In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture

by Kwame Anthony Appiah

The beating of Rodney King and the resulting riots in South Central Los Angeles. The violent clash between Hasidim and African-Americans in Crown Heights. The boats of Haitian refugees being turned away from the Land of Opportunity. These are among the many racially-charged images that have burst across our television screens in the last year alone, images that show that for all our complacent beliefs in a melting-pot society, race is as much of a problem as ever in America. In this vastly important, widely-acclaimed volume, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Ghanaian philosopher who now teaches at Harvard, explores, in his words, "the possibilities and pitfalls of an African identity in the late twentieth century." In the process he sheds new light on what it means to be an African-American, on the many preconceptions that have muddled discussions of race, Africa, and Afrocentrism since the end of the nineteenth century, and, in the end, to move beyond the idea of race. In My Father's House is especially wide-ranging, covering everything from Pan Africanism, to the works of early African-American intellectuals such as Alexander Crummell and W.E.B. Du Bois, to the ways in which African identity influences African literature. In his discussion of the latter subject, Appiah demonstrates how attempts to construct a uniquely African literature have ignored not only the inescapable influences that centuries of contact with the West have imposed, but also the multicultural nature of Africa itself. Emphasizing this last point is Appiah's eloquent title essay which offers a fitting finale to the volume. In a moving first-person account of his father's death and funeral in Ghana, Appiah offers a brilliant metaphor for the tension between Africa's aspirations to modernity and its desire to draw on its ancient cultural roots. During the Los Angeles riots, Rodney King appeared on television to make his now famous plea: "People, can we all get along?" In this beautiful, elegantly written volume, Appiah steers us along a path toward answering a question of the utmost importance to us all.

Genres: Philosophy, Africa, Nonfiction, Sociology, Ghana, Cultural, Anthropology

241 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Kwame Anthony Appiah, the president of the PEN American Center, is the author of The Ethics of Identity, Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, The Honor Code and the prize-winning Cosmopolitanism. Raised in Ghana and educated in England, he has taught philosophy on three continents and is a former professor at Princeton University and currently has a position at NYU.

Series:
* Sir Patrick Scott Mystery (as Anthony Appiah)

Reviews

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you like this review i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

171215: excellent selection of essays on philosophy, on history, on racism and racialism, with an interesting non-european, non-american perspective. only misfortune is that this is a historical document (1992), so does not talk about various places on the immediate ground in africa. there are essays on pan-africanism, on myths of what are africa and africans, on colonial and postcolonial and postmodern, on art and identity, on the chance to perhaps integrate modernity with less disruption and damage to cultures... all intriguing, well-written, philosophically compelling... and my edition has a great cover of a sculpture that encapsulates many ideas of text...

[Wendelle]

Kwame Appiah is one of the most influential and prestigious living philosophers today. This book was composed originally from his groundbreaking thesis in Cambridge. This book was , wildly, not quite what I expected. Its main thrust or argument is to disagree with the popular trends in African or postcolonial literature that defines the African identity or identity of African literature through opposition to the Eurocentric view. Appiah thinks that defining Africans as the 'Other' in antagonism or contrast to a monolithic West is a misplaced basis for African identity. Furthermore, Appiah is challenging here-- perhaps in what can be considered a hot take-- the African literary perspective that dominates in some circles, that embraces and defines pan-Africanism through the European-constructed matrix of race, of race as a metaphysical identity as opposed to a shared socio-historical identity. One of the ways that Appiah's perspective about this is concretized, or manifested, for example, is his disagreement with the agendas of African-American activists, such as WEB duBois, who aspire to cultivate the notion of a shared, unified sense of identity among African-Americans and Africans. Appiah challenges this by seeking to highlight the falsity of 'racialism' or the belief that certain races possess 'separate but equal' differences in cognition or characteristics linked to the pigment of their skin. In his view, then, the notion of pan-Africanism or an instantaneous shared identity due to race is just an instance of racialism, which is incorrect, because the European construct of race is itself incorrect and artificial. In this book, Appiah also strives to distinguish between extrinsic racism-- the belief that races have different amounts or levels of certain characteristics, and due to this discrimination is warranted-- and intrinsic racism-- the belief that races are just different morally in general and inherently. This is a challenging book to think about. I have to read it a 2nd time to decipher it carefully and correctly.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Identity ,Solidarity, and the Dilemmas of Modern Africa

Modern Africans find themselves at the juncture of several worlds: As Basil Davidson might have noted, revolution, episodic nationalism, and postcolonial debacles have cast a pall of chaos onto an already historically chaotic field of peoples. The philosophies of Europe, the roots of tradition, African nationalism, Pan-Africanism, racial, tribal and ethnic solidarity, and a modernity which seeks to unleash individualism all come into conflict when Africans attempt to assess the problems they face, and detail solutions for these problems.

