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Afrocentricity

From EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki


Afrocentricity is an academic theory and approach to scholarship that seeks to center the experiences and peoples of Africa and the African diaspora within their own historical, cultural, and sociological contexts.[1][2][3][4] First developed as an idea by Professor Molefi Kete Asante in 1980, he drew inspiration from a number of African and African diaspora intellectuals including Cheikh Anta Diop, George James, Harold Cruse, Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and W. E. B. Du Bois.[1] The Temple Circle,[5][6] also known as the Temple School of Thought,[6] Temple Circle of Afrocentricity,[7] or Temple School of Afrocentricity,[8] was an early group of Africologists during the late 1980s and early 1990s that helped to further develop the theory of Afrocentricity, which is based on concepts of agency, centeredness, location, and orientation.[5]

Definition

Afrocentricity means “African-centeredness”, and, as a unifying paradigm, it draws from and connects the foundational scholarship of Africana studies, African-American studies, and African studies.[3][9] Those who specialize in the multidisciplinary field and profession of Afrocentricity, including historians, philosophers, sociologists, self-identify as "Africologists."[10]

Professor Ama Mazama defined the paradigm of Afrocentricity as being composed of “ontology/epistemology, cosmology, axiology, and [the] aesthetics of African people” and as being “centered in African experiences,” which then conveys the “African voice.”[3] Afrocentricity is rooted in the perspective and culture common to African peoples, and centers on African peoples and their experiences as agents and subjects.[11] The epistemic aspects of the paradigm include African examples of dance, ideas, language, music, rituals, and symbols. Afrocentricity draws heavily from African culture, contextualized in various forms, including legends, literature, myth, and oratures. In addition, Afrocentricity integrates aspects of African spiritualities as essential components of African worldviews, including principles of harmony, interdependence, order, and perfectibility. Some Africologists rely on firsthand experience of these cultural and spiritual artifacts to inform their work; within the paradigm, a counterbalance to rationality includes intuitive methods of acquiring knowledge and emotional responses.[3] In the context of spirituality, Afrocentricity includes a foundational concept of a unity in being that is manifest as an inherent essence in nature (e.g., animals, humans, minerals, objects, plants).[11] As African wisdom traditions led to the development of African cultural phenomena (e.g., art, concepts, institutions, literature, science, symbols, voices), and philosophy and religion were not isolated from one another in classical African civilizations, the paradigm of Afrocentricity offers a coherent way to analyze such development.[1] Axiological aspects of Afrocentricity include explorations of ethics while aesthetic aspects partly rely on African approaches to concepts, such as spirit, rhythm, creativity, and performing arts.[3]

In contrast to the hegemonic ideology of Eurocentrism, the paradigm of Afrocentricity is non-hierarchical and pluralistic and is not intended to supplant “‘white knowledge’ with ‘black knowledge’”. Afrocentricty is designed as a holistic multidisciplinary theory (e.g., cultural, philosophical, social) with a strong focus on the location and agency of Africans that does not accept the role of subaltern prescribed to Africans by Eurocentrism. An important aspect of Afrocentricity is a deconstruction and criticism of hegemony, racism, and prejudice.[1]

Afrocentricity has three aspects: functional (socially/politically action-oriented), categorical (e.g., identities of class, ethnicity, gender, race), and etymological (e.g., concepts underlying words, groups of words representing a shared cultural heritage, language structures). The re-creation of classical African civilizations is sought through the methodology of Afrocentricity as a means to comprehending African cultural phenomena (e.g., cosmogonies, history, myths, narratives, spirituality).[1]

People of Africa and the African diaspora are viewed through Afrocentricity's conceptual lens of agency, centeredness, location, and orientation, based on the understanding that the peoples of Africa and the African diaspora became historically decentered by Europeans, as a result of enslavement and colonization, and have historically resisted becoming dislocated.[5] In particular, people of Africa and the African diaspora are considered as having become decentered culturally, intellectually, and philosophically as a result of enslavement and colonization. Decenteredness is the logical inconsistency between historical culture and perspective. As opposed to decenteredness, centeredness, rather than locating people of Africa and the African diaspora in the objectified disposition of “the other,” locates people of Africa and the African diaspora in the subjective disposition of the agent. Centeredness is regarded as important based on the understanding that the African psyche has become disoriented and misoriented.[7]

