Cameroon: Supervision and lecturing tour on Intercultural Philosophy, March 2005 (fast-loading version)
  Cameroun: Tour de supervision et de conférences sur la philosophie interculturelle, mars 2005 (téléchargement accéléré)

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PhD Network on Intercultural Philosophy around the Rotterdam chair of Foundations of Intercultural Philosophy

One of the priorities of the chair of Foundations of Intercultural Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, has been to create a context in which Intercultural Philosophy may be pursued in a multicentred way, combining and contrasting the cultural inspiration of a plurality of regional traditions world-wide (sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia, China, the North Atlantic region, etc.), so as to constrain and, to the extent of the possible, overcome North Atlantic hegemony in knowledge production. Adoption and resuscitation of the journal Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de Philosophie has been one of the strategies towards this goal. Making the chair's academic and literary production, and even his engagement in African therapy, globally and freely available on the Internet, has been another such strategy.

The most recent development is the creation of an intercontinental network of PhD candidates. Considering the paucity of intercontinental scholarships for Intercultural Philosophy and related fields, those PhD candidates who live outside Europe will not be invited to take up residence in the Netherlands; instead, they will remain in their own country (where they typically hold an academic appointment) during most of the period of their PhD work, and their supervision will take the form of a combination of annual local visits by their supervisor, in combination with extensive e-mail contact and internal circulation and discussion of their papers on the network's private website. Only towards the end of the PhD trajectory a few months' stay in the Netherlands is foreseen, to finalise the thesis and to prepare for the defense. The network is an initiative of the chair of Intercultural Philosophy, with support from the African Studies Centre (Leiden), Erasmus University Rotterdam, and the Erasmus University Trust fund. Participation in the network is by cooptation only, subject to the chair's approval of an extensive (at least 25 pp., 10,000 words) project proposal, including full bibliography and time table.

Cameroon (click for map)

The presence, in Cameroon, of a small core of two PhD students belonging to the PhD Network on Intercultural Philosophy prompted Wim van Binsbergen to visit them as supervisor in March 2005. Long and fruitful supervisory sessions, both groupwise and individually, were combined with an intensive tour of formal public lectures in three Cameroonian universities. These lectures also created the context for informal and most cordial intellectual exchanges with dozens of Cameroonian senior colleagues in the fields of philosophy, social sciences, history, economics, political science, Egyptology, literary studies, and biology; and to meet with dozens of advanced students already preparing for local PhD theses, many of whom presented their projects in detail as a basis for intensive and mutually inspiring discussions. These contacts laid the foundation for intensive exchanges with senior colleagues in the near future, and possibly for a further expansion of the Cameroonian branch of the PhD Network on Intercultural Philosophy.

By and large these two weeks of intensive touring brought out the high level of scholarship existing in Cameroon (many professors hold French doctorats d' Etat, comparable with the German Habilitation and in many respects superior to Anglosaxon PhDs -- and these qualities reflect on the students); the eagerness and capability to engage in incisive intellectual debate with international visitors; but also the great disparities in facilities and endowments that exist between the three universities visited:

  1. the francophone Université de Yaounde I;
  2. the francophone Université Catholique de l'Afrique Centrale; and
  3. the anglophone University of Buea

The local organisation of this supervision and lecturing tour was efficiently executed by the PhD candidate Mr Pius Mosima (lecturer at the National Institute for Public Administration). Prof. Godfrey Tangwa, Head of the Department of Philosophy, graciously acted as official host on behalf of the University of Yaounde I. The PhD candidate Mr Pascal Touoyem, of the Department of Philosphy Yaounde I and the Service Oecuménique pour la Paix SEP (Yaounde), made additional logistic contributions, e.g. SEP enabled us to conduct our PhD seminars in a quiet and well-equipped environment. George Ekema was our patient, resourceful and reliable driver throughout the entire period.

