Keynote: Thinking in Place and With Place

Bruce Janz

My work on place has been collected in two different and largely separate research projects. The first is familiar to audiences in African and cultural philosophy and is what I call “philosophy-in-place”. It is simply the attempt to answer the question “What is it to do philosophy in this (African) place?”, and moves the discussion about the identity of philosophy from finding necessary and sufficient conditions of Africanity and of philosophicality, to the idea that philosophical concepts and questions emerge from the lived experience of people, and must be understood as a form of striving to create a conceptual, affective, and lived future. The second is familiar to geographers, architects, social scientists, and others, and focuses on the wide range of meanings and uses we have for concepts of place and space and related terms. Place and space, as concepts, do not do the same kind of work in different disciplinary or intellectual places (sometimes even in the same discipline), and understanding the differences helps to see why both place and space have seen such a strong renaissance in many disciplines in the past couple of decades. 

In this talk, I bring these two programs of research on place and space together to think about how philosophy-in-place depends on a clear sense of what we mean and intend to accomplish when we talk about place. The goal will be to outline some place-based conceptual approaches that can enrich the discussion of cultural philosophy in general and African philosophy in particular.

African philosophies have been significantly shaped by publishing houses and journals that have played crucial roles in establishing and advancing discourse within this field. Names and traditions are canonical and sometimes controversial. This panel will invite members of editorial teams from influential publishing institutions to share insights into their respective histories and the pivotal part they have played in constituting African philosophy as a discourse. Through engaging conversations, we aim to show the contributions of these publishing platforms in providing a space for critical thought, creative expression, and intellectual exchange.

Pedagogical approaches to African philosophies deserve a thorough examination, particularly within African academic institutions: To what extent are African thinkers and their works represented in the curricula of philosophy departments? Which resources and languages are essentially consulted and represented? Furthermore, what are the implications and challenges of teaching African philosophies in non-African academies ? Are these philosophies integrated into other academic disciplines than philosophy? What interdisciplinary issues arise in such contexts? To gain a comprehensive understanding of these interrogations, the workshop will bring together a range of perspectives from various linguistic and geographic regions. These diverse viewpoints will offer valuable insights and assessments, promoting a dialogue on the teaching and mediation of African philosophies in contemporary academia.

The role of institutions is significant when examining the connections and fragmentation of African philosophies, both from a historical and topological perspectives. Nonetheless, an institutional history of African philosophy still remains to be written and further investigated. The panel is divided into two parts. The first session puts into focus philosophical societies. These are of particular interest as they represent autonomous communities that contribute to the diverse landscape of African philosophical discourse. The experts of different associations will give insights in the historical making of their particular institution and the contemporary challenges of the particular institution and its regional context. By examining these institutional dynamics, we can gain valuable insights into the broader context and orders of knowledge in which African philosophies have evolved and flourished. 

The second part of the section focuses on the ambivalent relationship between religious institutions and philosophical practice in Africa. With examples from three different contexts, the historical and contemporary place of the Catholic Church as a site of African philosophy will be discussed. By highlighting the institutional role, the session aims at contributing to the continuous debate on religion and philosophy from a refreshing angle.

Diasporic contexts raise important questions on the nature of African philosophies and its representations, teaching, and dissemination. This panel offers an encounter of manifestations of African philosophies away from the continent, with a special focus on Brazil and Europe. Significant, on the one hand, are structural power asymmetries that exert influence regarding the respective places and its people. Among these are e.g. material divides rooted in slavery and colonialism that go back to the plantation and the rise of capitalism, identity and language questions and the intersecting regimes of discrimination, violence and exclusion. On the other hand, there are different histories and contexts of (forced) displacement and mobility that determine on how African places are conceived in the respective philosophies. These considerations raise several questions: Are diasporic forms of African philosophies distinct from those of the continent – and if yes, how? From which sources do these draw inspiration and why? What role does Blackness as a categorical marker play in the respective discourses? Which concepts and broader programmatic currents or schools of thought have gained influence in different places (Pan-Africanism, Négritude, Africana philosophy, Afrofuturism, Amefricanidade, etc.)? How do African Philosophy and African Studies intersect in the respective settings? By engaging with these questions, the panel adds layers of complexity to African philosophizing. It takes various diasporic situations into account and by doing so it complicates the panorama of philosophizing in a globalized world.

The core task of the Center for Advanced Studies “Philosophizing in a Globalized World – Historical and Systematic Perspectives” is to create a digital, openly accessible encyclopaedia of philosophical practices and “works” in various languages, especially non-European languages. Contrary to common and prevailing views within the discipline (e.g. that philosophy has its origins in Europe alone and is therefore essentially a European tradition), the center takes a polylogical-global approach to the concept of philosophy and the order of knowledge in philosophy. In the first four years, we will focus primarily on philosophical currents in Africa and Latin America. The center works together with international fellows on the challenges facing philosophy as a discipline today. We would like to initiate a discussion for the conception and implementation of the research project, informed by the findings of the international workshop “Places of African Philosophies”.