Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Emergence of Animism in Contemporary Western Philosophy :Work in Progress

gloria

i just read the bbc report of the latest trump rally where the bbc camerman was attacked. everyone should read the report, though i admit i stopped before the end, it upset me so much.

trump is a fascist. i have the misfortune of knowing history, being old enough to have been born during world war II, so it is not like a distant past. plus, more importantly, i have studied enough of it to be able to recognize it, in its modern iteration.

trump is a fascist, his supporters include those we would have called black shirts in germany or italy. the attack took place a couple of days ago, and apparently trump eggs on these people at all his rallies.

his policies require a scapegoat, and the scapegoats in the past suffered in the holocaust, including jews but also slavs, gays, gypsies, and even mentally deficient people.

trump is a fascist, which means if we stand up to him, we will incur the wrath of his followers.

even here in michigan, of course. everywhere in this country.

that's the sad truth/.

gloria you are right.

and before trump we had the tea party, with equally regressive values.

the only good thing to say here is that we, many of us, can resist them. and do resist trump.

the best way to begin to resistance is to recognize and name what you are opposing. i call it fascism

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2019 11:03 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Emergence of Animism in Contemporary Western Philosophy :Work in Progress

 

Ken you still have to watch your back in Michigan, this time from the intolerant, evangelical rightwing.

G

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2019 4:48:51 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Emergence of Animism in Contemporary Western Philosophy :Work in Progress

 

good questions toyin. there are lines between entities when they are drawn. they are not "god-given," let's say. anyway, recent critical work very much is pushing notions that animals share traits, emotional psychic etc, with humans. it isn't my field, but major critics are now writing in that direction. cajetan iheka is writing about it. the whole field of animal rights is burgeoning.

anyway, it isn't that the three major western religions are gone,but that their "cultural capital" in the realm of knowledge--epistemology and ontology--has been supplanted by scientific/enlightenment values. that was althusser's point quite a while ago, and if anything it is more true than ever.

meanwhile, popular values, grounded in faith, seems stronger than ever as well.

so i guess we have to define which audience we are addressing: an educated or a non-educated one.

now, african religious beliefs had been denigrated by colonial discourses. i believe firmly that is changing, that scholars are now looking at how african religious beliefs function in defining values, in opening new possibilities for studying philosophical questions, like being, free from the wretched baggage of colonial thinking or its christian political agendas.

we surely are in a new age; but no new age comes without fighting off and rejecting the old, which is what your question about abrahamic religions suggests to me.

and we can discuss this calmly, looking at this film or novel, that theoretical philosophical text, without impediment. while at the same time, to open those questions in public venues might indeed risk exposing us to attacks.

the venues make all the difference (thinking of that pakistani girl condemned to death for christian beliefs) and i would be more circumspect around boko haram ideologues, or anywhere in the sahara these days, than i am here in my little corner of east lansing.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2019 12:03 PM
To: Yoruba Affairs; usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Emergence of Animism in Contemporary Western Philosophy :Work in Progress

 

ecocriticism is now effacing the ontological lines between the human and non human. old school thinking about animism, as understood along anthropological lines, is no longer respectable, which goes along with the end of abrahamic religions as defining any meaningful priorities of value.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2019 11:26 AM
To: usaafricadialogue; Yoruba Affairs
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Emergence of Animism in Contemporary Western Philosophy :Work in Progress

 

I used to think Western philosophy and Western academic scholarship uniformly  saw animism as a primitive style of thinking until I read such sources as the Wikipedia essays on animism and panpsychism.

What are the implications of such re-examinations for African thought, the value of whose animistic character is highly contested between philosophy and Abrahamic religions?

More forthcoming.

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