This comprehensive encyclopedia presents African thinkers, concepts and traditions, with a focus on African religious and philosophical practices. It offers a dependable and significant synthesis of African studies that encompasses major trends in the field since the early 1980s. The encyclopedia considers all religious and philosophical systems of Africa, both indigenous and non-indigenous. It also recognizes the determining role of the Diaspora in understanding African traditions and African identity. The work has benefited immensely from commitments in advanced interdisciplinary exchanges in (...) a number of domains, including comparative research in epistemology and from surveys in postcolonial studies and social sciences, along with religious and philosophical compendia. In brief, this is an encyclopedia made from the viewpoint of African studies and in dialogue with scientific traditions. (shrink)

This collection of meditations reformulates the experience of African studies as a concern with three thematics: Africa's place within today's intellectual, economic, and cultural configurations; the main axes that structure disciplinary practices concerned with African difference; and the possibility of understanding being-in-the-world with reference to alienation, creativity, and friendship. *** This book is highly innovative in its re-evaluation of alterity. It marshalls a broad range of theories from Adorno to Marx to Walter Benjamin, all the while "grounding" it in African (...) politics and aesthetics through the lens of Yacouba Konate. A veritable tour de force, if ever there was one. - Kgomotso Masemola, Associate Professor of English, U. of South Africa (Series: Thinking Africa). (shrink)