AFRICAN VITAL FORCE

: SELF-REVOLUTION IN TOWA IN THE LIGHT OF THE FIGURE OF IYA EN OYĔWÙMÍ AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF A DECOLONIAL TEACHING PRACTICE

Abstract

How can we draw on the "new philosophical orientation in Africa" by Marcien Towa, a Cameroonian philosopher, to contextualize contemporary approaches to Oyèrónkẹ Oyěwùmí? Is it possible to analyze the liberation of man in Marcien Towa considering the figure of Ìyá and the female occupation of public space? Based on these questions, we propose to first analyze Towa's notion of self-evolution. In the second part, we present the philosopher Oyèrónkẹ Oyěwùmí and her contribution to African thought in her book "The Invention of Woman", with a particular focus on the figure of Ìyá. This allows us to reveal the development of social technologies through the female presence in public space. Thus, in the final part, I present the experience lived with the pedagogical practice at Gaston Berger University in São Luis, Senegal. In other words, the aim is to establish a non-exhaustive dialogue between these two philosophers and a pedagogical practice example on the definition of the colonial wound and the healing and defence based on the cosmogony of the orixas Iemanjá and Oxum, in search of a self-revolution that leads to conscientisation and political and existential liberation. As in the Afrodiasporic and Afro-Brazilian case, the different social, literary, fictional or theoretical strategies of healing and defense of the colonial wound.