History of Philosophy: India, Africana, China

1970s black feminists like Toni Cade Bambara, the Combahee River Collective, and Awa Thiam critique white feminist and black nationalist failures to recognize the unique struggle of the black woman.

Another Caribbean thinker, Walter Rodney of Guyana, explores Africana history from a Marxist perspective. 

Famous for his killing at the hands of the Apartheid government in South Africa, Steve Biko was also a deep thinker, who introduced the notion of Black Consciousness.

The political and musical revolution of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, and the social critique of his cousin, the playwright Wole Soyinka.

How the Rastafari movement grew from trends within Africana philosophy, and then passed into global popular culture in the music of Bob Marley and other reggae artists.

Sun Ra and Parliament-Funkadelic return to claim the pyramids, and Octavia Butler uses science fiction to confront the brutal past of slavery.

Abdias do Nascimento, a leader in Brazilian theater and politics, and his theory of Qilombismo.

The career and ideas of Nelson Mandela up to the time of his imprisonment, in the context of the founding of the African National Congress.

Two scholars of the same name join us to shed further light on Amílcar Cabral.

Amílcar Cabral, leader of a revolution against colonialism in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, rethinks culture and Marxist theory as bases for his struggle.

The first leader of independent Tanzania grounds his socialist ideas in traditional African values.

After Albert Cleage and James Cone propose a liberatory interpretation of Christianity, William R. Jones wonders whether God is a white racist. We also follow Black Theology among “Womanist” authors and in South Africa.

African American literature of the late 1960s reflects the Black Power movement, in the works of such authors as Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Haki Madhubuti, Larry Neal, and Sonia Sanchez.

The controversial career of the Pan-Africanist philosopher Maulana Karenga, inventor of the holiday Kwanzaa.

The philosophical underpinnings of a “vanguard of revolution” led by Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver: the Black Panther Party.

How the controversial slogan “black power,” used by activists like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, relates to ideas of militancy, separatism, and the power of language.

The underestimated radicalism of Lorraine Hansberry, author of the famous play "A Raisin in the Sun".

We're joined by a leading Fanon expert to talk about a range of themes in his work: Negritude, psychiatry, and violence.

Fanon’s incendiary final work explores the violent process of decolonization.

Frantz Fanon combines existentialist philosophy and psychiatry to diagnose the condition of the colonialized target of racism.

The first leader of independent Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, writes against neocolonialism and in favor of socialism and Pan-Africanism.

Two Nigerian activists lead the struggle for independence, and clash over the competing values of national unity and ethnic diversity.

The Cuban activist and author Juan Rene Betancourt urges racial solidarity and reckons with the revolution under Castro and the island’s turn towards Communism.

After 1963, the views of Malcolm X and MLK came closer together, on topics including internationalism, political engagement, and economics.

Chike joins Peter to look back at our coverage of Africana philosophy in the first half of the 20th century.