Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination

Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination is an interdisciplinary reading of justice in literary texts and memoirs, films, and social anthropological texts in postcolonial Africa. 　 Inspired by Nelson Mandela and South Africa’s robust achievements in human rights, this book argues that the notion of restorative justice is integral to the proper functioning of participatory democracy and belongs to the moral architecture of any decent society. Focusing on the efforts by African writers, scholars, artists, and activists to build flourishing communities, the author discusses various quests for justice such as environmental justice, social justice, intimate justice, and restorative justice. It discusses in particular ecological violence, human rights abuses such as witchcraft accusations, the plight of people affected by disability, homophobia, misogyny, and sex trafficking, and forgiveness. 　 This book will be of interest to scholars of African literature and films, literature and human rights, and literature and the environment

Empathetic Cosmopolitanism: South Africa and the Quest for Global Citizenship

One feature of Nelson Mandela\u27s legacy in South Africa is his concept of post-apartheid society as a cosmopolitan space. Sadly, recent developments in the country suggest a return to nativist and bigoted world views and cast a dark shadow over his legacy. There is an urgent necessity to review this aspect of Mandela\u27s vision. In so doing, this paper highlights the ethical advantages of cosmopolitanism, and argues that what sets Mandela\u27s cosmopolitanism apart from others is his emphasis on empathy. I therefore suggest that empathetic cosmopolitanism is a particularly South African worldview. In support of this idea of empathetic cosmopolitanism, I discuss such recent theories as \u27incompleteness\u27, \u27multiple identity\u27, and \u27entanglement\u27, suggested by South African thinkers, as registers of Mandela\u27s global citizenship

Justice as a spiritual quest

This essay is based on the assumption that retributive justice fails to capture the immense riches of the human condition. Exploring the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), it argues that restorative justice must be seen as complementary to the retributive and other conceptions of justice. Restorative justice is presented here as a spiritual journey, one that is best grasped through the prism of Benjamin’s spiritual elements of class struggles. Nelson Mandela understood, like Georg Friedrich Hegel, that even the Absolute Spirit, powerful as it is, achieves its goal through cunning. Spiritual quest is, however, much more than the cunning of the spirit; it is also love and human flourishing understood as inclusive projects

Hate Your Enemy: The Anatomy of Resentment in Africa's Cultural Resistance to the West

It is common knowledge that the relationship between Africa and the West has been marked on the one hand, by exploitation and on the other by resistance to this. Africa’s resistance to the West has, in many instances muted into resentment that has in turn created some forms of moral delusions, and cultural relativisms. There is a parallel between African-American resentment of the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture and African resentment of European culture. To some degree, the one has influenced the other, and this has had tremendous effects on Africa’s perception of culture as homogenous whole

Literature as an ethical challenge: Alain Locke and the responsibility of the Negro artist

In this dissertation, I argue that the measure of a literary work of art is the degree to which it aids the establishing of the good life. My argument is rooted in Alain Locke\u27s charge to the “Negro”1 writers of his time that they help Negroes out of their disadvantaged situations by producing works that would enhance “spiritual quickening.” Literature therefore must contribute towards building a flourishing human community. This is its ethical challenge. I begin by defining ethics as the attainment of virtues that contribute to human flourishing. This definition relies heavily on Alasdair MacIntyre\u27s view of humans as dependent rational beings. Next, I situate Alain Locke\u27s dissatisfaction with the condition of Negroes and his belief that art can help uplift the Negro spirit and thereby effect their social condition. I then examine Jean-Paul Sartre\u27s idea of literature as a means of effecting social change. I do this as a way to understand Alain Locke\u27s ethical demand on literature. I identify the postcolonial condition as analogous to the condition of the African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance era. I then examine Rey Chow and T. Minh-ha\u27s postcolonial feminist criticism, and their ethical demands on writers as another way of understanding Alain Locke\u27s philosophy. Finally, I discuss select works of Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid and Buchi Emecheta to demonstrate in concrete terms not only how this aesthetic-ethical theory can be applied to literary works, but also how specific works can contribute to rebuilding fractured communities. 1I understand that the word Negro is not an adequate designation of an African-American. I however make use of it here for the purpose of being nearer to Locke\u27s use of it and his time

Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination

Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination is an interdisciplinary reading of justice in literary texts and memoirs, films, and social anthropological texts in postcolonial Africa. 　 Inspired by Nelson Mandela and South Africa’s robust achievements in human rights, this book argues that the notion of restorative justice is integral to the proper functioning of participatory democracy and belongs to the moral architecture of any decent society. Focusing on the efforts by African writers, scholars, artists, and activists to build flourishing communities, the author discusses various quests for justice such as environmental justice, social justice, intimate justice, and restorative justice. It discusses in particular ecological violence, human rights abuses such as witchcraft accusations, the plight of people affected by disability, homophobia, misogyny, and sex trafficking, and forgiveness. 　 This book will be of interest to scholars of African literature and films, literature and human rights, and literature and the environment