Professor Adeshina Afolayan (University of Ibadan, Nigeria), Putting Contemporary African Philosophy on Trial: A Pedagogical Perspective

A trial assumes an offense which attracts a possible sentencing. In this essay, I deploy Socrates’ trial before the ancient Athenian court as a foil to articulate a set of academic, intellectual and pedagogical issues that could serve as a pedagogical interrogation of contemporary African philosophy (CAP). What are the pedagogical implications of teaching CAP in postcolonial Africa and a global world in polycrisis? What anxieties does CAP generate in students who are looking for life skills to confront existential challenges of daily life in Africa? In this essay, I will argue that CAP, as a disciplinary endeavor, does not satisfy the pedagogical aspiration for transforming the lives of students or, at a more minimal level, for challenging their assumptions, perspectives and beliefs about life, citizenship, relationality, and a host of other issues that make for human flourishing. My objective is to recommends a redescription of CAP in ways that affect not only how students perceive the significance of CAP, but more fundamental how CAP enable them to perceive and engage with the world around them. In the final analysis, such a redescription could ultimately rescue CAP from a long prison sentence due to pedagogical and existential irrelevance.