Philosophy Today

published on June 29, 2022

The Sense of Interconnectedness in African Thought-Patterns
In Search of a More Useful Philosophical Idiom

The sense of interconnectedness is perhaps one of the most celebrated features of African thought. It has been theorized under different philosophical idioms among African philosophers. It has appeared variously as African metaphysics, ontology, socialism and even religion—all in a bid to underline the basic idea that aspects of reality are inextricably interconnected and mutually impact one another in a seemingly universal web of interaction. While each of the idioms used to express this idea has some merits, the article privileges the epistemic idiom. To support this move, I make two mutually reinforcing arguments. First, it is appropriate to describe the sense of interconnectedness in epistemic terms because it is primarily a mode of knowing/perceiving the world. Second, and more importantly, the epistemic idiom is useful for the formulation of emancipatory demands and formation of epistemic alliances against the subjugation of African and non-Western knowledges by mechanisms of coloniality.