“This newest offering of the African Potentials Project explores
crucial foundational questions confronting the enterprise of actualizing
African potentials in ways which are freed from the continuing grip of
Western colonialist prejudices and prescriptions, nourished by the vital
resources of endogenous thought and practices, and yet “porous,” as the
poet wrote, “to all the breathing of world.” To that end the
contributing essays address relevant debates in contemporary African
philosophy, appraisals of the strengths and weaknesses of traditional
forms of political legitimation and debate, contestation and conflict
resolution, resistance to oppressive and predatory regimes, the
resilience of local norms of welcoming strangers in this season of
creeping xenophobia. The result is a rich and variegated set of critical
examinations and suggestions for discarding imperial and tyrannizing
models of human knowledge, existence and association, and reactivating
more liberating and enabling precepts and practices in this time of
crisis.”
