Humanities in the Village: John Murungi

Description

John Murungi, a professor in the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Towson University, will give a talk titled "Decolonization of Postcolonial African Body" as part of Humanities in the Village.

In The Wretched of the Earth, a classic book on colonialism, Frantz Fanon points out that, for the African, the inevitable question that emerged out of colonial experience is, "What in reality am I?". Despite the passage of time since the book was published in 1961, this question has not lost its currency in post-colonial Africa. Even today it is doubtful whether it is fully be understood, let alone answered. This lecture presents what is at stake in this question and grounds the question on African body. Colonialism, it is pointed out, entails more than the colonization of the mind. It entails the colonization of the African's body. Accordingly, successful decolonization cannot take place without the decolonization of the African body. The question raised by Fanon is body-centered. "What am I in reality?" is a question that ought to be launched from the standpoint of African body. The answer to it must, likewise, be centered thereby. In this question, the reality of the "I" is a bodily reality. Post-colonial Africa calls for a de-colonization of the African body. De-colonization of mind that Ngugi wa Thiong'o calls for cannot succeed if the African body is not thereby de-colonized.

John Murungi's research is in aesthetics, African philosophy, and phenomenology and existential philosophy. Murungi is the co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Environment, Space, and Place and the founder of the annual Geo-Aesthetics Conferences. Publications include Home-Lived Experiences (Springer 2022), Africanizing African Legal Ethics (Routledge 2020), African Philosophical Currents (Routledge 2018), African Philosophical Illuminations (Springer Publishers 2017), An Introduction to African Legal Philosophy (Lexington Press), African Musical Aesthetics (Cambridge Scholars 2015).