Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Author's note
- 1 (African)
- 2 The necessary adjective
- 3 Disorientation
- 4 Awake to Africa
- 5 A way of seeing
- 6 Off-centre
- 7 Words are not enough
- 8 Teaching Africa
- 9 Psychology is culture
- 10 Africa internationalised
- 11 Aiming for redundancy
- 12 Overlooked perspectives
- 13 Unselfconscious situatedness
- 14 Own goal
- 15 African scholarship
- 16 Education as ethical responsibility
- 17 Black children and white dolls
- 18 Search for Africa in psychology
- 19 Dethingifying
- 20 Three problems
- 21 Fog and friction
- 22 African enough?
- 23 Antipathy, apathy
- 24 Superhuman subhuman
- 25 Sources of negativity
- 26 Not all (blacks) think alike
- 27 Causes of confusion
- 28 Estrangement
- 29 The centre
- 30 Terminology
- 31 Defining by negation
- 32 Self-sabotage
- 33 A welcoming home
- 34 Defining by affirmation
- 35 Scholarly extraverts and introverts
- 36 It's African, except when it's not
- 37 Points on a continuum
- 38 Invisible Africa
- 39 Calls to decolonise
- 40 We need to talk
- 41 A heterogeneous terrain
- 42 It's power, stupid
- 43 Living with constant resistance
- 44 A psychological history of struggle
- 45 Healing potential
- 46 Porous hegemony
- 47 An offshore model
- 48 Only a situated understanding will do
- 49 Satisfied with alienation
- 50 A worldwide need
- 51 Diverse and dynamic orientations
- 52 Returning to definition
- 53 A psychology from nowhere
- 54 A proposal
- 55 (African) American psychology
- 56 Mischievous questions
- 57 Solutions to alienation
- 58 Conscientisation
- 59 A new course
- 60 Complicity
- 61 The lost self
- 62 An unacknowledged past
- 63 In and of the world
- 64 Origins of (African) psychology
- 65 Birth of a discipline
- 66 Paternity claims
- 67 Fatal intimacy
- 68 Lineage and authority
- 69 Being African
- 70 Interconnectivity
- 71 Four axioms
- 72 Above all
- 73 The past in the present
- 74 Making space for all
- 75 Caveat
- 76 A variegated approach
- 77 The ultimate goal
- 78 Real constraints
- 79 Debates and contests
- 80 A contingent term
- 81 Polyvocality
- 82 Four orientations
- 83 Notes on Western-oriented African psychology
- 84 The world as it is
- 85 Notes on psychological African studies
- 86 A note on cultural African psychology
- 87 Traditions and modernities
- 88 Further notes on cultural African psychology
- 89 A note on critical African psychology
- 90 Misperceiving the object
- 91 Permeable boundaries
- 92 European archives, African exchanges
- 93 Continued hopes and frustrations
- 94 (African) developmental psychology
- 95 (African) community psychology
- 96 Awake to yourself
- 97 Tenets of psychology
- 98 Psychological freedom
- 99 Think Africa in the world
- 100 Always the future
- References
- Index
89 - A note on critical African psychology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Author's note
- 1 (African)
- 2 The necessary adjective
- 3 Disorientation
- 4 Awake to Africa
- 5 A way of seeing
- 6 Off-centre
- 7 Words are not enough
- 8 Teaching Africa
- 9 Psychology is culture
- 10 Africa internationalised
- 11 Aiming for redundancy
- 12 Overlooked perspectives
- 13 Unselfconscious situatedness
- 14 Own goal
- 15 African scholarship
- 16 Education as ethical responsibility
- 17 Black children and white dolls
- 18 Search for Africa in psychology
- 19 Dethingifying
- 20 Three problems
- 21 Fog and friction
- 22 African enough?
- 23 Antipathy, apathy
- 24 Superhuman subhuman
- 25 Sources of negativity
- 26 Not all (blacks) think alike
- 27 Causes of confusion
- 28 Estrangement
- 29 The centre
- 30 Terminology
- 31 Defining by negation
- 32 Self-sabotage
- 33 A welcoming home
- 34 Defining by affirmation
- 35 Scholarly extraverts and introverts
- 36 It's African, except when it's not
- 37 Points on a continuum
- 38 Invisible Africa
- 39 Calls to decolonise
- 40 We need to talk
- 41 A heterogeneous terrain
- 42 It's power, stupid
- 43 Living with constant resistance
- 44 A psychological history of struggle
- 45 Healing potential
- 46 Porous hegemony
- 47 An offshore model
- 48 Only a situated understanding will do
- 49 Satisfied with alienation
- 50 A worldwide need
- 51 Diverse and dynamic orientations
- 52 Returning to definition
- 53 A psychology from nowhere
- 54 A proposal
- 55 (African) American psychology
- 56 Mischievous questions
- 57 Solutions to alienation
- 58 Conscientisation
- 59 A new course
- 60 Complicity
- 61 The lost self
- 62 An unacknowledged past
- 63 In and of the world
- 64 Origins of (African) psychology
- 65 Birth of a discipline
- 66 Paternity claims
- 67 Fatal intimacy
- 68 Lineage and authority
- 69 Being African
- 70 Interconnectivity
- 71 Four axioms
- 72 Above all
- 73 The past in the present
- 74 Making space for all
- 75 Caveat
- 76 A variegated approach
- 77 The ultimate goal
- 78 Real constraints
- 79 Debates and contests
- 80 A contingent term
- 81 Polyvocality
- 82 Four orientations
- 83 Notes on Western-oriented African psychology
- 84 The world as it is
- 85 Notes on psychological African studies
- 86 A note on cultural African psychology
- 87 Traditions and modernities
- 88 Further notes on cultural African psychology
- 89 A note on critical African psychology
- 90 Misperceiving the object
- 91 Permeable boundaries
- 92 European archives, African exchanges
- 93 Continued hopes and frustrations
- 94 (African) developmental psychology
- 95 (African) community psychology
- 96 Awake to yourself
- 97 Tenets of psychology
- 98 Psychological freedom
- 99 Think Africa in the world
- 100 Always the future
- References
- Index
Summary
With a more materialist, political, or critical orientation, African psychology seeks to be attentive to the materiality or structures of daily life, including economic and political and other social institutions and structures. This is what I refer to as critical African psychology. As it concerns itself with structures that govern our lives, including our cognitive and emotional lives, another name we can give to this critical African psychological orientation is structural psychology. According to this stance, these institutions and structures are seen as shaping psychology, and a critical African psychology perceives itself as oppositionally situated, within yet against economic, political and other structures. Like the previous two orientations, critically oriented African psychology tends to be interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, appropriating its theories and methods from critical and radical African thought, critical Western psychology, and critical and radical Western thought more generally. Critical and structurally inclined African psychologists prefer to pose questions about the workings of power and knowledge in societies, institutions, groups, relationships and within psychology. This orientation is distinguished from cultural African psychology by its suspicious stance not only towards US and Western European psychology, but also towards all psychology and notions of culture.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The World Looks Like This From HereThoughts on African Psychology, pp. 178Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2019