Cameroon happens to be one of the South countries where members of the PhD Network on Intercultural Philosophy are residing. Similar supervision and lecturing tours are now being prepared for South Africa and Indonesia, while the People's Republic of China is under consideration.

formal addresses delivered

The following seminars and public lectures were given by Wim van Binsbergen during his Cameroonian tour:

at the Université Catholique de l'Afrique Centrale:

1. 'La notion de l' hégémonie come concept clé de la philosophie interculturelle', lecture for graduate students preparing for the licenciate, Université Catholique de l'Afrique Centrale, Monday 14 March 2005, 11-13.00 hrs;

the French argument presented was based on a selection from Wim van Binsbergen's book Intercultural encounters, especially the introduction and the final chapter

2. 'L'Afrocentricité et la lutte pour une perspective africaine sur l'histoire universelle de la culture', public lecture, Université Catholique de l'Afrique Centrale, Wednesday 16 March 2005, 15.00-18.00 hrs;

the French argument presented was a combination of those available at Wim van Binsbergen's webpage on Afrocentricity, both in French and in English

at the University of Buea

3. 'Globalisation: African agency in the appropriation of global culture', public lecture, University of Buea, staff and senior students of the social science faculty, Tuesday 22 March 2005, 11.00-13.30 hrs;

the English argument presented was gleaned from Wim van Binsbergen's co-edited book Situating globality: African agency in the appropriation of global culture, especially the introduction (with Rijk van Dijk and Jan-Bart Gewald)

at the Université de Yaounde I

4. 'Qu'est-ce que c'est que la philosophie interculturelle?', public lecture, Université de Yaounde I, facultés de philosophie et des sciences sociales, Wednesday 23 March 2005, 14-17.00 hrs;

the French argument presented was based on a selection from Wim van Binsbergen's book Intercultural encounters, especially the introduction, the final chapter, and chapters 5-8

5. 'Valentin Mudimbe: Dilemmas of universalism and homelessness -- is it possible to ground our knowledge production as Africans in our African identity and experience?', public lecture, Université de Yaounde I, facultés de philosophie et des sciences sociales, Thursday 24 March 2005, 13-15.00 hrs;

the English argument presented was a condensation of Wim van Binsbergen's very extensive paper 'An incomprehensible miracle: Central African clerical intellectualism versus African historic religion: A close reading of Valentin Mudimbe’s Tales of Faith', in press in the Journal of African Cultural Studies (2004, to appear June 2005), pp. 10-65.


click here for a map of Cameroon

Yaounde street scenes

to compensate for the campus' lack of resources, students of philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology have created and are managing their own library/lecture hall at Yaounde I inside the students' circle, during one of Wim van Binsbergen's seminars. Note the minimal furniture. The gentleman in khaki, centre, is Prof. Kishani of the Ecole Normale (Yaounde), holder of a doctorat d' Etat in philosophy from the Sorbonne, Paris, France, and a prominent anglophone poet

Under the chairmanship of official host Prof. Godfrey Tangwa (holder of a Nigerian PhD, Africa's foremost specialist on bioethics, and Head of the Department of Philosophy at Yaounde I), Wim van Binsbergen addresses staff and students on the topic 'Qu'est-ce que c'est que la philosophie interculturelle?'; to the right the chairman of the students' association managing the hall and library

the students' carefully collected and maintained, yet absolutly minimal and patchy, library resources; students take turns as unpaid library attendants and thus prevent theft, loss and damage to their cherished intellectual capital

Outside the lively and well-attended seminars, day after day was spent on intensive PhD seminars with the Cameroonian candidates for the PhD seminars, the Norbert Kenne Memorial Peace House (Yaounde), Service Oecumenique pour la Paix, offered an ideal and hospitable environment

