CAN I CHOOSE TO BE WHO I AM NOT?

Abstract

This article engages Abraham Olivier’s recent distinction between “being” and “choosing to be” within his phenomenological approach to subjectivity in general and to African, communal subjectivity in particular. I recapitulate and problematize aspects of Olivier’s reverse phenomenological analysis, briefly contrasting it with more orthodox African approaches to the ontology of the self. I then hone in on the distinction between being who I am and choosing to be who I am not. I argue that I can indeed choose to be who I am not, subject to the proviso that I cannot choose to be who I am. I close with some reflections on the moral significance of conscientiously choosing to be who I am not.

Keywords:

• African communalism
• subjectivity
• reverse phenomenology
• being who one is not

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

Evidently inspired by Abraham Olivier’s “On Being an African,” this paper has benefited enormously from discussions about (African) personhood with Martin Ajei, Caesar Atuire, and Dieter Sturma. A first draft of the paper was presented at a workshop on “Persons and Community” held at the University of Bonn on 25 June 2018. My thanks to participants for their helpful comments and suggestions.

1 Olivier, “On Being an African” 102.

2 It may be a moot point whether one can or cannot distinguish between being a self and subjectivity or consciousness of self. Those who think there is a meaningful difference are likely to take the view that who immigrants are and who they take themselves to be are two different issues – the one may be an ontological issue and the other a psychological one. I assume here that Olivier’s phenomenological approach supersedes the distinction between objective selfhood and subjective consciousness of self: the self is subjectivity. From this perspective, the question of who one is and that of who one chooses to be lie on the same level of analysis: they both concern subjectivity or consciousness of self. It is this that makes Olivier’s claim both striking and difficult to get a handle on.

3 Olivier, “On Being an African” 79.

4 Masolo.

5 But see Fanon.

6 While the relationship between other-ascription and self-ascription remains underdeveloped in the article under discussion, Olivier has returned to it in some of his subsequent writings – most notably in “The Freedom of Facticity.” There he offers a more fully developed account of other-ascription as the basis of self-ascription. See also idem, “Wings of Desire.”

7 Hountondji, African Philosophy; idem, The Struggle for Meaning.

8 Olivier, “On Being an African” 83.

9 Ibid. 81.

10 Ibid. 89. This actually seems to me to be a move back towards Kantian passive receptivity – though the phenomenological framework does, of course, seek to preserve the unity of perceptual experience in lieu of Kant’s distinction between two separate roots of human knowledge.

11 Ibid. 87.

12 Ibid. 89.

13 Olivier’s account here may also betray certain sympathies with elements of Negritude that emphasize the conative aspects of being human.

14 Ibid. 87.

15 Ibid. 88.

16 Ibid. 89.

17 Ibid. 95.

18 On theorizing the relation between the culturally particular and the universal, see especially Wiredu, Cultural Universals.

19 On subjectivity as social role playing, see also Velleman, How We Get Along. See also idem, “The Self as Narrator.” There are some methodological similarities between narrative and phenomenological accounts of subjectivity, though on the narrative account the emphasis is on self-construction rather than consciousness of self.

20 The issue of “psychologism” in connection with reflexive subjectivity preoccupied analytic approaches to Kant’s transcendental idealism. See, especially, Strawson, especially 162–74.

21 I return to this issue briefly in section 5.

22 Menkiti 324–31.

23 See, respectively, Gbadegesin, African Philosophy, especially chapters 2 and 3; Gyekye, African Philosophical Thought, especially chapters 6 and 7.

24 Cf. p’Bitek.

25 On the status of sunsum, contrast Wiredu, “The Akan Concept of Mind” and Gyekye, African Philosophical Thought 85–90.

26 Gyekye denies the particular association of sunsum with paternal lineage; he instead identifies ntoro with paternal lineage and mogya with maternal lineage. Contrast Appiah 21–34.

27 Gbadegesin, “Toward a Theory of Destiny” 313–23; see also idem, “An Outline of a Theory of Destiny” 51–68.

28 Cf. Gyekye, “Person and Community in African Thought” 297–313. To be fair to Mbiti, Gyekye tends simply to assume that this must be the case – he does not show how consciousness of itself is itself possible.

29 In personal conversation, Olivier has suggested to me that he may be able to accommodate this Kantian challenge regarding the logical priority of the capacity for reflexive consciousness of self – subjectivity – over other-ascription. Briefly, Olivier suggests that

transcendental subjectivity is as such conditioned by other-ascription: others, with whom I interact, shape my transcendental capacity to reflect and to conceive of myself, and to be free to do so, before I can take the freedom to choose what I am not.

The claim appears to be that I learn or acquire the capacity for reflexivity itself through the process of socialization. At least from a Kantian perspective, my problem with this proposal is that it seems to turn a formal or presuppositional requirement of empirical selfhood into something that is itself empirically acquired. But this may then open up an infinite regress: if I socially acquire my capacity for reflexivity, in virtue of what do I have that capacity? In other words, must we not now posit a capacity communally to acquire reflexivity? I think my point is this: if it is subjectivity we are after – i.e., consciousness of oneself as a socially constituted self, say – must we not then predicate some notion or capacity for selfhood that is distinct from that of which it is conscious as being? I cannot really see a way around this – though I also concede that, at this point, the Kantian in me and the phenomenologist in Olivier may simply have arrived at an ontological crossroads, as it were.

30 Fanon.

31 Olivier, “On Being an African” 97.

32 Ibid. 102.

33 On the open-endedness of human life, see especially Lear.