DELIBERATIVE AGENCY, a study of modern African political philosophy

217pp., paperback, Bloomington, 2022

"The philosophical significance of Okeja's study of political failure should not be underestimated. Empirical analyses of political failure in Africa treat it as contingent; by contrast, Okeja diagnoses it as an existential condition for modern Africans. In responding to this existential crisis, Okeja issues a plea for a new departure in African philosophical thinking: from the retrieval of traditional values towards the creative exercise of the philosophical imagination that takes the post-independent experience of political failure as its baseline. This is a courageous book whose message, though bleak, is indispensable to the future of modern African political thought and practice."Katrin Flikschuh, Professor of Modern Political Theory, London School of Economics

"In Deliberative Agency, political philosopher Uchenna Okeja has provided us with a deeply innovative work that does not take off on some essentialist path but restores and instills analytical vitality and rigor into African conceptual categories. The study of African political failure has been the subject of an extensive scholarly literature. Contemporary African citizens struggle to make meaning of their daily experiences and to find agency in contexts marked by political inertia and corruption. Since "people experience themselves as a continuum," and their past is imperative to an understanding of their present and futures, Okeja has embarked on a process of conceptual creativity and produced "deliberative agency" as an account of contemporary African political philosophy that helps overcome the challenge posed by political failure. This is a highly erudite and original work." Emmanuel Akyeampong, Ellen Gurney Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University

Uchenna Okeja is a Professor of Philosophy at Rhodes University and a research associate at Nelson Mandela University. He is the co-editor of the journal Philosophical Papers.