She explores the idea of global philosophy

Author: Susanne Wenger 

Lerato Posholi began her studies in 2010 at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. That same year, the world’s largest sporting event took place in South Africa: “South Africa was hosting the FIFA World Cup,” says the 34-year-old in a video call from northern Germany, where she is currently working. It was the first World Cup to be held on African soil. In retrospect, the coincidence seems symbolic. She developed a global theme from the subjects she was studying at the time – philosophy and educational science: What might a philosophy look like that also incorporates thinking from outside of Europe?

Posholi speaks about her complex subject carefully and with ease. She amiably overlooks any vagueness in questions. She opted for educational science at the time because her parents had taught her the value of education at an early age. “In South Africa, education is the key to economic and social advancement,” she explains. She studied philosophy out of curiosity. The subject was unfamiliar to her, but she liked “how philosophy questions things we take for granted”. The curriculum at “Wits” – as the university is known – was strongly Western-oriented. “‘We studied almost exclusively the great European thinkers – all men – from Plato to Kant,” she recalls.

The first in her family

Two experiences shaped her research interests. One was a lecture by Charles Mills – a philosopher from Jamaica – on racism in philosophy. “At first, that seemed strange to me – it was like two separate categories,” she explains. The other was the student movement that gripped South Africa’s universities from 2015 onwards. With the slogan “Rhodes must fall”, students demanded the removal of a statue of the colonialist Cecil Rhodes from the campus in Cape Town. But it was about more than just a monument, Posholi emphasizes. The aim was to free the universities from the inequalities that colonialism and apartheid had left behind. The protests were also directed against high tuition fees.

Posholi – who was doing her master’s degree at the time – supported the demands. She comes from a working-class family and was the first person in her family to go to university – thanks to a scholarship. “The move to university was the biggest change in my life to date,” she remarks. Despite the political upheavals since the end of apartheid in the 1990s, she continued to experience South Africa as being highly segregated, both spatially and socially. Having grown up in a predominantly Black community, it was only at Wits that she met more people from other social and ethnic groups.

Think decolonization

She became increasingly preoccupied with the idea that the mind also needed to be decolonized: the history of ideas, the knowledge bases, teaching content. She read works by authors who addressed these issues, such as Kwasi Wiredu, a philosopher from Ghana. In her dissertation, she herself examined the connections between knowledge, curriculum and power. She is particularly interested in the epistemological dimension, that is, the question of how valid knowledge is created. “The colonial conquest of Africa led to the predominance of Western philosophy, which was deemed the only valid form of philosophy,” she points out. The colonial powers imposed their education curricula, systems and languages, which had far-reaching consequences for philosophy, whose most important tool is language. African traditions of thought were devalued and research on, and further development of, them were largely neglected.

The potential of African philosophies

Much has been reconstructed in recent years. Posholi is contributing to this effort by searching for philosophical works in Sesotho, one of South Africa’s eleven official languages, as part of an international project at the University of Hildesheim. “It’s my mother tongue,” she says, “even though I'm hardly fluent in it.” To find sources, she consults, for example, literary scholars who are proficient in Sesotho. But collecting alone is not enough for her: “We must harness the potential of African philosophies to solve philosophical problems in Africa and around the world.” To do this, it is important to identify their terms and concepts, she says.

In 2019, Posholi came to Switzerland to collaborate on the “Reversing the Gaze»” project at the University of Basel. The project examined what happens when concepts from the Global South are applied to political topics in Europe. One case study, for example, analysed the debate on migration in Switzerland using the concept of retribalisation. This term comes from folklore and describes how people react to changes by focusing more strongly on the group to which they belong. “In relation to South African miners, retribalisation had connotations of backwardness,” explains Posholi, who was jointly responsible for the theoretical part of the project. “In Switzerland, the concept simply explained that people want to defend their cultural traditions.” She is fascinated by the way new contexts can change the meaning of concepts.

Questioning the familiar

Posholi is interested in how “migrating concepts” can open up new, non-Eurocentric perspectives. She says it’s not only about “epistemic justice,” but also progress: “Knowledge grows when traditions of thought are not hierarchically opposed to each other, but intertwined.” European-Western, African, Latin American, Asian and indigenous schools of thought could together help us to understand problems. But she knows that a philosophy which draws on diversity will not be easy to achieve.

The postcolonialism debate is often ideologically charged. In addition, a global perspective challenges criteria that are familiar in philosophy – such as the written word or the notion that ideas always originate from individuals. “Some African traditions of thought were passed down orally within communities,” she explains. One example is Ubuntu – a concept from southern Africa according to which humanity arises through compassion. “The concept is rich in ethical and moral philosophy,” says Posholi. She herself, trained in the Western analytical tradition, first has to get used to new forms of expression and doing philosophy.

Broadening the canon

Curricula are a key to a more global philosophy, in Posholi’s view. How can the canon be broadened in a productive way? At Hildesheim, she is working on this question with researchers from the Global South and North. She finds students to be interculturally open at her classes and lectures. Posholi has been a member of the Swiss Young Academy since 2022. “It’s inspiring to have discussions with researchers from a wide range of disciplines who are at a similar point in their careers to myself”, she says. She has participated in projects on inequalities and the relationship between science and activism.

Her goal is a professorial chair in South Africa. For now, she intends to remain in Europe for at least another year, presenting her research at international conferences and keeping in touch with her family and friends via FaceTime and WhatsApp. She reads novels and goes for walks in her spare time: “I love the way you can do that in European cities like Basel and Hildesheim,” she says. She thought the orderliness was great – at least for a while. Laughing, she adds: “At some point, I started to miss the chaos a little.”

Lerato Posholi’s tip for reading up on African philosophies:

https://blog.apaonline.org/2022/03/25/so-you-want-to-teach-some-africana-philosophy/