The Colonization of Philosophy
Note: Continuing the Miami Institute’s forum on philosophy, Lewis R. Gordon argues that the “colonization of philosophy has at least five forms: (1) hegemonic misrepresentations of racial, engendered, and ethnic origins of its history, (2) coloniality of its norms, (3) market commodification, (4) disciplinary decadence, and (5) solipsism.”
There is discrimination and bias against the Global Majority (if, by this, is meant BIPOC and communities of women, trans, and queer peoples across them) in the discipline of professional philosophy—for the most part still known as among the least diverse with regard to race and gender—by virtue of the professional academy doing so in general. This is a function of the concept of the “university,” which was inherited and promoted in various guises along with the growth of Euromodern colonialism. This historical development adapted the 11th century institution from Bologna and honed it for the rationalization and promotion of Euromodern hegemony and its philosophical anthropology of race and racism.
There were other models of learning and researching (continued learning) going back several millennia. Their logic, organically connected to the value systems of their societies, was often pluralistic because of polytheism in theonaturalistic cases and relational humility in those in which gods and supernaturalism were not prevalent.
For the most part, today’s hegemonic professional philosophy goes against the grain of one of the most enduring allegories in the history of philosophy—namely, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in his Republic (514a–520a). Instead of aiming to go outside and embracing relationships across humanity and reality, the prevailing norm is to walk up to the entrance of the cave and move the biggest boulder in front so no one can exit. Achieving that, many professional philosophers return to the shadows and announce: “Nothing to see beyond here.”
The allegory I have offered through the Allegory of the Cave brings to the fore a basic fact about contemporary professional philosophy. Instead of concern with reality, truth, freedom, and politics (important because the activities of persuading others to exit the cave is palpably political), the prevailing norm is professional success. The result is the colonization of philosophy, for the most part, away from what historically animated philosophical reflection.
The colonization of philosophy has at least five forms: (1) hegemonic misrepresentations of racial, engendered, and ethnic origins of its history, (2) coloniality of its norms, (3) market commodification, (4) disciplinary decadence, and (5) solipsism. I elaborate this critique in my writings, including the books: Disciplinary Decadence (2006) and Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (2021).
Hegemonic history presumes that philosophy began in 5th century BCE Athens and city-states of Ionia. Added to this is the presumption that the embodiments of such thought were white and male. Ignored is the fact that those ancients referred to contemporaries elsewhere and others more ancient than them in the history of philosophical thought. Those other ancients, some of whose writings survived the Christian hordes of destruction of their libraries, learning institutions, and more from the rise of “Christendom,” offer a history of philosophical ideas of more than 4,000 years instead of the misrepresenting and hegemonic 2,500. The older writings include Antef, Ani, Imhotep, Lady Presehet, and more from East Africa, and there are others from Asia, whose influence continue in philosophical argumentation that challenge racist philosophical orthodoxies. As a form of pedagogical inoculation, I often place the “Inscription of Antef” (12th Dynasty, Kmt/Ancient Egypt, 1991–1782 BCE) on the first page of my syllabi so my students have the experience of discussing the ideas on philosophy from an ancient African philosopher. How can it be true that philosophy began 2,500 years ago in Europe when they’ve analyzed writing from nearly 4,000 years ago from someone in East Africa?
The coloniality of philosophical norms are manifold. They range from the presupposition of ontology as the basis of philosophy, a variety of epistemologies and philosophical anthropologies that center self-interested individuals, and metaphysical assumptions of self-sustained substance and normative presuppositions of agonal or warlike approaches to the production of knowledge. Some of these are prevalent in certain traditions (such as analytical philosophy) more than others (ranging from pragmatism to hermeneutics to existentialism, phenomenology, and philosophies of the global south). Others suffer from Eurocentrism (especially among Eurocontinental philosophical textualists). Alternative approaches are more communicative, social/communal, and marked by humility in relation to evidence.
The coloniality of Euromodern professional philosophical norms are linked also to its market commodification, which involves entombing philosophical inquiry into the demands of market forces. This includes views of informational capital, such as the error of confusing philosophical work as exclusively written activity. Most philosophy, as is most thinking, is never written. Published or documented work are but a fragment. Although an important element, reductionism would lead to the fallacy of thinking that only those who have written down their philosophical ideas are those who have actually produced philosophical thought.
Commodification is part of a confluence of practices in Euromodernity in which secularized Christianity and Capitalism demanded expression in hegemonic agents in the form of a philosophical anthropology of who counts or matters and those who don’t. The philosophical anthropology of racism also has a specific normative agent of knowledge. In today’s parlance, it is the presupposition of how one should “appear” as a legitimate agent of knowledge—in this case, a philosopher. The marketability of that agent affects who and what are actually heard, read, or studied.
