Description
Book SynopsisDecolonising the Human examines the ongoing project of constituting 'the human' in light of the durability of coloniality and the persistence of multiple oppressions. The 'human' emerges as a deeply political category, historically constructed as a scarce existential resource. Once weaponised, it allows for the social, political and economic elevation of those who are centred within its magic circle, and the degradation, marginalisation and immiseration of those excluded as the different and inferior Other, the less than human.
Speaking from Africa, a key site where the category of the human has been used throughout European modernity to control, exclude and deny equality of being, the contributors use decoloniality as a potent theoretical and philosophical tool, gesturing towards a liberated, pluriversal world where human difference will be recognised as a gift, not used to police the boundaries of the human. Here is a transdisciplinary critical exploration of a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and decolonial studies.
Table of Contents
- Acronyms and Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 The Trouble with the Human - William Mpofu and Melissa Steyn
- Chapter 2 The Invention of Blackness on a World Scale - Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Patricia Pinky Nkete
- Chapter 3 To What Extent Are We All Humans? Of Culture, Politics, Law and LGBT Rights in Nigeria - Olayinka Akanle, Gbenga S. Adejare and Jojolola Fasuyi
- Chapter 4 Humanness and Ableism: Construction and Deconstruction of Disability - Sibonokuhle Ndlovu
- Chapter 5 Doing the Old Human - Cary Burnett
- Chapter 6 Being a Mineworker in Post-Apartheid South Africa: A Decolonial Perspective - Robert Maseko
- Chapter 7 Meditations on the Dehumanisation of the Slave- Tendayi Sithole
- Chapter 8 'Language as Being' in the Politics of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o - Brian Sibanda
- Chapter 9 The Underside of Modern Knowledge: An Epistemic Break from Western Science - Nokuthula Hlabangane
- Chapter 10 The Fiction of the Juristic Person: Reassessing Personhood in Relation to People - C.D. Samaradiwakera-Wijesundara
- Chapter 11 The Cultural Village and its Idea of the 'Human' - Morgan Ndlovu
- Chapter 12 A Fragmented Humanity and Monologues: Towards a Diversal Humanism - Siphamandla Zondi
- Contributors
- Index
