Exiled from History: Africa in Hegel’s Academic Practice

Abstract

Abstract:Many scholars, African and otherwise, have excoriated G.W.F. Hegel for his dismissal of Africa from history and progress in his lectures on the philosophies of history and religion. This has been done by quoting his texts and setting his words in the context of his influence on nineteenth-century European imperialism and racism. A different approach informs this paper. I treat Hegel, a complicated person, as a working university academic with a career to make and an overriding desire to publicize his own thought. I provide biographical insights relevant to these matters, and go on to examine specific texts about Africa that Hegel either sought out or chanced upon, read, misread, excerpted, used, and misused in support of his theorizing and apriorism. Attention is paid throughout to the construction, recording, and dissemination of Hegel’s lectures, and to aspects of their reception and authority in the educational formation of selected modern African intellectuals. I argue that such persons and African studies more widely are still trying to come to grips with the long and enduring shadow cast by Hegel over both the past and present of the continent.