Integrating African heritage studies as a new terrain of African philosophy

Abstract

One of the innovative features of post-apartheid scholarship in Africa is the emergence of African heritage studies, an inter-disciplinary field concerned with the study of the collection, conservation and interpretation of historical, archaeological and anthropological artefacts of African cultural heritage. However, despite the preoccupation with questions about the value of African heritage in African philosophy, the imperative and benefits of integrating African heritage studies and contemporary African philosophy have largely been ignored by both fields. In this article, I argue for the integration of African heritage studies and African philosophy by showing their inherent symbiosis and the potential mutual benefits of their integration. By highlighting the mistaken assumption that critics of ethnophilosophy reject the centrality of the study of African heritage in African philosophy, I show how criticisms of ethnophilosophy, in fact, provide not only the rationale for African heritage studies, but also the most promising theoretical direction for how African philosophy could draw on African heritage studies, for its object of analysis and how African heritage studies can, in turn, benefit conceptually and methodologically from integrating itself with African philosophy.