‘If you carry the egg basket, do not dance.’
— Asante proverb

We gathered, Dear Reader, in honor of a beloved Elder. The importance of doing so is premised on an understanding from ancient times in Africa. Briefly, the cosmology of many African communities points to an initial goodness from which emanates values over time. The Elder, being closer to the past, is a custodian of value handed over time. We who inherit that value are obligated to offer something of value to subsequent generations. In doing so, each generation could fulfill the mission of becoming a venerated Elder. Failing to do so, however, raises a philosophical problem. What would one become if that mission is betrayed? Though of an older age, would not the failure to take on the custodianship of responsibility for knowledge entail also failing to become an Elder?

An Elder, on occasions, needn’t be older. There are, as many African communities would attest, young—even child—Elders. Such Elders, paradoxically, are old when they are young; young when they are old.

I met Ato Sekyi-Otu in 1996, although, as a scholar, I had already met him the proper way. I knew he was the author of a legendary dissertation (1971) on Frantz Fanon, a copy of which Paget Henry had shared with me. Additionally, I had the good fortune of having been one of the referees for his manuscript that was published that year as Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience. That text, as readers of this gathering of reflections on Sekyi-Otu’s work know, is a classic in Fanon studies. Having read the manuscript, I was able to acknowledge it by way of citation in my book Fanon and the Crisis of European Man, which was published the preceding year. The occasion on which we met was the Antiracism Lecture at York University in March 1996. Sekyi-Otu, as the much loved and honored senior scholar in my areas of research, was entrusted with my introduction.

When I walked onto the stage, which was the first time we met in the proverbial flesh, Sekyi-Otu looked perplex. In his introduction he explained why. Having read my writings, he thought I was an old man. He expected to welcome an Elder, but, instead, a fellow in his early thirties stood on the stage. Well-versed in the tradition on which I reflected in this Afterword, Sekyi-Otu gave me an honor shared as well by the jazz musicians with whom I grew up and performed music. Whatever one’s chronological age may be, when one stands on the stage to speak or perform, one must do so for those across the ages. It is a moment to learn or perform together.

My lecture was entitled ‘Frantz Fanon and Critical Race Theory.’ Given right-wing politicians and pseudo-intellectuals’ efforts to besmirch critical Fanon and race theory through familiar tactics of misrepresentation, the lecture’s title was clearly spot on. I was responding at the time to what I saw as a Trojan horse both from neoliberal analytical philosophical treatments of the study of race and racism and postmodernist poststructuralist accounts, which, unfortunately, many on the cultural studies left heavily embraced. Beneath both, I argued, was an affirmation of the right through an undermining of coherent conditions of possibility by which the left could actually act.

Sekyi-Otu and I were immediately bonded as lovers of truth, freedom, and dignity. I did not know at that time that I would one day join a community honoring him as an Elder who, true to form, is youthful in his older age.

Among the many unfortunate consequences of the rise of capitalism is its concomitant philosophical anthropology, which separates the human being from relationships through which humanity makes sense. The preferred—and proffered—anthropology is the isolated individual who is one often onto his self. Such an individual, no longer looking beyond himself, ignores the past and is not interested in a future beyond his own. For that individual, obligations to ancestors are nonsense, and descendants from whom one cannot immediately benefit are irrelevant. In truth, descendants are already imperiled when ancestry is no longer of value, since one cannot become an ancestor without descendants. Each generation, after all, is premised on those who precede them. This precedence and succession needn’t be biological. It could be constellation of ideas; it could be, as I’ve already reflected, values. Without a way of articulating obligation across time, how could, for example, any argument about the importance of preparing the planet for generations to come reach ears that listen?

The meeting of Sekyi-Otu and me immediately became Ato and Lewis. We realized we were already listening, which is a form of learning, to and with one another before our meeting, and we’ve not stopped since.

The ability to think beyond the self raises the question of abstractions and generalizations. I recall an amusing exchange from my years as a graduate student. Discovering I was studying philosophy, a community activist remarked that she had no time for abstractions. ‘I prefer to focus on the concrete,’ she said.

