ABSTRACT
Just as we said that Africa’s interface with European modernity is itself a philosophical text to be read, critically appraised, and understood-as part of “postcolonial African philosophy”—so, too, African literature is a central part of that text. We share in forming and expressing our particular life-worlds through our narratives, as Said says. It is through such narratives that we see both the uses and abuses of power and human identity. Out of the liberation struggles come the poetry, the stories, the telling of Africa’s suffering and indignity. From the cries of injustice, the memory and narration, come a new and broader sense of justice and the hope of the transformation of communal values to engage modernity. This “telling” from these “texts” is part of the narrative enterprise that is the “memoir” and “diary” for philosophy. Philosophy takes account of the contexts in which the conversations of human life take place. It is this aspect of philosophy that is expressive of varied ways in which human life is articulated-the values, ideologies, and truths of individuals and communities. It is the narrative aspect of philosophy that ties it to a culture and gives it its existential texture. It is also the narrative aspect of philosophy that preserves it from abstraction. Among the central kinds of narrative texts in Africa and of particular importance to philosophy are those to be found in its oral traditions and in its recent literature and art. Furthermore the development of civil society in particular African nations needs to be tied as much to patterns found in local council structures and the rational dialogues of village palavers as to either one party or multiparty democracies or to Western social engineers. To call forward tradi-
tions of orality alongside art and literature and explore how these contribute to an African philosophy may be anathema to some like Hountondji, but I believe they are essential to grasping the present African reality, especially if the grasp is from outside the African context.
