the limits of texts and individual authorship. Relational cognition holds that the process of cognising in African traditions and the related cognitive features such as thinking, learning and remembering are essentially a communitycentred process, collectively achieved by group agency and governed by the community and its structures. This is precisely why knowledge is seen as shared, collective knowledge since the process of accessing, acquiring and remembering such knowledge is done collectively and determined by institutions and ontologies constructed and controlled by the community. In sub-Saharan African places, there is no doubt that there are individual minds cooperating, codepending and interacting together to grasp realities and engage in collective thought processes – recalling the concept of akota in Edo language. What is cognised and the knowledge produced are collectively attained and passed down from generation to generation through orality, symbolism and art, more than they are through writing. Consider, for example how a strange phenomenon might be cognised in a village square meeting in an African community through the art of deliberation, a well-crafted art of reciprocal conversation, compromise, non-competitive and deindividualised forms of deliberation. In such a scenario, community members will explore matters together, perceive together, think together, reason together, sense together, bringing in different individual angles based on individual expertise and understanding, and then come to a decision or knowledge claim about the phenomena by agreement and compromise that incorporates both majority and minority viewpoints Thus, no single individual member can claim to have cognised alone or independently, thereby claiming individual ownership or authorship. Rather, the group has collaborated and collectively engaged in the cognitive process, resulting in a collective rather than an individualistic understanding of a given situation. Here, there is a co-dependency process of knowledge production, where each individual mind is in a web of relationships with other minds, cooperating to produce the best body of knowledge possible, one that is mutually binding on all parties. This is crucial to keep in mind in doing African philosophy, the realisation that to authentically do African philosophy is to think together with a transgenerational collective rather than thinking solitarily in the Cartesian sense. Our thinking about African philosophy must always include thinking about and thinking with the group and all its multilayered features such as language, ancestry, and all its oral, symbolic and textual elements. Thinking and writing African philosophy cannot be effectively done from a detached, disinterested and subjective way. It must be done concretely, intersubjectively and collectively.

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