Intellectual Imagination

Omedi Ochieng is assistant professor of communication at Denison University. He is the author of a number of books and articles, including Groundwork for the Practice of the Good Life: Politics and Ethics at the Intersection of North Atlantic and African Philosophy.

• Introduction: Groundwork for the Intellectual Life: Ontology, Imagination, and Praxis1. Radical Knowledge: Toward a Critical Contextual Ontology of Intellectual Practice2. Embodied Knowledge: Intellectual Practices as Ways of Life3. Radical World-building: Notes Toward a Critical Contextual Aesthetic4. Geographies of the Imagination: Figurations of the Aesthetic at the Intersection of African and Global ArtsConclusion: Theses on the Intellectual Imagination

"By creating and categorizing an aesthetic practice for writers like Achebe, Soyinka, and Coetzee, Omedi Ochieng is inventing a new way to think about the works of these celebrated authors from the African continent. Much has been written about these thinkers and their aesthetic styles, but Ochieng's unique approach takes them out of dominant categorizing as being in dialectic engagement with the West and rather generates new ways to think about their aesthetic practices. This book is geared to advanced undergraduate or graduate students of philosophy who want to expand their understanding of how African thought fits within Western paradigms." —Cheryl Sterling, The City College of New York"Intellectuals study a range of objects, organisms, and phenomena. However, they hardly study their own practice of intellection. In this book, Omedi Ochieng offers an enthralling dissection of the intellectual imagination. He invites us to take the turn of radical practice of the intellectual life. The book is a journey into the future of global philosophy. Playing the role of an excellent tour guide, Ochieng makes the journey easy as he provides the conceptual tools to navigate difficult terrains. Anyone interested in understanding the intellectual life should read this book." —Uchenna Okeja, Rhodes University "There is something Nietzschean in the theses at the core of Omedi Ochieng's The Intellectual Imagination—that intellectual practice is art, and art is intellectual practice and knowledge. Did I say that those theses are teachings from the author of The Gay Science? The Intellectual Imagination is the brilliant demonstration that they are teachings from African philosophy." —Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Columbia University"The Intellectual Imagination is a rich and complex work, filled throughout with pithy and rhetorically charged interventions. There are moments of admirable concision and insight, particularly when it comes to his engagements with various interlocutors." —Reviews in Religion & Theology