Turning to the what and the how, the colonization of philosophy takes the form of disciplinary decadence, in which the methodologies of various subfields are fetishized with the retroactive effect of the subfields and, ultimately, the discipline becoming the same. Such a phenomenon leads to the discipline turning away from reality and becoming internally and self-referentially normative. This is the allegory about the undermining of the allegory of the cave. I’ve argued in my writings for a teleological suspension of philosophy, where philosophy is willing to go beyond itself for the sake of truth, reality, freedom, and the decolonization of normative life. This requires a commitment to communicative practices through which philosophy functions more like a student or learner among others (including other disciplines) through which its relationship becomes generative of other, constructive relationships.
This last point about teleological suspension addresses the colonial problem of solipsism, where the discipline or subject imagines itself as the world beyond which all is lost.
All this amounts to the importance of working for a transformation in which there is no longer a hegemonic philosophical subject but, instead, the cultivation of relationships through which philosophy, as a discipline among others, leads to the philosopher as a communicative agent among others. This means that the philosopher, as relational, is not a fixed, epistemologically closed subject or agent. It also means that her, his, or their appearance is also not fixed and could thus be manifested and openly produced. Put differently, among the results would be living philosophers building living philosophies.
There are networks devoted to that end today. Among them is the Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA), whose motto of “shifting the geography of reason” takes these issues head on through not only subjects of inquiry but also practices of meeting. It is an organization in which philosophers don’t eschew poetry, dance, and narration, but, instead, embrace them in the spirit of understanding the limitations of prose and narrow models of professionalization.
As thought premised on these alternatives is relational, institutions by which it is nurtured are necessary. The CPA has created book series such as Creolizing the Canon, Global Critical Caribbean Thought, and Living Existentialism, journals such as The CLR James Journal and (founded by two of the association’s former presidents) Philosophy and Global Affairs, a summer school, and other resources. Bear in mind that the CPA is also linked to many organizations that posed such challenges that stimulated its birth. They include the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers and Committee on Public Philosophy, the Caribbean Studies Association, the Latin American Studies Association, the Phenomenology Roundtable, the Radical Philosophy Association, SOFPHIA (Society of Feminist Philosophers in Action), the Centre for Caribbean Thought at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, and more. There were, and continue to be, independent organizations guided by similar interests. They include Philosophy Born of Struggle, the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers, the Forum on Contemporary Theory in India, the Society of Senegalese Philosophy (SOSEPHI), the International Association for African Philosophy (ISAP), the Azanian Philosophical Society (in South Africa), the American Indian Philosophy Association, Focus on the Funk (in the UK), and organizations that don’t avow philosophical identities but are rich with philosophical practice. These include Black studies associations, feminist studies organizations, and intellectual groups such as the Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association, and others are being formed today such as Black British Studies, Azania philosophy, and more such as Dalit philosophy in Southwest Asia and varieties of Indigenous philosophy-oriented groups in Australasia ranging from those in Australia to the Māori in New Zealand and more.
Beyond those linked to racialized, minoritized philosophical anthropologies, there are also groups premised on posing questions of advanced study that require addressing the issues posed here. They are dotted across the global south in conversation with some, ranging from those in universities to those in art institutes and organizations for political transformation, across the global “north.” Wonderful examples include SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, Germany, The Marxist Education Project (formerly the Brecht Forum) in NYC, the (ironically titled) Europhilosophie project in Toulouse, France, the Ubuntu Project (organized by Drucilla Cornell in South Africa), The Forge (in South Africa), which is part of the global Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, Convivial Thinking, slews of decolonial summer and winter schools, and informal research groups addressing many of the themes of this reflection.
Finally, a path I often recommend is one set by Jane Anna Gordon and me in our introduction to Not Only the Master’s Tools (2006). We argued that Audre Lorde’s famous dictum should be reinterpreted to address the fact that colonized and subjugated peoples’ tools/conceptual frameworks facilitated the prosperity of Euromodernity. Very few “masters” actually developed tools. And more to the point, the task is to transcend the idea of “masters.” Thus, instead of tearing down the master’s house—which invariably entangles one in the folly and irony of affirming the value of his/her/their recognition—the task may be to decenter it through building other houses that render masters impotent by virtue of their irrelevance. In short, building other philosophical approaches that not only bring forth new ideas but also facilitate the appearance of ancestral ones covered over or made invisible in Euromodernity would be a constructive path to take.
-Lewis R. Gordon
Lewis R. Gordon is Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, Storrs; Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies; Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa; and Honorary Professor in the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University, South Africa. Gordon has authored numerous publications, including Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (2021); Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (1995); and forthcoming in 2022, Fear of Black Consciousness (2022).
