Mabogo More receives the Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award from the Caribbean Philosopy Association

Mabogo More: More than a Black Philosopher

 

Mabogo More

The Con

The Rhodes Must Fall campaign has shaken both the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University to the core. It has quickly become about a lot more than just a statute and name. Students are demanding the deracialisation and decolonisation of both institutions. As more and more stories are being told about the racism faced by workers, students and academics in these institutions, and its hold over curricula, the idea of the liberal university as a space of universal enlightenment and reason is being subjected to sustained and cogent critique. Much of this critique is, rightly, orientated towards the present and the prospect of a better future. But there is a long history of the systematic marginalisation of black South African academics, whether working at home or in exile, in both the liberal and radical wings of the South African academy. In 2015 students at a university like Rhodes are quite likely to graduate with a degree in the social sciences without ever having been asked to read people like Archie Mafeje or Sam Nolutshungu.

No country for brilliant thinkers

Mabogo More

by Kwanele Sosibo, Mail & Guardian

The philosopher’s den cum-study-cum-living area simultaneously conjures order and chaos. The bookshelf behind his desk is lined with mostly existential philosophy tracts in logical order, so that he easily pulls out tomes by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and African-American philosopher Leonard Harris to chart his intellectual trajectory. His desk is covered in open, upended books alongside strewn academic papers, evoking his widely referenced, re-interpretive papers and essays.

Locating Frantz Fanon in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Mabogo Percy More, Journal of Asian & African Studies

There is a huge re-emergence of Frantz Fanon’s ideas and an equally huge interest in his work in post-apartheid South Africa, both in the academy and social movement and organizations. Contrary to some commentators, particularly his biographers, this article aims to locate Fanon within the South African struggle for liberation. It is argued here that Fanon, throughout his life, as evidenced by his writings, was highly concerned about apartheid just as he was about French Algerian colonialism. For him, the paper claims, apartheid was synonymous with colonialism and therefore his critique of colonialism was just as much a critique of apartheid. The resurgence of his name and ideas in the country is a consequence of this critique.

The Intellectual Foundations of the Black Consciousness Movement

The Intellectual Foundations of the Black Consciousness Movement by TigersEye99

Mabogo More: Hegel, the Black Atlantic & Mphahlele

Mabogo More: Hegel, the Black Atlantic & Mphahlele by TigersEye99

Lewis Gordon: A Phenomenology of Biko's Black Consciousness

Click here to download this essay in pdf.

Biko: Africana Existentialist Philosopher

by Mabogo More, Alternation, 2004

This paper, following Lewis Gordon's extensive phenomenological work on Frantz Fanon, seeks to locate Bantu Steve biko within the philosophical terrain, more pointedly the Africana existentialist tradition.

Aimé Césaire

by Mabogo Percy More, Hydrarchy

We the living shoulder the historical responsibility of ensuring that the deeds and words of the dead should not fade into oblivion unnoticed. Since the dead (ancestors) will always be there, confronting us directly or far off on the horizons of our being, our duty requires that we accept this responsibility with a clear consciousness. The death of Aimé Césaire - the Martinican poet, politician and revolutionary - last week calls on us to carry out the responsibility that we owe the dead.

Thulani Ndlazi Introduces Mabogo More's 'Without Land There is No True Liberation'

Mabogo P. More's recent paper on Fanon and land question in South Africa is online here. It is introduced, below, by the Reverend Thulani Ndlazi from the Church Land Programme.