Moving beyond the canon: Reflections of a young African scholar of political theory

Abstract

In this short paper, I reflect on the issue of what the decolonisation of political theory might constitute. I consider what it would mean to deparochialise and decolonise political theory for it is within the discipline of political theory, that a charge of eurocentrism is particularly valid. First, this is because what we teach and study as African political theorists merely perpetuates the idea that thinking and theorising around the normative questions of politics has traditionally been a Western dominated concern. Second, it is because it is within the discipline of political theory, that a eurocentrism of ideas is more apparent and evident as opposed to elsewhere in political science as both our research and pedagogical objectives have been confined almost exclusively to the Western ‘canon’.