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What is Africana philosophy? Why do philosophers now use this term? And where did it come from?

Does it just refer to philosophy that takes place in Africa?

Chi K. Jeffers of Dalhousie University explains...

Chi K. Jeffers, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

We're talking today about Africana philosophy. What is Africana philosophy, and why isrikaner philosophy and why is it Afrikaner philosophy and not

African philosophy? Great question. Afrikanah philosophy is a larger category within which

African philosophy can be seen as one component. The term Africana philosophy comes about after another term, Africana

Studies, had already been in use. There was at Cornell University an Africana Studies program,

part of the general explosion of Black Studies programs at U.S. universities and the use

of the term Africana Studies was part of the attempt to be very clear about covering not just

African-American life, but also African, African-Caribbean, and other places.

And so how we then find this term becoming now specified in relation to philosophy.

So Lucius Outlaw, a pioneering African-American philosopher, he organized a conference.

Funnily enough, in the year of my birth,

1982. He had been at a number of conferences in the U.S., in the 1970s that are seen in retrospect is really important for developing African-American philosophy as a tradition, but he had also visited Africa,

met some of the philosophers doing important work over there.

And so he tried to bring these groups together at this conference in 1982.

It's aiming to gather together what's going on in African philosophy, what's going on

in African-American

...