Abstract
Philosophy is born out of the living experience of a people. It is out of the living experience of the conquered, dispossessed, oppressed, and exploited peoples of South Africa that the Black Consciousness philosophy was born.1 The philosophy took cognizance of the historical experience of conquest in the unjust wars of the colonization of South Africa. It recognized that “the Khoisan did not willingly submit to their systematic incorporation into foreign, white rule… The indigenous people were dispossessed, sometimes by violent force of arms, at other times by sheer ‘non-violent’ chicanery… When they lost the land, they lost their independence and the ability to shape and determine their destiny.”2 Thus the systematic dispossession of the conquered peoples of the country was questioned.
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Notes
Leonard Harris, ed., Philosophy Born of Struggle: from 1917 (Dubuque: lowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1983).
Sebidi, “The Dynamics of the Black Struggle and its Implications for Black Theology,” in Itumeleng Mosala and Buti Tlhagale, eds., The Unquestionable Right to be Free: Essays in Black Theology (Braamfontein, SA: Stockville Publishers, 1986).
Mogobe B. Ramose, “The Struggle for Reason in Africa,” in P. H. Coetzee and A. P. J. Roux, eds., Philosophy from Africa: A Text with Reading (South Africa: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Gail Gerhart, Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1979), 261.
Mamphela Ramphele, A Life (Cape Town, SA: David Philip, 1995).
Mihailo Markovic, “Women’s Liberation and Human Emancipation,” in C. Gould and Marx W. Wartofsky, eds., Women and Philosophy: Towards a Theory of Liberation (New York: Schocken Books, 1976): 152.
Kopano, in the report of the workshop on GWS (www.gwsafrica.org/about/gws%20 sept%20final.htm).
The United Nations, 1980. Forum 1980, United Nations, New York. Naomi Black and A nna Ba ker Cot t rell, Women and Ch ange , Equity Issue s in Development (London: Sage Publications, 1980), 275.
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 1990).
Ibid.
Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds., All the Women are White and All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, Black Women’s Studies (Old Westbury, New York: The Feminist Press, 1990).
Oshadi Mangena, “Perspectives on Feminist Epistemology and the Evolution of Black Feminist Thought,” in Sir. Marie Pauline Eboh, ed., Philosophical Criticisms: Anthology of Gender Issues (Port Harcourt, Nigeria: Pearl Publishers, 2000), 188.
Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD), “The Experience of the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD)” in Development Dialogue: A Journal of International Development Cooperation (Upsala: Dag Hammarksjold Foundation, 1982), 1–2.
bell hooks. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981), and Mangena, “Perspectives.”
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© 2008 Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander, and Nigel C. Gibson
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Mangena, M.J.O. (2008). The Black Consciousness Philosophy and the Woman’s Question in South Africa: 1970–1980. In: Mngxitama, A., Alexander, A., Gibson, N.C. (eds) Biko Lives!. Contemporary Black History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613379_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613379_14
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