African Philosophy at the African Cinema

Abstract

The premise of this chapter is quite provocative: African philosophy, since its inauguration, has had little or no engagement with African cinema. Hence, there remains a huge intellectual and multidisciplinary gap that necessarily creates a conceptual absence in the collective attempt at making sense of the African predicament and pushing decolonization forward. In this chapter, Afolayan draws on the Deleuzian experience of being compelled to look for answers to philosophical problems in the cinema to ground his interrogation of African philosophy and its relationship to African cinema: Can the compelling significance of the African predicament force African philosophers to look for answers, and even questions, in Nollywood? The answer to this question requires breaking down the barrier that defines what is philosophical, and its incarnation in Africa.