The book excavates the critical concepts and interpretative procedures of qiné hermeneutics with a view to enucleate an Ethiopian critical tradition that could meet the intellectual, social, and political challenges of the modern world. It conducts a critical internal journey into Ethiopia’s intellectual traditions and elucidates the emancipatory ideas that gestate in them. It uses these as a guide to conduct a critical external journey into the borrowed Western social sciences that are dominant in Ethiopian studies. The text critiques, deflects and reworks this borrowed knowledge from the perspective of the emancipatory aspirations and ideas that the critical internal journey discloses. The book argues for an approach—Ethioperspectivism—that ensures the epistemic autonomy of Ethiopian studies. Ethioperspectivism symphonizes the outcomes of the internal and external journeys to produce knowledge on Ethiopia that is rooted in Ethiopian history and intellectual traditions and is committed to the emancipatory interests of Ethiopians.
Acknowledgements
Preface
1 Introduction: Intellectual Autonomy and Ethiopian Emancipation
1.1. The concept of gädl
1.2. Whose mirror?
1.3. The conundrum of borrowed ‘development’
1.4. Christianity, Islam, and development in Ethiopia
1.5. On the non-Ethiopianization of development
1.6. Gibbonism and Ethiopian Studies
1.7. De-Westernizing/de-Gibbonizing Ethiopian Studies
Notes
Part I. Prolegomena to Critical Qiné Hermeneutics
2 Towards Qiné (ቅኔ) Hermeneutics: I
2.1. The qiné tradition of questioning
2.2. Qiné education
2.3. Zäybé and qiné hermeneutics
2.4. Andem and tirgum
2.5. Andem and the “four-eyed” scholar
2.6. The intellectual roots of Amharic qiné
Notes
3 Towards Qiné (ቅኔ) Hermeneutics II
3.1. Säm ena wärq: duality without dualism
3.2. Säm ena wärq, wärq (ewnät) and ewqät
3.3. Qiné and incompleteness
3.4. Qiné zäräfa
3.5. Lissan, quanqua, and säm ena wärq
3.6. Lissan and quanqua: the struggle for time
3.7. The telos of säm ena wärq
3.8. The Tabot: a zäybé of säm ena wärq logic
3.9. Mischaracterizing säm ena wärq
Notes
4 Qiné Hermeneutics, Surplus history, and Arnät
4.1. Mädämamät, mäsmat, and qiné hermeneutics
4.2. Qiné-analogue and nägär
4.3. Critical internal journey and “fusion of horizons”
4.4. Surplus History
4.5. Critical external journey and “fusion of horizons”
4.6. “Unity of wärq admas” and diatopical hermeneutics
4.7. Addis Andemta and Dagmawi Tinsa’e
Notes
Part II. INTERLUDE: Reading Strategies in Critical Qiné Hermeneutics
5 Antsar and Wistä wäyra Readings
5.1. Zäybé and hibrä qal as diagnostic concepts
5.2. Antsar reading
5.3. Wistä wäyra reading
5.4. Critical qiné hermeneutical readings of peasant rebellions
5.4.1. Who governs the government?
5.4.2. Religious language and lissan
5.4.3. Peasant rebellions and the surplus self
Notes
6 Qiné Hermeneutics, Non-tradition, and Utopianism without Utopia
6.1. Utopianism and Qiné
6.2. Non-tradition and the utopian impulse
6.3. Utopianism and non-tradition
6.4. Ahmad b. Ibrahim (Grañ) and the utopian impulse
6.5. Tewodros and the utopian impulse
6.6. Awra Amba: Utopianism without utopia and “commoning”
6.6.1. Awra Amba, common economy, and living labour
6.6.2. Awra Amba as a critique of Gibbonism
Notes
Part III. Critical Qiné Hermeneutical Readings
7 The Surplus History of Lalibela
7.1. The Chronicles of Lalibela and transcritique
7.2. Reality, fantasy, and action
7.3. The maxims of autonomy and equality
7.4. Epistemic autonomy and emancipation
7.5. The dignity of those who labour
7.6. From “power over” to “power with” the people
7.7. “Hurry up”: Mastering time and emancipation
7.8. Lalibela’s lesson: utopianism without utopia
Notes
8 The Surplus History of the Däqiqä Estifanos
8.1. The Däqiqä Estifanos
8.2. On standing upright
8.3. Bähig amlak or the rule of just law
8.4. Litigation with Ethiopia
8.5. Following one’s mind
8.6. Against resembling our rulers
8.7. Scaling one’s history
Notes
9 The Surplus History of Gada
9.1. That which is in gada more than gada
9.2. Remembering gada
9.3. Gada: an unfinished answer
9.4. Luba/butta: time as socio-political relation
9.5. Luba/butta: participation and constituent power
9.6. Gada and the de-fetishization of history
9.7. The moggaasa revolution: E pluribus unum
9.8. Moggaasa, historical wounds, and democracy
Notes
10 Indigenous Institutions and Surplus History
10.1. The question of indigenous institutions
10.2. Däbo: the unity of head and hand
10.3. Iddir and iqqub
10.3.1. Iddir: Non-tradition as modernity
10.3.2. Iqqub: an economy of shared need
10.4. Iqqub lottery and lottocracy
10.5. Däbo, iddir, iqqub (DII): Recognition and civil society
10.5.1. DII and the issue of recognition
10.5.2. DII and “civil society”
10.5.3. DII as the critique of “civil society”
10.6. DII, NGOs, and interpassivity
10.6.1. DII against adaptive preferences
10.6.2. DII’s question: Is Ethiopia’s problem “poverty” or “poor living”?