Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò

Lecture Abstract:

I published a paper titled “Political Obligation and Military Rule” in 1996 in which I argued that the persistent silence in the philosophical literature on political obligation–particularly, of the challenge posed to the phenomenon by the experience of living under conditions of military rule, a variant of what is otherwise called extra-constitutional rule–was an omission that called for remediation.  Of course, my then paper was an effort in the direction of that remediation.  I have over the years since its publication noticed that the paper has not attracted any attention in the philosophical discourse concerning its subject matter.  Yet the problem it treated has not disappeared into the historical ether.  Rather, military rule continues to be a standard part of the human experience and the problem that it poses has not become any less relevant.  If that were the only justification for addressing this issue the original paper would have sufficed.  This postscript has been compelled by events since the original publication.  On this note, it is not the continuing intrusion of the military into politics in different countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa that calls for a revisit.  Rather, it is that the failure to take seriously the theory of political obligation propounded in the original paper means that scholars are unable to explain the recurrence of military interventions in politics and, more importantly, how to explain the mixed fortunes of such occurrences in different countries.  I argue presently that when it comes to the latter issue, our theory has been well corroborated by history and paying attention to it might, indeed, enable us to predict the trajectory of political obligation in polities that are, on the surface, stable democracies.  This is what has necessitated this postscript.

Workshop Abstract:

This workshop features Professor Taiwo in conversation with UW-Madison professor of African Cultural Studies, Matthew H. Brown. In interview style, they will explore the pitfalls and payoffs of employing the concept of agency to understand concepts like political obligation and decolonization and how they may be represented visually.

Biography:

Táíwò’s primary field is philosophy, with much of his work focusing on politics in Africa and the legacies of colonialism. His most recent book, Against Decolonization: Taking African Agency Seriously, argues that the ascendence of “decolonization” rhetoric in the humanities risks making the agency, and therefore the lived realities, of people from Africa and other formerly colonized regions invisible in the face of an otherwise overwhelming colonial legacy. More directly, one of his strongest contributions to African political philosophy is a canonical essay on the subject of political obligation in nonconstitutional contexts, particularly military rule. He will contribute to the Center’s programming by addressing the agency, and therefore rendering visible the choices, of people who find themselves in political dispensations where they must grasp to understand their political obligations to regimes they haven’t chosen.

Táíwò’s book, How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010) was a joint winner of the Frantz Fanon Book Award of the Caribbean Philosophical Association in 2015. His works have been translated into French, Italian, German, and Chinese. At the present time, he working on a monograph tentatively titled, Does the United States Need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

For more information, see Táíwò’s website.