Radical Utu
Ohio University Research in International Studies
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Radical Utu
CRITICAL IDEAS AND IDEALS OF WANGARI MUTA MAATHAI
Besi Brillian Muhonja
Ohio University Research in International Studies
Africa Series No. 95
Ohio University Press
Athens
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Muhonja, Besi Brillian, author.
Title: Radical utu : critical ideas and ideals of Wangari Muta Maathai / Besi Brillian Muhonja.
Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2020. | Series: Ohio University Research in International Studies, Africa Series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002544 | ISBN 9780896803268 (paperback) | ISBN 9780896805071 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Maathai, Wangari. | Women intellectuals--Kenya. | Women conservationists--Kenya. | Women political activists--Kenya. | Kenya--Intellectual life. | Kenya--Politics and government. | Decolonization--Kenya. | Philosophy, African.
Classification: LCC DT433.582.M24 M84 2020 | DDC 967.6204092--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002544
Dedicated to Vaa Muhonja
Contents
1. Birthing Radical Selves: The Making of a Scholar-Activist
2. Replenishing the Earth: Maathai’s Holistic Environmentalism
3. Eco-agency and Unbowed Personhood: A Decolonial Imagining of Equity
4. Theorizing and Activating Utu Citizenships
5. Just Globalization: Utu and Development as Social Justice
Preface
Literature available on Professor Wangari Muta Maathai primarily focuses on her work with the Green Belt Movement and the 2004 conferment of the Nobel Peace Prize. In most accounts, the scholar and critical thinker are lost in celebrations of the activist, and the activist is very narrowly feted. This book focuses on Maathai’s thoughts, words, and works, locating them in the global map of knowledge production, an exercise necessary to the project of centering African thinkers in the academy and in scholarship in general.1 With a larger-than-life profile like Maathai’s, it is easy for the person and public history to overshadow engagement with the ideas. For this reason, I invite readers to privilege, in their encounter with this text, the analysis, philosophies, and theories presented.
The philosophical and theoretical legacies of Maathai’s at times controversy-inspiring life and work have not, until now, been examined in a book-length monograph. Engaging her as a scholar-activist, this interdisciplinary undertaking goes beyond the simple recording of herstory to tease out her world senses and critical thinking on four main subjects: women’s empowerment and liberation, environmentalism, democratic spaces, and globalization and global governance. Writing this book involved years of mining and reviewing publications, speeches, interviews, and news reports by and on Maathai and identifying recurring subjects. I consolidated and analyzed the material, and for each topical area I isolated clusters of themes, which provided directions for framing solid concepts. In order to articulate and engage them, it was necessary to christen some concepts, philosophies, and theories. I endeavored to maintain the integrity of Maathai’s thoughts and words in the processes of functionalizing and naming these ideas and locating them in dialogue with each other.
The book is quote-heavy to authentically represent Maathai’s ideas and allow the reader access to not just
