Wim Van Binsbergen

Rethinking Africa's transcontinental continuities Wim Van Binsbergen

This volume of QUEST: An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de Philosophie considers Africa's transcontinental continuities, based on the Leiden 2012 international conference. Its prominent contributors include Coquery-Vidrovitch, Rowlands, Osha, Anselin, Li Anshan, Lange, and Van Beek - as well as the specialists Blazek and Berezkin. Our journal has always been a meeting place between philosophy and other disciplines, and this felicitous combination also marks the present volume. The Africanist establishment is largely partial to the splendid isolation and essentialisation of Africa / Africans; by contrast, a globalising, de-essentialising perspective informs this book. Here Africa and its inhabitants appear, at long last, as integral parts of the world as a whole, involved in a constant and complex process of exchange where Africa now gives, then takes; now (in Afrocentrist fashion) takes the initiative in global developments, then follows them.