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Exiled from History: Africa in Hegel’s Academic Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2018

Tom C. McCaskie
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Abstract:

Many scholars, African and otherwise, have excoriated G.W.F. Hegel for his dismissal of Africa from history and progress in his lectures on the philosophies of history and religion. This has been done by quoting his texts and setting his words in the context of his influence on nineteenth-century European imperialism and racism. A different approach informs this paper. I treat Hegel, a complicated person, as a working university academic with a career to make and an overriding desire to publicize his own thought. I provide biographical insights relevant to these matters, and go on to examine specific texts about Africa that Hegel either sought out or chanced upon, read, misread, excerpted, used, and misused in support of his theorizing and apriorism. Attention is paid throughout to the construction, recording, and dissemination of Hegel’s lectures, and to aspects of their reception and authority in the educational formation of selected modern African intellectuals. I argue that such persons and African studies more widely are still trying to come to grips with the long and enduring shadow cast by Hegel over both the past and present of the continent.

Résumé:

De nombreux chercheurs africains et d’ailleurs ont vertement critiqué G.W.F. Hegel pour son exclusion de l’Afrique tant de l’histoire que du progrès dans ses conférences sur les philosophies de l’histoire et de la religion. Cette critique a été faite en citant ses textes et en plaçant ses paroles dans le contexte de son influence sur l’impérialisme et le racisme européens du XIXe siècle. Une approche différente informe ce papier. Je traite Hegel, un personnage compliqué, comme un universitaire de métier devant construire sa carrière et désirant très fortement faire connaître sa pensée. Je fournis des éclairages biographiques pertinents sur ces questions et analyse ensuite des textes spécifiques sur l’Afrique que Hegel a soit recherchés ou trouvés par hasard, lus, mal lus, extraits de leur contexte, utilisés ou utilisés à mauvais escient pour soutenir ses théories et préjugés. Une attention toute particulière est accordée à la construction, à l’édition et à la diffusion des conférences de Hegel, ainsi qu’aux aspects de leur réception et de leur autorité dans la formation pédagogique de certains intellectuels africains contemporains. Je soutiens que ces personnes et les études africaines plus largement tentent encore de s’attaquer à l’influence très vaste et durable des idées développées par Hegel sur le passé et le présent du continent.

Type
Critical Historiography
Information
History in Africa , Volume 46 , June 2019 , pp. 165 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2018 

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