I replied: ‘You do realize “the concrete” is an abstract, no?’

There is no thinking without generalization. Where there is danger is in over-generalization, where the effort to assert and reassert a point leads to an internal logic in which the thought loses touch with reality. Focusing on being consistent with itself, it ignores its relationship with anything that doesn’t fit. Left to its completeness, its self-contained consistency, it ignores the contradictions that would open its eyes to reality.

This reflection on generalizations is familiar to Marxist thinkers. It is a reminder that the syllogistic logic of seeking closed universals imperils human life, which is rich with contradictions. Too many critics of Marxism—and of Hegelianism—fail to understand this aspect of dialectical thought because of the popular characterization of dialectics as seeking a synthesis from contraries. If one simply presumes a movement from thesis and antithesis to synthesis, one has a foregone conclusion that erases praxis. It is one of the reasons that presumed syntheses have been imposed on communities such as those in the Global South with a pregiven edict: become the Global North. Yet, as any nuanced dialectician understands, dialectics is not about closure but, instead, about openness. It is the logic of treating the human world as contraries—as enforced under colonial and racist regimes—that presume outcomes of universal positives beyond which are, supposedly, universal negatives. But lived reality doesn’t work that way. When an avowed universal positive is proven false, the possibilities are manifold. Each subsequent step has its own contradictions to address, which means each disclosure offers many directions in which to go, many acts of valuing to explore, many possibilities through which, in practice, responsibility for action comes to the fore. What is this but a testament to activities and relationships through which freedom manifests itself as open instead of closed?

Sekyi-Otu has dedicated his life to this commitment as an educator. By this, I don’t only mean his formal vocation as a university professor. I mean, also, his ongoing quest to learn, to understand, to communicate. In this sense, a professor is a continuing student, one who, in continuing to learn, places learning across relations. Thus, students of this continuing student join the infinite and value-producing task of learning. If we extend this understanding to the activist and, eventually, the revolutionary, the point is that revolutionary praxis is a form of learning together, which means that models of imposition, of forcing the people, militate against its avowed project of liberation. In this sense, education for Sekyi-Otu was never a job. It is, in the true sense of educere (to bring out) and educare (to bring up) an acknowledgment of the ongoing allegory of free thought. Although attributed to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in his Republic, the idea preceded him in written East African texts by a few thousand years. Humanity, becoming aware through standing out from merely being, reaches beyond the self. It marks the birth of freedom and responsibility for it through attunements with reality. After all, if the quest for liberation is premised on falsehoods—if liberation is a lie—wouldn’t coming out or being brought up be nothing short of futile? Wouldn’t revolution be, as the right-wing attest, folly?

Sekyi-Otu, as his readers and students know, is firmly committed to probing the question of liberation. He has done so through reflections over the course of his career, a collection of which is available under the title Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays (2018).

That text takes on the colonial epistemic not-out-of-Africa thesis without being reactionary. The text is a sober intervention in political theory from the Global South—specifically, West African political thought as a point of departure into debates on ambivalences plaguing contemporary left political thought. It addresses the unfortunate tendency to treat key theoretical concepts such as ‘universality’ and ‘individuality’ as imports into Africa instead of part of the already critical discourses of African societies.

Sekyi-Otu offers there an important critique of Manichean tendencies in political thought borne of Eurocentrism and reactionary African nationalisms premised on postmodern, often poststructuralist, notions of radical difference. Difference is there, he argues, but not as all the difference. In other words, political reality is premised on communicative practices and possibilities through which understanding rejects the false dilemma of full positivity versus absolute negativity. In either direction, there is no possibility of movement.

Recall my discussion of dialectics. Although dialectics tends to be treated as a concept that sprung up willy-nilly from Hegel and then materialized in the thought of Marx, the truth of the matter is that dialectical thinking has been at work on the African continent for millennia. One could easily find such reasoning, especially on the limitations of false universals, in Ethiopian thought from the seventeenth century or ancient East African thought from four thousand years ago on varieties of wisdom and the fluidity of existence and the complexity of balance, truth, and life through relations with negations. That such reflections are not written in the style of academic journals or recent academic treatises—many of which look more like government manuals—should not diminish their significance as ideas.

