Consciencism Philosophy and Ideology for de-colonisation Kwame Nkrumah Kwame Nkrumah here sets out his personal philosophy,

Near Fine; see scans and description. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970. Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization, by Kwame Nkrumah. ISBN 0853451362. Octavo, printed perfect-bound wraps, 122 pp. Near Fine, with no salient flaws whatsoever; some light cover rubbing and touch edgewear. Sharp, handsome. Nkrumah's effort to translate parts of traditional European socialist philosophy into terms relevant to circumstances in Africa at the time. LT18

Kwame Nkrumah is globally recognized as a foremost pan-Africanist strategist and statesman. He is less widely acknowledged as a philosopher, in spite of his considerable philosophical training, seminal contribution to African political theory, and incisive critique of the ethics of international relations. Consciencism has the distinctive status of being the only published book that Nkrumah consciously meant to be a work of his philosophy, yet it has failed to attract the focused attention of philosophers. The chapters in Disentangling Consciencism: Essays on Kwame Nkrumah’s Philosophy critically explore the metaphysical, ethical and political thought expressed in Consciencism. In doing so, they broaden our understanding of his philosophical ideas and their relevance for effective African contribution to thought in a contemporary world in which Africa increasingly totters on the margins of international affairs. In much of current moral and political thinking, there is a tendency to universalize liberal values and neglect non-Western philosophical perspectives. At the same time, global normative thinking is overwhelmingly applied in non-Western contexts. Writing from across three continents, the contributors to this volume establish greater intellectual connection among African, Asian and Western academics, and their chapters offer explicit perspectives on the value of Nkrumah’s philosophy, and on the conceptual basis of early post-colonial public policy options in Africa. A valuable appendix provides the text of speeches delivered at the 1964 launch of Consciencism. With insights into numerous dimensions of Nkrumah’s philosophy, this volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars of philosophy—especially of non-Western metaphysical, moral and political thought—and to anyone working in the history of African political theory.

For most of its history, the African continent has witnessed momentous political change, remarkable philosophical innovation, and the complex cross-fertilization of ideologies and belief systems. This definitive study surveys the concepts, values, and historical upheavals that have shaped African political systems from the ancient period to the postcolonial era and beyond. Beginning with the emergence of indigenous political institutions, it traces the most important developments in African history, including the Africanization of Islam, liberal democratic movements, socialism, Pan-Africanism, and Africanist-Populist resistance to the neoliberal world order. The result is an invaluable resource on a region too often ignored in the history of political thought.

Decolonization revolutionized the international order during the twentieth century. Yet standard histories that present the end of colonialism as an inevitable transition from a world of empires to one of nations—a world in which self-determination was synonymous with nation-building—obscure just how radical this change was. Drawing on the political thought of anticolonial intellectuals and statesmen such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, W.E.B Du Bois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Eric Williams, Michael Manley, and Julius Nyerere, this important new account of decolonization reveals the full extent of their unprecedented ambition to remake not only nations but the world. Adom Getachew shows that African, African American, and Caribbean anticolonial nationalists were not solely or even primarily nation-builders. Responding to the experience of racialized sovereign inequality, dramatized by interwar Ethiopia and Liberia, Black Atlantic thinkers and politicians challenged international racial hierarchy and articulated alternative visions of worldmaking. Seeking to create an egalitarian postimperial world, they attempted to transcend legal, political, and economic hierarchies by securing a right to self-determination within the newly founded United Nations, constituting regional federations in Africa and the Caribbean, and creating the New International Economic Order. Using archival sources from Barbados, Trinidad, Ghana, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, Worldmaking after Empire recasts the history of decolonization, reconsiders the failure of anticolonial nationalism, and offers a new perspective on debates about today’s international order.

Kwame Nkrumah’s Political Kingdom and Pan-Africanism ReInterpreted, 1909-1972 provides an in-depth study of the life of the late Pan-African leader from the former Gold Coast, Kwame Nkrumah. Authors A.B. Assensoh and Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh analyze Nkrumah’s life from his birth on the Gold Coast through his studies in the United Kingdom and the United States, his activism and political life, and his exile and death. Throughout, Assensoh and Alex-Assensoh present a twenty-first-century reinterpretation of Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanist views in the context of Black unity as well as Black liberation within the African continent and the United States and Caribbean diaspora.