Hanétha Vété-Congolo-Leibnitz

The Status of Oral Traditions in the History of Philosophy: Methodological Considerations

7.-9. September 2023, Universität Hildesheim

Hanétha Vété-Congolo-Leibnitz

Unearthing Philosophy Through African and Caribbean Philosophy:

Methodological Considerations

In this paper, I will make a few propositions as to how to read out of Caribbean orality, fundamental principles pointing out to the thought processes and philosophical standing, vision and positioning vis-à-vis existential notions such as humanness, the human person, life, and death. This will allow for a discussion on both content, value, and methodology.

Hanétha Vété-Congolo-Leibnitz is "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow" Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the Bowdoin College. She holds a doctorate in general and comparative literature from the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, and teaches French cultures, oralities and literatures from sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. Hanétha’s research and teaching interests include Black Studies, Caribbean and African Ideas, Caribbean and African Orature, Caribbean and African Philosophy, Caribbean and West and Central African Literature, Cross-Cultural Theories, Cross-Cultural Feminist and Africana Womanist Theories, Francophone Women’s Literature from West Africa, Central Africa and the Caribbean, French colonization and imperialism, French and Francophone Comparative Literature, Literature and philosophy, Literary Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Psychoanalytic approach to literature. Her publications include Discours AntillaisE: Moralisation blanche, Fanm visyèz et Femmisme aux Antilles (2023, forthcoming), "Suzanne Césaire, Martinique, and Caribbean Surrealism and Psychoanalysis” (in Bloomsbury Handbook of Literature and Psychoanalysis 2022), Penser le sujet femme noire francophone (2021, co-edited with Agnès Berthelot-Raffard), L’interoralité caribéenne: le mot conté de l’identité (2016), The Caribbean Oral Tradition: Literature, Performance, and Practice (2016).