Philosophy and genre

Abstract

In this chapter, Alena Rettová addresses the debate on the relationship between African philosophy and genre, particularly as regards texts in African languages. She believes that, evident from the start of the debate on the existence of African philosophy, ignorance of the “genre” led many African scholars to reductionist, truncated, and even erroneous approaches about this philosophy. A range of scholars believed that this philosophy was nothing more than a thought that is expressed through non-fictional texts, i.e. in prose, and that is produced by Africans writers who themselves qualify them as being philosophical texts. She considers that this approach excludes oral literature and all literary production in African languages, as these languages have no specific term to express the concept of philosophy. The same is also valid of the use of African cultural resources, such as proverbs, for example, to express the principle of non-contradiction or the idea of the excluded third. In this respect, the chapter maintains that this is a shortcut which, by ignoring the genre incidence, leads to an erroneous appreciation of African philosophy. It is essential to take into consideration the genre factor in the study of African philosophy because it is through this modality that authors write and that they are read by readers. The genre covers a wide range of texts, including poetry, fiction, prose, and oral literature. While recognising the postulate that African philosophy must be based on texts, the chapter espouses the idea of an enlarged (broader) concept of the text, including the context, the culture, the languages (local and foreign), and the genre. By shedding light on the reality of the relationship between philosophy and genre, the chapter suggests a range of case studies on philosophical texts in African languages, encompassing different genres, such as the essay (Tshiluba), the novel (Acoli, Shona, Swahili, Lingala), and Sufi poetry (Swahili and Wolof).