Maasai concepts of personhood: The roles of recognition, community, and individuality

International Studies in Philosophy

Volumn 34, Issue 2, 2002, Pages

  Presbey, Gail M ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60950457646     PISSN: 02705664     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Michael Jackson and Ivan Karp, eds., Personhood and Agency: The Experience of Self and Others in African Cultures (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990), p. 18
2. Didier Kaphagawani, "Some African Concepts of Person: A Critique," in Ivan Karp and D. A. Masolo, eds., African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana Univ. Press, 2000), pp. 66-82, reference pp. 66-67
3. D. A. Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1994), p. 64
4. Rosalind Shaw, " Tok Af, Lef Af: A Political Economy of Temne Techniques of Secrecy and Self," in Karp and Masolo, eds., African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry, pp. 25-49, citation p. 26
5. As an example, notice the title of a recent book by Fred Lee Hord (Mzee Lasana Okpara) and Johnathan Scott Lee, eds., I Am Because We Are: Readings in Black Philosophy (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1995)
6. H. Odera Oruka, Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy (Nairobi: ACTS Press, 1991)
7. H. Odera Oruka, Ethics (Nairobi Univ. Press, 1990), p. 73
8. Quoted in Dikirr, Patrick Maison. The Philosophy and Ethics Concerning Death and Disposal of the Dead Among the Maasai. Masters Thesis (Nairobi: Univ. of Nairobi, 1994), p. 34
9. Dikirr, Philosophy and Ethics Concerning Death, pp. 41-42
10. Naomi Kipury, Oral Literature of the Maasai (Nairobi: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983), pp. 30-31
11. Barry Hallen and J. Olubi Sodipo, Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997), pp. 127-31
12. Menkiti, Ifeanyi A. "Person and Community in Traditional African Thought," in Richard A. Wright, ed., African Philosophy: An Introduction (Lanham, MA: Univ. Press of America, 1984)
13. Kudadjie, J. N. "Toward Moral Development in Contemporary Africa: Insights from Dangme Traditional Moral Experience," in Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu, eds., Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, 1 (Washington, D.C.: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1992), pp. 212-13
14. Gyekye, Kwame. "Person and Community in Akan Thought," in Kwame Gyekye and Kwasi Wiredu, eds., Person and Community, p. 108
15. Kaphagawani, "Some African Concepts of Person: A Critique," p. 71
16. Gbadegesin, Segun. "Current Trends and Perspectives in African Philosophy," in A Companion to World Philosophies. Ed. Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 548-63, esp. pp. 553-54
17. Interview by the author with Ntetia Namalae, Olepolos, 25 April 1999. Trans. Daniel Sasine
18. Kipury, Oral Literature of the Maasai (Nairobi: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983), Chapter on songs
19. Mbiti, John, African Religions and Philosophy (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), p. 214
20. Verhoef, Heidi and Claudine Michel, "Studying Morality Within the African Context: A Model of Moral Analysis and Construction," journal of Moral Education, vol. 26, no. 4, 1997, pp. 389-407. Quote p. 396
21. quoting Myers, L. J., "Transpersonal Psychology: The Role of the Afrocentric Paradigm," in Journal of Black Psychology 12, pp. 31-42, quote p. 35
22. To hold this consciousness of self literally at all moments, I suggest, is not easy. In Eastern philosophy, it was a practice which became possible for the enlightened sage, but it was not part of routine consciousness. According to Fung Yu-Lan, only the sage who has reached the highest level of consciousness (or "sphere of life" as he calls it), transcending the earlier lower stages of egoism and moralism, realizes that his/her true self is completely at one with the universe. I don't propose to deny the truth of this statement, nor to deny that Africans can and do have this experience. I merely express skepticism that this is the routine and constant conception of self possessed by most or all Africans. On the other hand, perhaps it is easier to consider oneself one with one's community rather than the entire universe. See Fung Yu-Lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy. Ed. Derek Bodde (MacMillan, 1948), pp. 338-40
23. Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity, pp. 137, 143
24. Dharmasiri argues that to call Buddhist Ethics either egoistic or altruistic makes no sense, because in Buddhism, the ego and others are ultimately interrelated in such a way that harm to others harms oneself, and vice versa. See Gunapala Dharmasiri, Fundamentals of Buddhist Ethics (Antioch, CA: Golden Leaves, 1989), pp. 12-21
25. Menkiti, "Person and Community in Traditional African Thought."
26. David Wong, "Relativism," in A Companion to Ethics. Ed. Peter Singer (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), pp. 442-50
27. "Disappearing World" video series, episode: "Maasai Women," Koch Vision/Shana chie Video, 1995
28. Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Trans. Joel Anderson (Polity Press, 1995), p. 23
29. Due to lack of relevant material, however, it cannot easily serve as the focus of this paper
30. Joel Anderson, translator's introduction to Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. x-xxi, reference p. xvii
31. Let me clarify the distinction by giving an example from literature of a person who has a unique talent that is not, however, regarded as important by his or her community. In Franz Kafka's short story, "The Hunger Artist," a professional faster bemoans the fact that no one takes interest in his fast of amazingly long duration, because, he notes, no one appreciates the "art of fasting" any longer. Franz Kafka, "The Hunger Artist," in Franz Kafka, The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces (New York: Schocken, 1971), pp. 243-56
32. Soitara ole Pulei, interview with the author, 17 April 1999. Venue: Murera (near Kiserian), trans. Daniel Sasine
33. Ngaimarish ole Mulo, Ingarroj, Olepolos, 13 December 1998. Interviewed by the author, trans. Daniel Sasine
34. Ngaimarish ole Mulo, interview, 13 December 1998
35. Soitara ole Pulei, interview
36. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (New York: Penguin, 1991), p. 194
37. Honneth, Axel. The Struggle for Recognition
38. Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967)
39. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 170-77
40. Herskovits, Melville, Cultural Anthropology (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), pp. 356-57
41. Kipury, Naomi, Oral Literature of the Maasai, pp. 30-31
42. Thomas Spear and Richard Waller, eds., Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press and Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1993)
43. Peter Rigby, Cattle, Capitalism, and Class: Ilparakuyo Maasai Transformations (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1992), p. 18
44. Bitek, Okot. Song of Lawino (Nairobi: East African Pub. House, 1966)
45. Song of Ocol (Nairobi: East African Pub. House, 1970)
46. See, for example, Catherine Oddie, Enkop Ai (National Museums of Kenya, 1995)
47. Emmanuel Eze, "Toward a Critical Theory of Postcolonial African Identities," in Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader, ed. E. Eze (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 339-44
48. Two recent books that emphasize the continuity of pastoral life among the Maasai and related ethnic groups are, Killian Holland, The Maasai on the Horns of a Dilemma, Nairobi: Gideon Were Press, 1996, and Francis Sakuda, et. al., Honey, Heifer and Water, National Museums of Kenya, 1998
49. While this paper focuses on notions of personhood, I have written and published another article that focuses on Maasai resistance to leaving their pastoral way of life. "Maasai Rejection of the Western Paradigm of Development: A Foucaultian Analysis," Cheryl Hughes and Yeager Hudson, eds., Cultural Integrity and World Community (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), pp. 339-59