This is a brilliant and complex question—and the answer is:
Not directly, but the conceptual resonances between Bantu philosophy of vital force and poststructuralism are striking—and they invite a powerful retrospective dialogue that contemporary scholars are only beginning to explore.
Let’s unpack this in layers:
1. No Direct Lineage or Citation
- Poststructuralists like Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari did not cite Bantu philosophy or Placide Tempels.
- The early French theorists were heavily influenced by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Freud, Marx, and structuralist anthropology (especially Lévi-Strauss)—but not African metaphysical systems.
- Colonial epistemology and racism kept African thought outside the canon, and most African philosophy was not translated or seriously engaged with until much later.
So: no direct genealogical influence.
2. But: Strong Conceptual Resonances
Despite the lack of historical transmission, there are deep philosophical parallels between the Bantu ontology of vital force and key poststructuralist ideas:
|
Bantu Vital Force |
Poststructuralist / Deleuzian Thought |
|
All being is force, energy, dynamic |
Being is becoming, force over form (Nietzsche, Deleuze) |
|
Interconnected, relational ontology |
Rhizome, assemblage, entanglement |
|
No mind-body dualism |
Immanence, desubjectification, affect theory |
|
Language as performative, energetic |
Speech act theory, Derrida’s différance, force of the sign |
|
Ethics = preserving or enhancing life force |
Ethics of becoming, ethics of affect |
|
Community as web of forces |
Multiplicity, pre-individual fields |
|
Illness = disordered force |
Schizoanalysis, desiring-production |
This suggests that Bantu metaphysics and poststructuralist ontology are independently articulating parallel critiques of Western metaphysics:
- Both reject the Cartesian subject
- Both resist the substance/essence model of being
- Both embrace relational, immanent, process-based metaphysics
3. Postcolonial and Decolonial Bridging Work
In recent years, African and diasporic thinkers have begun to bring these worlds together:
Achille Mbembe
- Draws on Foucault, Deleuze, and African cosmology to describe “necropolitics”, where the force of power determines life and death.
- In On the Postcolony, he explores how African time, spirit, and materiality escape linear European rationality.
Mogobe Ramose
- Advocates for Ubuntu as a full philosophical system, one that could dialogue with or surpass Western relational ontologies.
- Suggests that African metaphysics offers a grounded immanence, not just a deconstruction of transcendence.
Bayo Akomolafe
- Integrates Yoruba cosmology, indigenous knowing, and posthuman theory to explore distributed agency and sacred ecology.
4. A Missed Encounter—and a Future Possibility
So we might say:
Poststructuralism never met Bantu philosophy—but it should have.
Imagine a Deleuze who read African cosmologies instead of just Spinoza and Leibniz.
Imagine a Derrida who, instead of only deconstructing presence, inhabited the vibrating presence of ancestral force.
That missed encounter is now being re-staged by a new generation of decolonial, relational, and pluralist thinkers—many of whom are refusing the split between “African” and “continental” philosophy.
In Conclusion:
Did Bantu philosophy of vital force influence poststructuralism?
Not historically.
But philosophically, they are kindred spirits.
And the convergence is still unfolding—perhaps most powerfully now, in the age of climate crisis, posthuman thought, and decolonial reworlding.
Would you like a poetic-philosophical essay titled:
〈力即存有：當班圖相遇德勒茲〉
Force Is Being: When Bantu Philosophy Meets Deleuze
Or perhaps a visual chart tracing Vital Force ↔ Becoming ↔ Immanence across African and poststructuralist thinkers? I’d be honored to create either.