It is, however, the present and the future about which Sekyi-Otu is most concerned. He is aware of the forms of severing of the past that could be destructive instead of being constructive. The destructive kind is conservative. It fetishizes the past as complete and demanding endless repetition. The constructive kind understands the past as a struggle for improving the world. There is thus paradox in embracing improving as an ongoing practice since it is a repetition that lets go of repetition itself as the objective. With that understanding in mind, Sekyi-Otu takes on many classic tropes of postmodern political theory and their avowed anti-liberalism. He does so through skillful analysis and a sober understanding of theory as addressing reality—instead of fantasies severed from connections to evidence and a lack of accountability. He brings to the fore the core insight of revolutionary theories of social change—namely, their underlying appeal to human dignity and freedom—in which the outrage at degradation entails antidotes of dignity, respect, and transformation of social and material conditions that impede their potential. The methodological and conceptual issues that he addresses include ideological reductionism. Sekyi-Otu examines what I would call the disciplinarily decadent conditions under which such idols are formulated and preserved and then, through what Jane Anna Gordon would call the creolization of theory, brings worlds together in the practice of what he is arguing for in a teleological suspension of fashionable theoretical tropes for the sake of addressing political reality.

Many voices are brought to the fore in which Sartre and Fanon, among many other meetings of Europe and the Caribbean, join living debates across African giants such as Paulin Hountondji (Benin), Kwame Gyekye (Ghana), Ngũgĩ  wa Thiong’o (Kenya), and Ayi Kwei Armah (Ghana), to name a few. Political science thus meets philosophy, literature, sociology, history, and more, because, as should be evident, none alone could address the gravity and scope of this problem of tendencies to close off—at times also to reject—humanity without ignoring disciplinary shortcomings. Disciplinary nationalism falls sway to reality in Sekyi-Otu’s thought, as it should.

Take, for example, the distinction between individuality and individualism. The former refers to an important condition of human existence. To stand out is to individuate, but each act of individuation is also a form of distinction through which reality becomes intelligible. If we could not make distinctions and, thus, individuate, we would fall into a sea of incoherence. Individualism, however, discards that epistemic and existential project. As we have already seen, it turns the self onto itself, with the result of casting aside relations by which the self could make sense in the first place. Individualism is thus not only solipsistic and arrogant but also, ultimately, antipathetic to what many individualists claim to adhere: freedom. Locked into the self by itself, the individual in this sense might as well be a god. But such a god would have nowhere to go, since the logic of going anywhere requires a negation of the self-sustained ‘here’ on which such individualism rests. What would such an individual be, if not a god, but a child who fails to understand what it means to step outside, or, in familiar philosophical language, leave the cave?

Sekyi-Otu offers a similar critique of other fashionable conceptual errors, especially as averred by postmodernists and poststructuralists. For instance, there is the error of epistemic centrism, where many critiques of ‘foundations’ fail to address the implications of their argument, which is that conversations would no longer be possible without, at least, the condition of possibility afforded by communication and communicability.

Today, however, there are other problems with which poststructuralists and postmodernists must contend. Among them is the ascent of many left-wing academics as the model of organic political action under conditions in which they were simply coopted by the market dictates of employment. In short, the commodification of thought and politics led to a triumphant neoliberalism and neoconservatism through which the shortcomings of prioritizing textualist and genealogical responses became apparent and, in a word, embarrassing. As of today, meeting an avowed poststructuralist is rare. This does not mean that poststructuralist and postmodern thinking has disappeared. It has, as I’ve argued in Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (2021), rebranded itself as critical theory, decoloniality, and Afropessimism.