Université Catholique de l'Afrique Centrale (Yaounde): the extremely well-kept campus during rains Université Catholique de l'Afrique Centrale (Yaounde): main lecture theatre during one of Wim van Binsbergen's seminar

at the Université Catholique de l'Afrique Centrale (Yaounde), after Wim van Binsbergen's seminar on Afrocentricity, left: waiting for refreshments in the senior common room; from left to right the Professors Oum (Egyptology; Yaounde I), van Binsbergen (Intercultural Philosophy; Rotterdam and Leiden), Mono-Njanga (Philosophy; Yaounde I) and Kouam (Philosophy, Université Catholique de l'Afrique Centrale); right: well-earned refreshments to lubricate a lively intellectual exchange

at the Université Catholique de l'Afrique Centrale (Yaounde), Prof. Kouam displays publications (including several volumes of Quest: Revue Africaine de Philosophie) to be deposited at the campus library

during this trip, the large number of presentations, formal and informal contacts in both francophone and anglophone Cameroon could only be realised in such a short time thanks to the skill, patience and humour of driver George Ekema

Mr Pius Mosima, proud alumnus of the Université Catholique de l'Afrique Centrale (Yaounde); lecturer at the National Institute for Public Administration, PhD candidate and efficient organiser of Wim van Binsbergen's trip in Cameroon

Mr Pascal Touoyem, long-standing political publicist and publisher, critic of ethnic politics, and lecturer of philosophy; PhD candidate

at the boundary of francophone (eastern) and anglophone (western) Cameroon, the bridge destroyed in 2004 when a fuel truck exploded, and the rumours and allegations surrounding this incident, testify to the great historical differences between these two regions

Mount Cameroon, a complex of active volcano's rising to c. 4000 m above the Gulf of Guinea, offers breathtaking vistas as well as a pleasant climate

In Bakwerri villages on the slopes of Mount Cameroon, the recent dead are buried on the eastern outskirts of the the family plot. Land scarcity (partly related to the CDC/Bakwerri Land Case) is on of the factors in the high rate of witchcraft accusations, which the regional Male cult can scarcely control During many decades, the southern slopes of Mount Cameroon (near Buea) were the scene of the Cameroon Development Corporation, a huge plantation enterprise now partly dismantled and privatised. From the 1980s onwards, Piet Konings of the Leiden African Studies Centre (ASC) has conducted important research here, in the context of an agreement then negotiated with the Cameroonian Council of Human Sciences by Wim van Binsbergen as ASC's Head of Political and Historical Studies

Mount Cameroon is traditionally considered the domain of the mountain god Epasamoto ('Half-Human', in clearly identifiable northwestern Bantu). In this depiction commissioned with a Buea sign painter and used for a Cameroon TV docudrama 'In search of Epasamoto', the god appears as horizontally split, upper half human, lower half stone. However, there is reason to surmise that underneath this local representation lurks a much older concept distributed all over sub-Saharan Africa: that of the halfling (known e.g. as Luwe, Mwendanjangula), who is a forest/ hunting/ weather/ metallurgical god, not horizontally but vertically split, and hence having only one leg, one arm, one eye, one nostril, etc. (click here for background information from Wim van Binsbergen's ongoing long-range comparative and historical research on global leopard symbolism, where this divinity plays a major role)

African realities highly relevant to the PhD Network on Intercultural Philosophy around the Rotterdam chair of Foundations of Intercultural Philosophy: a standard cybercafé in Buea. One hour of internet access costs here CFA 300, i.e. Euro 0.45. For comparison: a femme de chambre in a hotel earns about CFA 30,000 per month, i.e. Euro 45. In this cybercafe, connections, hardware and possibly also virus infections are such that to open, read, and reply to one e-mail message of a few hundred words may take as long as half an hour or more.
University of Buea, South West Cameroon, where Wim van Binsbergen's seminar on globalisation was chaired and hosted by Dr Yenshu, Head of Sociology, and major international exponent of a transactional and performative perspective on ethnicity (Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 2002-2005)

market day in Buea
hospitality in the family

the harbour village of Idenau at the contested Nigerian border one returns transformed, and in puzzlement at the complexities, contradictions, potential, resourcefulness, cultural (spiritual, culinary!) riches, archievements, and unparallelled hospitality of this amazing country

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page last modified: 31-03-2005 08:26:39