Kwame Antony Appiah calls African thinkers to take up this important work, and he offers several assessments of these problems and possible solutions in his book. He believes that a better basis for solidarity in Africa is needed to replace decaying philosophies of negritude, and he discredits Pan Africanism's ability to fulfill this role. He addresses the question of what African philosophers should be preoccupied with, and whether, in their seeking to establish, unify, or recreate cultures, African philosophers can really draw upon philosophies and identities unique to Africa. The importance of an "African" identity has emerged since colonialism, and Appiah questions what such an identity should be founded upon, using Wole Soyinka and his own father Joseph Appiah as examples of intellectuals at work on the question.

After a reading of Appiah's book, I question whether an African solidarity can be usefully articulated. Can inclusive, constructive and accessible modern culture be derived in a continent-wide scale, with some collective experience as its sourcebook? Perhaps the question rides on whether tradition is truly expendable, although so far it has apparently not been expendable (although it has proven malleable). Appiah's arguments in favor of reexamining what it means to be African, while he has labored to disassociate them from the Pan-Africanist agenda, seem unsure on the issue of Pan Africanist hopes. Pan Africanism, whether informal or economic, seems more than mired in implied racialism - it seems to ignore the idea that there is a need for modern African nations to promote overture to the world, rather than aggrandized protectionism, which invariable carries with it repressive nationalist agendas. The reality is that Africa is dependent upon its ties to the rest of the world. I believe that Appiah would argue that any "Africanism" is not useful as a method of affirming culture, either, precisely because to be simply "an African" implies such a tremendous negation of one's own past.

This book, for the density and complexity as well as honesty of its inquiry, should be seen as a sold introuduction to what makes Africa so problematic on the level of identity and solidarity. The existence of an "african" identity can no longer be ignored. Appiah finds all the roots of this identity and gives them rigorous criticism in light of his own personal view of Africa as well as a solid reading of African philosophy, social science and history.

[Alex Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kwame Anthony Appiah successfully describes the difficults involved in relating lived experience in Africa with the globalized agency of Africa as a group. Without hammering the post-colonial apparatus too heavily, Appiah navigates the difficult area of defining what makes Africa Africa from as many points of view simultaneously. For Appaih the post-colonial condition is characterized by a variety of competing identities, groupifications from tribal, regional, racial, national, ethnocentric, religious, eurocentric and otherwise. All of these necessitate that the individual successfully navigate as many areas as possible in order to figure out who they are. Identity is destablized because after we reject nationalism as a modernist aesthetic derived from european identity of the 18th+ centuries, what have we got to replace it with? In post-colonial countries, there is a harsh identity that the educated elites begin to have problems with creating -- as their uneducated peers do not have access to the same historic basis to define themselves. Yet having a historic basis means losing the very centeredness of those "good ole days" when we were young, and life seemed very clear and stable.

We experience some of this daily, in non-colonized countries as well, but our sense of legitimacy is different. The problem of post-colonialism is that all groupings of identity are competing and yet equally legitimate, in some sense. One can't deal with the world and completely ignore how the world sees one. The problem is complicated by the fact that many Africa groups do not identify with one another, coming from incompatible worlds, speaking a variety of incompatible languages with incompatible customs. The epilogue Appiah provides detailing his father's identity and how his father's death presented a complicated problem dealing with different competing sensibilities of how to honor the man and yet submit to the variety of powers that be.

All in all, a good read, one which suggests that the solution is of yet an unnamed composite identity that only time can seal. Appiah is aspecially adept at navigating the different areas of art, capitalistation, globalisation and identities that characterize a contemporary Africa, a final global limit of capitalist hegemony that is constructed from the top down, leaving the middle confused as to the desired orientation. It's not a matter of having too many choices, it's a matter of not even knowing what the proper choice can be, as the competing value systems require constant renegotiation, differentiation and redifferentiation depending on the the multivalience of the identities of the actors on the ground.