Today’s critical theory is basically textualism, often of a Eurocentric kind, continued. Decoloniality has taken the mantle from genealogical postructuralism through replacing the term ‘power’ with ‘coloniality.’ We should bear in mind, however, that while critical theory almost guarantees drawing the attention of a majority white and Northern audience, decoloniality emerged from and still speaks to many across the global south, the majority of whom are not white. Both, however, continue to evolve, and it would be important to see how those who are aware of their relationship to postructuralism might create a form of difference that is not repetition. Ironically, despite the anti-foundationalism of postructuralism, this argument reveals its foundational role. Afropessimism, however, is a different beast. Inspired by existentialism and Afro-poststructuralism, it offers a strange obsession with ontology through which there is a reified dichotomy of the universal white as human and the universally negated black as the antithesis of all things human. This ontologizing of the categories leads to a variety of conceptual missives. One is an ironic affirmation of colonialism through advancement of the logic of contraries instead of contradictions. Another is to press those contraries to the point of mystification as in the Afropessimistic use of ‘social death.’ Of course black people will be socially dead if the reality principle becomes exclusively white antiblack points of view. What Afropessimists fail to address is what Sekyi-Otu discusses throughout Left Universalism—namely, first, that no black people are only black. Africans, for example, are also black peoples, but most live each day through the humanity wrought from their African ethnicities. That understanding creates a form of sociality among each other that is not the diminutive black but the social and agent-oriented Black. Sekyi-Otu’s text is a reminder of the importance of addressing a fundamental imperialist fallacy. All imperial nations presume their racialized minorities are the only exemplars of their group. In the United States, for example, there is a tendency to treat their blacks as the blacks. The same was the case in apartheid South Africa, and its vestiges continue, because of neoliberal inheritance, in post-apartheid South Africa.

We come, then, to two additional concepts that should be borne in mind when engaging Sekyi-Otu’s thought. The first is ‘modern.’ Eurocentrism, unfortunately espoused by many anti-Eurocentrists, leads to the presumption of European and modern as one. In short, to become modern is to become European; to become European is to become modern. Yet, from the Latin word modo (of the present), all ‘modern’ means is to belong to now. But how does one belong to the present? At any moment one attempts to grasp ‘now,’ it becomes past. One could properly belong to now if one belongs to where events are headed—namely, the future. There is a form of retroactive legitimacy of one’s presence gained from belonging to the direction in which either one’s community or much of humanity is headed. Thus, as long as one’s creative resources contribute to that future, one is, then, modern. Thus, what should be articulated is the difference between being Euromodern and other kinds of modern. One could be Afrimodern. And within the many designations, through drawing upon the communicative resources of each human community, one could find many moderns—especially if our species takes on the monumental task of addressing the challenges of our global existence.

The other distinction is between the right and the left. I have already touched on it in my discussion of conservatism. Although most discussions of the right and the left focus on groups that call themselves such, we should bear in mind that the terms were arbitrarily introduced in the eighteenth-century French parliament to distinguish the monarchists (those affirming the old regime) and the republicanists (those looking to build a new one). But this distinction preceded its naming. After all, human beings have always faced crises in which the question of whether to return to what they interpret as a perfect or better past is the best counsel, or to let go of that past and strive for a better, albeit uncertain, future is worthwhile. The rightward turn is often premised on security and order. Radicalized, they lead to authoritarianism and, in today’s language, fascism. Opposing that turn are those who look to the past and notice that there was never a perfect one. People in the past were seeking a better future, which makes it the contemporary generation’s task to take on that task. But, as we know, there are those who are locked in uncertainty. For them, the task, being uncertain, leads to each agent’s being locked in, at best, ‘opinions.’ This familiar assessment is liberalism. We should bear in mind, however, that some liberals cannot stand this uncertainty, and they thus argue, as did Thomas Hobbes, for security above all through the elimination of uncertainty. Their path thus, despite their liberalism, leads to conservatism. Then there are liberals who embrace uncertainty. They do so, however, to the point of only finding certainty in themselves. The fallacies of individualism follow. Moving leftward, the challenge becomes reaching beyond the self into relationships through which there is not a foreclosed future. Making things better means understanding that one may not, proverbially, enter the Promised Land. It means acting as a condition of possibility for others. That form of leftism, which I take to be at the heart of Left Universalism, is premised on love.