History

Professor Midas Chanawe outlined in his historical survey of the development of Afrocentricity how experiences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Middle Passage, and legal prohibition of literacy, shared by enslaved African-Americans, followed by the experience of dual cultures (e.g., Africanisms, Americanisms), resulted in some African-Americans re-exploring their African cultural heritage rather than choosing to be Americanized. Additionally, the African-American experience of ongoing racism emphasized the importance that culture and its relative nature could have on their intellectual enterprise. All of this cultivated a foundation for the development of Afrocentricity. Examples of the kinds of arguments that presaged Afrocentricity include pieces published in the Freedom's Journal (1827) that drew connections between Africans and ancient Egyptians, African-American abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass and David Walker, who highlighted the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians as Africans to undermine the white supremacist assertion that Africans were inferior, and the assertions of the Pan-Africanist, Marcus Garvey, who argued that ancient Egypt laid the foundation for civilization in world history. These would be echoed in the contexts of Black Nationalism, Negritude, Pan-Africanism, Black Power movement, and the Black is Beautiful movement that served as harbingers for the formal development of Afrocentricity.[9]

Professor Molefi Kete Asante dates the first use of the term, "Afro-centric", to 1964,[10] when the Institute of African Studies was being established in Ghana and its founder, Kwame Nkrumah, said to the Editorial Board of the Encyclopedia Africana: "[T]he Africana Project must be frankly Afro-centric in its interpretation of African history, and of the social and cultural institutions of the African and people of African descent everywhere."[12] Other antecedents to Afrocentricity identified by Asante include the 1948 work of Cheikh Anta Diop when he introduced the idea of an "African Renaissance",[10][13] J.A. Sofala's 1973 treatise The African Culture and Personality, and the three 1973 publications of The Afrocentric Review.[10] Following the example of these and other preceding African intellectuals, Asante formally proposed the concept of Afrocentricity in a 1980 publication, Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change,[1] and further refined the concept in The Afrocentric Idea (1987).[10] Other influential publications that helped to develop Afrocentricity include Linda James Myers' Understanding the Afrocentric Worldview (1988), Asante's Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (1992), Ama Mazama's edited compilation The Afrocentric Paradigm (2003), and Asante's An Afrocentric Manifesto (2007).[10]

Temple University, the institutional home of Professor Molefi Kete Asante and site of the first PhD program in Africology and African American Studies,[14] is widely regarded as the leading institution for scholarship in Afrocentricity. In addition to Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity developed among the "Temple Circle" (e.g., Abu Abarry, Kariamu Welsh Asante, Terry Kershaw, Tsehloane Keto, Ama Mazama, Theophile Obenga).[9] As a result of the scholarly development of Afrocentricity, several scholarly journals and professional associations have developed throughout the United States of America and Africa.[9] Africological conferences also developed, some which operate by invitation, and some which occur on a yearly basis,[15] such as the Cheikh Anta Diop Conference.[15][16] The theory of Afrocentricity also had subsequent impact on other academic fields and theories, such as anthropology, education, jazz theory, linguistics, organizational theory, and physical education.[17]

Differences between Afrocentricity and Afrocentrism

Professor Molefi Kete Asante explained:

By way of distinction, Afrocentricity should not be confused with the variant Afrocentrism. The term “Afrocentrism” was first used by the opponents of Afrocentricity who in their zeal saw it as an obverse of Eurocentrism. The adjective “Afrocentric” in the academic literature always referred to “Afrocentricity.” However, the use of “Afrocentrism” reflected a negation of the idea of Afrocentricity as a positive and progressive paradigm. The aim was to assign religious signification to the idea of African centeredness. However, it has come to refer to a broad cultural movement of the late twentieth century that has a set of philosophical, political, and artistic ideas which provides the basis for the musical, sartorial, and aesthetic dimensions of the African personality. On the other hand, Afrocentricity, as I have previously defined it, is a theory of agency, that is, the idea that African people must be viewed and view themselves as agents rather than spectators to historical revolution and change. To this end Afrocentricity seeks to examine every aspect of the subject place of Africans in historical, literary, architectural, ethical, philosophical, economic, and political life.[2]

Karenga (2002) highlighted distinctions that exist between the public understanding of Afrocentrism conveyed through mass media, held by some proponents, and held by some critics of Afrocentrism and the academic conceptualization of Afrocentricity held by African-centered scholars.[3] Afrocentricity is indicated to be an intellectual paradigm or methodology, whereas, Afrocentrism, as indicated by the term’s suffix (i.e., -ism), is an ideological and political disposition.[3] In Afrocentricity, African behaviors and African culture are subject to examination through the centered lens of African ideals.[3]

Asante (2017) indicated that critics of Afrocentricity have conflated Afrocentricity with Afrocentrism, and thus, mischaracterized it as being a "'religious' movement based on an essentialist paradigm."[18] Consequently, as opposed to identifying it as Afrocentrism, Africologists tend to identify their professional field as Afrocentricity.[18] Asante further indicates that Afrocentricity is not what it has been characterized by critics.[18]

Criticisms

Major critics of Afrocentricity have been Tunde Adeleke (e.g., The Case Against Afrocentrism, 2009), Clarence Walker (e.g., Why We Can't Go Home Again, 2001), Stephen Howe (e.g., Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes, 1998), and Mary Lefkowitz (e.g., Not Out of Africa, 1997).[10]

Esonwanne (1992) critiqued Asante’s Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (1990) and characterized its discourse as “implausible,” its argumentation as “disorganized,” its analysis as “crude and garbled,” its perceived lack of seriousness in study as harmful to the “serious study of African American and African cultures,” as being part of a “whole project of Afrocentrism,” and as being “off-handedly racist.”[19] Esonwanne (1992) indicates that the redeeming quality and “intellectual value” of Asante's earlier work is its “negative value” and that it is a prime example of what researchers in African studies and African-American studies “would do well to avoid.”[19] Esonwanne (1992) further characterizes Asante’s Afrocentricity as being a “post-Civil Rights individualist version of the pan-Africanist doctrine” that merits not giving into “temptation to dismiss the notion of Afrocentricity completely in abeyance.”[19]

Hill-Collins (2006) characterized Afrocentrism as essentially being a civil religion (e.g., common beliefs and values; common tenets that distinguish believers from non-believers; views on the unknowns of life, on suffering, and on death; common places of gathering and rituals that establish one as a member of an institutionalized belief system).[20] Some aspects that she defined and related to Asante’s Afrocentricity was a fundamental love for black people and blackness (e.g., negritude) and common black values (e.g., Karenga’s established values and principles of Kwanzaa); another aspect was black centeredness as a form of grace or relief from white racism; another aspect was the “original sin” of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade as the major reasoning for the suffering and death of black people, Africa as the promised land, and a form of salvation through self-redefinition and self-reclamation as an African people as well as rejection of what is perceived as being of white people and white culture (which are viewed as bearing evil qualities in relation to black people).[20] Another aspect of the characterization of Afrocentrism as a civil religion involves the homophobic and sexist exclusion of black GLBTQ individuals, black women, biracial and multiracial individuals, and wealthy black individuals.[20]

Responses to criticisms

The major critical works of Adeleke (2009), Walker (2001), Howe (1998), and Lefkowitz (1997) were characterized in Asante (2017) as being a "misunderstanding of Afrocentricity or an attempt to relaunch the Eurocentric domination in knowledge, criticism, and literature."[10]

