Endangered African Knowledges and the Challenge of Modernity: An Igbo Response

This book presents an innovative African philosophical response to coloniality and the attendant epistemicide of Africa’s knowledge systems, drawing on Igbo thinking.

This book argues that theorizing modernity requires a critical conversation between African and Western scholarship, in order to unpack its links with coloniality and the subjugation of Africa’s indigenous knowledges. In setting out this discussion, the book also connects with Latin American scholarship, demonstrating how the modern world is structured to marginalize and destroy knowledges from across the Global South. This book draws on Igbo epistemic resources of solidarity thinking, positioned in contrast to capitalist knowledge-patterns, thereby providing an important Africa-driven response to modernity and coloniality. This book concludes by arguing that the Igbo sense of solidarity is useful and relevant to modern contexts and thus constitutes a vital resource for a less disruptive, more balanced, and more wholesome modernity.

At a time of considerable global crises, this book makes an important contribution to philosophy both within Africa and beyond.

Donald Mark C. Ude studied in Nigeria, Kenya, Canada and Belgium. He has a PhD in Philosophy from KU Leuven (2021), where he currently researches and teaches. He is a recipient of a number of research fellowship awards, notably FWO (Belgium) and Humboldt (Germany). His articles have featured in Theory, Culture & Society, Philosophy Today, South African Journal of Philosophy and about a dozen reputable journals. He maintains an active research interest in African Philosophy, Postcolonial/Decolonial Studies, Critical Theory, Social/Political Philosophy, Modernity, and Post-secularism. At freer moments, he writes on topical socio-political issues in Nigerian newspapers.