How to Decolonize The Creolizing Thought of Kwasi Wiredu, Visionary West African Philosopher

Abstract

This article addresses problematic interpretations of African decolonial thought. It begins by responding to a recent
challenge to efforts at decolonizing knowledge in political theory and philosophy, arguing Olúfémi Táíwò raises
profound questions about what it means to do so. These problematize the market commodification of decolonial
thought and highlight reasons for interpreting African philosophy as modern, universalist, and creolizing in Jane
Anna Gordon’s and Michael Monahan’s senses. It next discusses the pathbreaking work of the late Ghanaian
intellectual and Akan philosopher, Kwasi Wiredu, whose political thought I situate within a genealogy I call
anticolonial West African liberalism. Subsequently, I examine Wiredu’s method of conceptual decolonization,
which remains an effective model for decolonizing knowledge production in philosophy. To show why, finally, I
thematize Wiredu’s writings on truth and philosophy of mind, concluding they should continue orienting African
decolonial theorists of the present generation as they struggle to advance the frontiers of knowledge beyond what
Wiredu witnessed in his lifetime.