Tempels’s question about African ontology counters Western denial of African philosophy

Evidence

In his 1946 book, Bantu Philosophy, Rev. Fr. Placide Tempels tries to reconstruct an “African philosophy” or a “Bantu philosophy”, whose foundation is the language, grammar and proverbs of the Baluba society. The question that Tempels pursues, Is there an African ontology?, is an intellectual curiosity deliberately framed to address the discursive knowledge hegemony of a Western audience that believed in the non-existence of an African philosophy. The question maintains high epistemic value and provides a befitting starting point for generating counter-hegemonic discourses that can give back value to an African way of life that has survived years of colonial denigration. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 891

Categorization

• XREF: Recapitulates the book’s framing: Bantu Philosophy as a counter-hegemonic epistemic intervention, tying this chapter back to earlier chapters on the colonial knowledge context.