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Department of the Languages and Cultures of Africa

Benedetta Lanfranchi

BA in Philosophy (Rome), MA in Philosophy and Critical-Theoretical Studies (Rome)

Overview

Benedetta Lanfranchi
Name:
Benedetta Lanfranchi
Email address:
Thesis title:
A Revolution in Justice: Judgment Theory in African Philosophy
Year of Study:
2nd
Internal Supervisors

Biography

I am Italian but I grew up in New York City. When I turned eighteen I decided to pursue my studies in philosophy at the University of Rome. During the last five years I have lived significant personal and professional experiences in East Africa. 

My approach to things has always been philosophical and it was only natural for me to try and understand the philosophy of the new continent I was exploring. I started finding it very strange that during all my years studying philosophy in high school and in university I had never once come across an African philosopher. The philosophy I had been exposed to for the whole course of my academic life was all Western, though with strong claims of universality! This is why I looked at SOAS as an academic environment where African intellectual and artistic realities could be studied and explored.

PhD Research

My PhD research, “A Revolution in Justice: Judgment Theory in African Philosophy” explores the contributions of African philosophy and African jurisprudence to themes of judgment and justice, both from a theoretical and practical perspective.

To carry out this philosophical investigation, I analyze texts of selected African philosophers and study the debates preceding the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, the enactment of the Gacaca Law in Rwanda and those following state referral to the International Criminal Court of the situation in Northern Uganda as “moments” of important philosophical discourse involving different local and international actors.

In the first part of my thesis, “A Premise: The Subject and Object Relation,” I analyze the challenges that African philosophy poses to the traditional subject-object relationship that dominated Western philosophy from Descartes to Husserl, where the subject and object are seen as separate entities and where the relationship between the two is essentially rationalistic.
The significance of this Premise is to illustrate that the way the subject is conceptualized in relation to the world and to others is essentially related to moral theory and to the practice of justice.

The first chapter, “Reclaiming the Subject”, analyses the beginning of African scholarly philosophy as a movement of reaffirmation of the African subject against the objectification inflicted by the colonizing Western subject. The early works of African philosophy are deeply linked with the existential quest of the African subject and it is this existential urgency that constitutes the original aspect of the philosophy: its beginning as a movement of liberation.
In the second chapter, “Subject and Object Questioned” the philosophical problematization of the subject and object relation is studied through the works of selected African philosophers. Particular relevance is given to the interpretation of the Cartesian cogito, to Marxist theory and to the concept of onto-criticism advanced by Tanzanian philosopher Euphrase Kezilahabi as a literary discourse opening a space where subject and object can be situated in a new ontological and existential relation.

In the second part of my thesis, “African Moral Philosophy and Judgment Theory” works of moral philosophy by selected African philosophers are analyzed with particular attention to judgment theory. In the last chapter, Hannah Arendt’s work on the faculty of judgment is analyzed in connection with the findings in African philosophy. Arendt’s notion that moral judgment depends on a sensus communis much like aesthetic judgment provides an interesting theoretical bridge with many themes of African moral philosophy.

The third part of my thesis, “Judgment In Practice: Three Case Studies of Justice Approaches in Africa” analyses the transitional justice scenario of post-apartheid South Africa, post-genocide Rwanda and post-civil war Uganda, with particular focus on the philosophical aspects contained in the debates surrounding the choices of justice approaches in these particular contexts.

PhD Publications

  • Daring To Be Destructive. Euphrase Kezilahabi’s Onto-criticism. Swahili Forum 19 (2012): 72 -87.
Other Publications:
  • East Africa International Justice Initiative, 'Report on the Stakeholders’ Sensitization Workshop', February 2011.
  • Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, 'Uganda: Leveling the Playing Field. The Race to 2011', December 2010.
  • Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, 'The Right to Healthcare in Uganda. August', 2010.
  • Italian Embassy in Nairobi, 'Italiani in Kenya. Testimonianze', June 2009.

PhD Conferences

  •  “Daring To Be Destructive. Euphrase Kezilahabi’s Onto-Criticism” Swahili Colloquium. University of Bayreuth, May 10-12, 2012
  •  “Theories of Punishment in African Philosophy. A discussion of Henry Odera Oruka’s Punishment and Terrorism in Africa (1976)” Third Institute for African Transitional Justice. Kitgum, March 17-23, 2013
  •  “Envisioning Transitional Justice Where There Is No Regime Change” with Chris Dolan and Stephen Oola. Third Institute for African Transitional Justice. Kitgum, March 17-23, 2013.

PhD Affiliations

African Royal Society
British Institute in East Africa