Three Pathways for Enlarging Critical African Psychology

Abstract

Departing from the position that critical African psychology is an endeavour whose objective is to harness psychological knowledge in, by, for, and with Africa, as well as the world, but also to critically think Africa into psychology, this article considers space as a key idea to consider in the further development of African psychology, and more specifically, a critically inclined African psychology. Taking critical African psychology as one of the orientations within Africa(n)-centred psychology, we argue for constructing and enlarging space so as to resist ruling epistemes in psychology in and of Africa and to create oppositional spaces that adduce alternative readings and makings of psychology-in-place. We outline three pathways, namely, (1) collective thinking and writing, (2) transdisciplinarity, and (3) affective community building, via which to realise and work from a critical African psychological position. These by no means exhaust all the pathways that can be charted by critical African psychologists and are instead offered as illustrations with which our collective has been engaging, thinking together, and experimenting.

Conundrums in teaching decolonial critical community psychology within the context of neo‐liberal market pressures

“…Ratele et al. (2020, np) build on this pathway to decolonization by suggesting that practice and thinking should be located within a paradigm of critical African psychology which consists of “politico‐intellectual, ethical, and epistemological project with radical possibilities for praxis.” We use this frame to consider the possibilities and limitations of the discipline in relation to the reflections of the MACC alumni.…”

What and for whom is a decolonising African psychology?

“…At this point, we might say that although a decolonising African psychology is certainly a kind of critical psychology, in many ways it resists critical psychology’s (oftentimes muted) Euro-American focus (Ratele et al, 2021; Teo, 2015). Indeed, critical psychology rarely proclaims its geographic location and thus, in many ways, silently reproduces Euro-American centrism and logics, albeit from a progressive standpoint (Pillay, 2017).…”

“…We also have friends and families in Africa and on other continents who love Europe and North America. Rather than abandon European and U.S. psychologies, we search for seams with these traditions that might prove useful for decolonising struggles; to be used in conjunction with, and reconfigured through, decolonising Africa-centred knowledges (Ratele et al, 2021). Dominant models of trauma, for instance, have been criticised for heavily emphasising individualism, passive subjectivities, and a liberal conception of human rights (Meari, 2015).…”

“…There is tension when formulating who it is that should make use of a decolonising African psychology. Indeed, if a psychology of this sort can and has been taken up most usefully by activists, community organisers, cultural workers, and students involved in decolonising struggles (see Ratele et al, 2021; Watkins & Shulman, 2008), what is the place of the psychologist here? Put differently, if a decolonising African psychology is to cast a sceptical eye onto psychological traditions so that the discipline might be repurposed for decolonisation within, by, and for Africa, is the conventional figure of the psychologist (and its “neutral” subjectivity) even necessary?…”

“…Critical African psychology, by definition, it would seem, continually looks beyond mainstream psychology's disciplinary borders to address the oppressive living conditions of, and articulate possibilities of emancipation for, psychosocial subjects. This is to say that in steering psychology toward socioeconomic change by harnessing knowledges that lie outside of mainstream psychology, critical African psychology, while still an orientation within psychology, represents what we might refer to as transdisciplinary planetary praxis that harnesses knowledges and practices beyond the bounds of psychology (see also Ratele et al, 2021). Indeed, considered as transdisciplinary praxis, we can turn psychology against its masters and their handmaidens, and move it away from the discipline's elite concerns and internal quibbles that have little to do with the conditions of, existence of, and the possibility of a good life for, the majority of people (Martín-Baró, 1994).…”