Abstract:
Since Plato, Western Philosophy has offered accounts of creation entwining discussions from the philosophy of history, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of race. These particular discussions are implicated by Africana Philosophy as the impetus for colonization and the Scramble for Africa. Together, with these accounts of creation from Western Philosophy and the critical theory of Africana Philosophy, this dissertation reads aspects of linguistic, epistemological, and ontological violence applied to Africa by the European imaginary. This dissertation argues that there is a legacy of that colonialist violence through Western Philosophy, as discussed in Africana Philosophy, and manifested in the modern-day colonization of the voice of the Other.The intent of this dissertation is to first focus on the placement of Africa and race in Western Philosophy. This dissertation reads this placement through the work of Plato in Timaeus, G.W.F. Hegel in Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, and Michel Foucault in Society Must Be Defended. This dissertation deconstructs these works through the exegetical lens of Africana Philosophy. This lens is cultivated through work from Martin Bernal, Aim C saire, Cheikh Anta Diop, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze. Edouard Glissant, Achille Mbembe, V.Y. Mudimbe, Walter Rodney, and Serequeberhan, Tsenay. Through that deconstruction of the legacy of colonial violence, this dissertation asserts a repetition of this racialized violence as enforced against people living with AIDS through biopower. Particularly, this dissertation focuses on the narration of AIDS as revelatory of language used in the struggle for life in the creating, enacting, and being of life. This dissertation focuses on the work by Stephanie Nolan in 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa and Dider Fassin in When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa to discuss AIDS narratives.This dissertation offers that here is a discursive bioethics by which AIDS narratives offers ways to, in the decolonization of the narrator, then enact the decolonization of the mythical story of Africa as a racialized subject in the imagination of European alterity. This dissertation develops this discursive bioethics through the work of Benedict Anderson, Bat-Ami Bar On, Mich le Le Doeuff, and Jean-Luc Nancy.