Césaire dismissed Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy as colonial deception

Evidence

During the colonial period, there were some Africans, such as Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), Sheikh Anta Diop (1923–1986) and Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), who did not quite agree with Tempels’s project to restore the “man” in Africans. For example, Aimé Césaire, quoted by Chachage (1994, p.53), says that “the reconstruction of Bantu Philosophy was nothing more than an attempt to create a deception among Africans given the political problems in the colonies. Tempels was simply safeguarding the colonial order and exploitation”. Thus, according to Césaire, Tempels’s work had nothing to do with African philosophy. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 114

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on ethnophilosophy as a colonial instrument, relevant to postcolonial theory discussions beyond this book.