The leftism of which Sekyi-Otu speaks is a form of love for the freedom of others with the understanding that oneself is also another. The universalism, however, is not as it may appear, since there is an underlying critique of ‘isms.’ If we return to the dialectical argument, it should be clear that there is a distinction between ‘universal’ and ‘universalizing.’ To seek ‘the universal’ is to seek a thing. To universalize is to reach beyond the self, but since humanity is always in the making, the project of universalizing is an ongoing commitment of self-transcendence. The return of the earlier-observed generalizing is at play here, but it is done, always, with humility and a commitment marked by love.

The Reader may wonder: What is this love? This love is best understood as opposed to narcissistic love. Colonialism is a narcissistic project. It seeks replication of the self, and it imposes onto its subjects the status of imitation. But worse, as was so beautifully demonstrated by Mary Shelly in her eponymous novel Frankenstein (1818), the narcissist is ultimately hiding from himself through what he projects. Thus, when Victor Frankenstein looked at his image, objectified in the Creature he created, he recoiled. There is a long history of Africana intellectuals from Cheikh Anta Diop to Amílcar Cabral and now Sekyi-Otu, who articulate the folly of this project of imposed recognition. So long as what is sought is the externalization of the Self in the Other, there is violence under the guise of love. But, as many human beings already know, it is possible to love those or that which is not identical to the self. This love, which celebrates the freedom of another to live her, his, or their life, is radical love. It is a love without closure; it is a willingness to serve as a condition of possibility for others’ meaningful and flourishing life. It is, in short, revolutionary love.

At this point there may be a question of whether the possibilities explored here set too high a bar. Isn’t history littered with the evidence of generations failing to achieve these aims?

Sekyi-Otu’s argument, as I see it, requires a radical, Fanonian meditation on failure. From Black Skin, White Masks (1952), and throughout many of his medical and political writings, Fanon distinguishes between two kinds of failure. One kind is missing the mark or not measuring up. The other kind is premised on an understanding of the self that ignores the importance of others. The first is the failure of recognition, as we saw in narcissistic love. If you can only love yourself, then my attempt to be like you would always fall short or miss the mark. I would have to ignore you and simply, ironically, imitate you through simply loving myself, and we could both be locked in our silos. The other kind of failure emerges from treating oneself as the entire story of action. With this other model, if I do not get what I want, then there is failure. But this works if my goals ignore others, and all measurement is in terms of myself. If, however, I regard my actions as part of a story greater than myself, then my actions shift to the path of radical love and raises the question not of what I receive but, instead, what needs to be done. In other words, the commitment to what needs to be done prevails. In historical form, we should bear in mind that no generation moves forward without another preceding it. Everyone is a condition of possibility for something that transcends us. Had enslaved ancestors, had colonized populations, had women, everyday folk, the preceding Damned of the earth not acted, contemporary struggles would be different. In too many cases, there would be no one left to do what needs to be done. As there is narcissistic love, there is also narcissistic failure. Fanon in fact regarded narcissism as the heart of most mental illness, and, for him, colonization requires the normalization of illness. To act requires the ability to change the world through access to the conditions of doing so. This brings us to an important maligned concept in postmodern political thought: power.

At this point, it should be clear that coercive models of power are those devoted to the disempowering of others. Disempowerment is a key feature of oppression, and thus to affirm it through waging war on power itself is misguided. The hoarding of power dehumanizes others. The distribution of power facilitates conditions on which the ability to make things happen finds its possibility. Made plain: politics, ultimately, is about increasing the options by which people could make meaningful choices to live lives worth, in a word, living.

For these interventions, which, through years of dedicated commitment, courage, and love, the community of beloved students, colleagues, and friends have gathered here not only to give thanks, but also to share with the world their practice of continued learning with our beloved Elder Ato Sekyi-Otu.