Some years ago, I attended a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) workshop on grant writing. The moderator of the workshop asked me what my project was about, and as I started to reply, “My project is on conceptions of the good life in African philosophy…,” he interjected: “Well, Africa is such a big continent. We can’t really speak of African philosophy for such a diverse continent, can we?”

I was sure that the moderator couldn’t possibly have read a single book on African philosophy from cover to cover, so I got to thinking why that response had come so easily, so confidently to his tongue. To put it differently: what does the discovery by a U.S. academic that Africa is not a country say about his views of African philosophy?

Had I said, “My project is on conceptions of the good life in Western philosophy…” I’m quite sure his immediate response wouldn’t have been, “Well, ‘the West’ is such a huge region. We can’t really speak of Western philosophy for such a diverse region, can we?” And yet such a response would have been just as fitting. So why not? Why wasn’t such a response available to him?

Because for this academic — and many others in the United States — “African philosophy” names the doxa of various African “tribes” or “nationalities.” Unlike “Western philosophy,” which he takes to be a distinctive discourse responsive to a discrete set of texts, “African philosophy” is reduced to the identitarian emanations of African “tribal” groups.