Curriculum Transformation, Post-Comparative Philosophy, and Philosophizing in Sesotho

A first strand of the conversation concerns the workshop “Futures of Philosophizing: On the Transformation of the Philosophy Curriculum” that Posholi co-organized during her fellowship. The workshop is conceived on several levels: it assembles examples from around the world of how philosophy departments have sought to dewesternize, diversify, or decolonize their curricula; it addresses, at the level of principled theoretical debate, what such demands mean; and it draws on the expertise of curriculum scholars concerning the principles by which curricular change can be carried out. Underlying these aims is a structural question: since disciplines constitute themselves through canons — through bodies of knowledge deemed fundamental — what does the call for curricular transformation imply for what counts as fundamental, and how can such change be undertaken systematically rather than piecemeal?

Asked whether the protests have in fact produced curricular change in South Africa, Posholi offers a differentiated assessment. The year 2025 marked a decade since the student movement, an anniversary accompanied by a wave of scholarship and public reflection. Change has certainly occurred, she notes, but its depth varies considerably across universities, disciplines, and individual academics. She draws particular attention to the diagnosis advanced by Jonathan Jansen and Cyrill Walters in “The Decolonization of Knowledge” (2022): although the protests were initially met with force, universities proved remarkably capable of absorbing the call for decolonization, which soon became a normalized feature of institutional life. Precisely this institutionalization, Jansen and Walters argue, may have tamed what was conceived as a radical demand. Implementation, moreover, has been heterogeneous: understandings of decolonization ranged from diversifying reading lists to pedagogical changes in classroom dynamics, while consistent examples of a systematic approach remain scarce — and philosophy departments, Posholi observes, have hardly been examined in this connection at all.

A second strand concerns the methodology of intercultural philosophy. In her article “On the Idea of Post-Comparative Philosophy”, Posholi engages an approach that turns away from evaluative comparison between traditions — the judgment, for instance, that one tradition’s metaphysics is superior to another’s — and proposes instead a fusion-oriented mode of philosophizing, in which the philosopher borrows freely from whatever traditions are accessible in order to address a given philosophical question. She regards this as an attractive ideal, yet raises a concern informed by the critique of Eurocentrism: philosophical traditions have received unequal degrees, and unequal kinds, of academic attention. The feasibility of the post-comparative method therefore presupposes robust and rich philosophical resources on all sides.

Her current fellowship project responds directly to this need for richer resources by establishing a research focus on “Philosophizing in Sesotho”. Sesotho, Posholi’s first language, has played no role in her philosophical training; it figured in her formal education only as a school subject and, in part, as a medium of instruction in primary school, while her philosophical formation took place entirely in English. Her project is accordingly foundational in character: not yet to do philosophy in Sesotho, but to identify what in the language and its culture might be philosophically interesting — material for philosophizing. Although orality is central to African traditions, she concentrates on textual sources for practical reasons of documentation and shareability: proverbs (maele), riddles (lilotho), novels written in Sesotho or engaging Sesotho culture, and the praise poetry (lithoko) composed for Basotho kings.