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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The territory is not the map: place, Deleuze, Guattari, and African philosophy
Author:Janz, Bruce B.ISNI
Year:2002
Periodical:Philosophia Africana: Analysis of Philosophy and Issues in Africa and the Black Diaspora
Volume:5
Issue:1
Pages:1-17
Language:English
Geographic term:Subsaharan Africa
Subject:philosophy
Abstract:This article considers ways in which we might think of African philosophy outside of the metaphors of maps used by both modernist and some postmodernist writers, the first to delineate and define area and establish ownership and citizenship, the second to clear space and allow for possibilities. The first project of mapping, which has been the explicit or implicit project of the majority of African philosophy, leaves African philosophy forever at the edge of Western thought, defining its territory by that already claimed. The second project, meant to resist that sense of entitlement, ends up avoiding discussions of subjectivity even as it tries to avoid any hint of essentialism. The result in the first case is a map that has little legitimacy, and in the second a map that has little use. The alternative, the author argues, is to rethink both the metaphysical and the postmodern addiction to the notion of space, and instead suggest that the concept of place holds more hope. African philosophy, like that of any other place, is earned through reflection on the concepts made available in the place that creates an identity. 'A thousand plateaux: capitalism and schizophrenia' (1988) by G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, is used as an unexpected door into this topic. Bibliogr., notes, ref. (ASC Leiden abstract)
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