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Fabien Eboussi Boulaga: Cameroonian Philosopher Who Asked Who Thinks for Africa

Cameroonian philosopher Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, who lived from 1934 to 2018, built his work around a single persistent question: from where can an African intellectual speak without becoming the representative of a power, an ideology or a fixed identity? Writing in The Conversation, researcher Christophe Premat traces that question through Eboussi Boulaga's break with the Jesuits in 1980, his 1977 book on the crisis of the Muntu, and his 1993 essay on the "exotic intellectual". Premat argues the philosopher's insistence on interrogating the categories used in the name of emancipation keeps his thinking current.