From hauntology to a new animism? Nature and culture in Heinz Kimmerle’s intercultural philosophy

Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa

 
 
Field Value
 
Title From hauntology to a new animism? Nature and culture in Heinz Kimmerle’s intercultural philosophy
 
Creator Hofmeyr, Murray
 
Subject — animism, spectrology, hauntology, nature, culture, humanism, environment
Description Derrida has proposed a new spectrology in an attempt to deal with the ghost of Marx. Kimmerle shows that Marx has forgotten nature, and enquires about Derrida’s forgetting Marx’s forgetting. With specific reference to African culture he asks whether a new animism should not be explored within the framework of a new spectrology. Derrida uses the concept animism, but not in terms of the being of things in and ofthemselves, which could positively be thought as animated. Kimmerle proposes a way in which Western philosophy could be opened to African philosophy in order to understand the problem of animated nature more adequately. African philosophy has a concept of the universe of spiritual forces, in which nature and its powers arecompletely integrated. This paper explores these issues in dialogue with a number of African philosophers, while linking them to certain contestations within environmental philosophy and ethics, especially Murray Bookchin’s critique of spirit-talk in Deep Ecology. Kimmerle’s work on the relationship between Africa and Hegel sets the scenefor an elaboration of his re-evaluation of animism which is compared to the groundbreaking hypothesis of Bird-David. A relational epistemology is understood in ethical terms, and it is implied that such an epistemology would be more adequate for a new humanism that would be new in going beyond the western tradition, and in the processgain a more inclusive concept of “person” and “community”.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2007-04-11
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/td.v3i1.317
 
Source The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa; Vol 3, No 1 (2007); 38 pages 2415-2005 1817-4434
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/317/128
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2007 Murray Hofmeyr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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