[Jroos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful and academic book. The beginning required thought and concentration to grasp all parts. As the end was reached it all tied together in a good way.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first four chapters build up a criticism of the various ways the identity "African" had been defined in the last two centuries or so. Appiah picks at places where a racialism continues to hide behind Afrocentrist and Pan-Africanist definitions even while the concept of biological race has been thoroughly discredited. Time and again, Appiah reminds us of the cultural, historical and other elements of broad diversity among African peoples. Bits where the idea of Africa as a promised land for Pan-Africanists in the diaspora were explicitly compared to Zionism in ways I found enlightening and intriguing. Things get a bit freakier in subsequent chapters on African Philosophy, religions, and literature. Often while reading this book I had moments of 'I don't get it, but I believe that the author does...' I like to be challenged by thinkers who are smarter than me. It all comes together in the conclusion, a call for an African identity based on solidarity. The most fun is when Appiah uses examples from his own experiences in Ghana. The final chapter tells the story of Appiah's father's funeral, a nerve wracking affair involving many antagonists and a witchcraft battle!

The cover of the edition I read features a sculpture called "Yoruba Man with a Bicycle" and the book spends a few pages discussing James Baldwin's description of the work in Perspectives: Angles on African Art: "This is something. This has got to be contemporary. He's really going to town. It's very jaunty, very authoritative. His errand might prove to be impossible. He is challenging something -- or something has challenged him. He's grounded in immediate reality by the bicycle. . . . He's apparently a very proud and silent man. He's dressed sort of polyglot. Nothing looks like it fits him too well." This artwork fits the book very well, though.

[Yaw Asare · Rating 5 out of 5]

A difficult read due to its provocative nature and technicality as in arguing from various fields of knowledge.
Kwame Anthony Appiah nevertheless persuasively crushed the foundations of my knowledge pertaining to my identities as an Akuapem, Akan, Ghanaian, Afrikan and Human. He convinced me to seek new meanings for these labels having at the back of my mind that "there are no races, only cultures."
The ending of the book, novel-like, shows the nature of feuds amongst the abusua "family" of the Akan especially when one passes away. Most importantly, it showcases how identities can conflict in the case of his fathers burial.
A book I would recommend the modern Afrikan elite to read.

[Jason Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh snap! Ontological Afrocentrism, you got served!

[A YOGAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

In My Father's House: Wenn die Kulturphilosophie zum Immobiliengutachter wird
Kwame Anthony Appiahs Werk ist die perfekte philosophische Abrissbirne für alle, die Kultur immer noch in bequemen Schubladen verstauen wollen. Unter dem Titel „In My Father’s House“ lädt uns Appiah ein, das vermeintliche Haus des afrikanischen Denkens zu betreten – nur um schon im Flur zu zeigen, dass die Suche nach einer einzigen „afrikanischen Essenz“ oder gar einer biologischen „Rasse“ ein koloniales Altlastenproblem ist, das in diesem Gebäude längst keinen Mietvertrag mehr haben sollte.
Appiahs Hauptthese lautet, dass Pan-Afrikanismus und Négritude zwar verständliche und historisch notwendige Reaktionen auf den Eurozentrismus waren, zugleich aber unbewusst jene Kategorien übernahmen, die sie eigentlich überwinden wollten. Wer in diesem „Haus“ nach einfachen Antworten auf die Frage „Was ist Afrika?“ sucht, wird ernüchtert: Appiah räumt nicht auf – er räumt aus. Mit analytischer Schärfe zertrümmert er die alten Regale und zeigt, dass die vermeintliche Ordnung nur ein koloniales Einrichtungskonzept war.
Das Resultat ist eine intellektuelle „Unordnung“, die erfrischend befreiend wirkt: Wahre Identität ist kein Museumsstück, das man entstauben muss, sondern eine Dauerbaustelle der Moderne – offen, porös und voller Zukunft.

[L7od · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este livre é incrível. Fala de muitas questões relacionadas ao continente africano, com o pan-africanismo, a diáspora e até mesmo esta construção da identidade africana, feitas por um filósofo gânes, não muito perverso, que deixa claro seus pontos de vista e apresenta conjunturas e hi(e)stórias que nos aproximam da diversidade de culturas e povos africanos, das questões relacionadas ao racismo e a desigualdade da qualidade de vida dos negros nas américas e também muitas reflexões que extrapolam a cor da pele. O livro fala de cultura, literatura, filosofia, antropologia, sociologia, política, enfim tem crônicas pra todos os gostos. Realmente gostei muito.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this as an introduction in my African religion module

[beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read excerpts of this for an African American lit course. Appiah just brings up some good ideas about race and culture and I think he is brilliant

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

a very hard read.

[Elaine Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant thinking on Pan Africanism

[Gail]

Brilliant, insightful and beautifully written.

[Marsha]

Growing up African (Asante). from Looking for Lovedu --