Asante (1993) critiqued Esonwanne (1992) and the critical review that was given to his earlier work.[21] Asante indicated that scholars who considered using Esonwanne (1992) as a means to comprehend his earlier work would have a limited comprehension of his earlier work.[21] Esonwanne’s characterization of Asante’s work as “off-handedly racist” was characterized by Asante as “gratuitous mudslinging” that lacked specificity about what was being characterized as “off-handedly racist.”[21] Additionally, Asante indicated that, due to the lack of specific example cited from his earlier work to support the characterization of it as “off-handedly racist,” it was “not only a serious breach of professionalism but a grotesque and dishonest intellectual ploy.”[21]

Esonwanne (1992) indicated that grouping Cheikh Anta Diop, Maulana Karenga, and Wade Nobles together was a “strange mix” due to each of the scholars having different methodological approaches to African studies and African-American studies.[21] Based on this characterization of Asante’s earlier work as a “strange mix,” Asante (1993) viewed this as indication of Esonwanne (1992) showing a lack of comprehension and familiarity with his earlier work, with the works of Diop, Karenga, and Wade, as well as the theory of Afrocentricity.[21] Asante (1993) went on to clarify that Cheikh Anta Diop, Maulana Karenga, and Wade Nobles, despite differences in professional backgrounds or academic interests, were all scholars in the theory of Afrocentricity.[21]

Asante (1993) went on to clarify that, similar to the use of the term “European”, the use of the composite term “African” is not used it in reference to an abstraction, but is used in reference to ethnic identity and cultural heritage; as such, there are modal uses of terms such as “African civilization” and “African culture,” which do not deny the significance of the discrete identities and heritages of more specific African groupings (e.g., African-American, Hausa, Jamaican, Kikuyu, Kongo, Yoruba).[21] Asante (1993) indicates that usage of such terms, in reference to Ma’at, was addressed in a chapter of his earlier work, but that the shortcomings of the critiques presented in Esonwanne (1992) show that Esonwanne may not have read as far as that chapter.[21]

Asante (2007) characterized Hill-Collins (2006) as following a similar approach as Stephen Howe and Mary Lefkowitz of not providing a clear definition for the concept of Afrocentricity that they are attempting to critique and then, subsequently, negatively and incorrectly characterizing Afrocentricity as Afrocentrism (i.e., a black form of Eurocentrism).[22] Asante indicates that Afrocentricity is not an enclosed system of thought or religious belief; rather, he indicated that it is an unenclosed, critical dialectic that allows for open-ended dialogue and debate on the fundamental assumptions that the theory of Afrocentricity is based on.[22] Asante further critiqued and characterized Hill-Collins (2006) as being “not only poor scholarship”, but a “form of self-hatred” that is typically “engaged in by vulgar careerists whose plan is to distance themselves from African agency.”[22] Asante highlighted Hill-Collins' intellectual work on the centeredness of women of the African diaspora to contrast with her characterized lack of understanding of the intellectual work on the centeredness of African people that Afrocentricity focuses on.[22] As a follow-up to Hill-Collins' Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism?, she authored Ethnicity, Culture, and Black Nationalist Politics, which Asante characterizes as having vaguely defined notions of black nationalism, Afrocentrism/Afrocentricity, civil religion, and African-American ethnic identity.[22] Asante characterized her critiques of Afrocentricity as being supportive of a manufactured intellectual agenda and predicated on the reactionary politics surrounding modern American history.[22]

Asante (2007) highlights that Hill-Collins' perspective on black nationalism, rather than being distinct from usual approaches, derives from the same origin as these approaches (e.g., black feminist nationalism, cultural nationalism, religious nationalism, revolutionary nationalism).[22] Within the context of racialized American national identity, Asante characterizes Hill-Collins' notion of civil religion as the reverence for American civil government and its political principles; along with this notion is the characterized view of immigrating Afro-Caribbeans choosing how to not become “black” Americans (who later join with African-Americans and partake in the UNIA movement), immigrating Europeans choosing how to become “white” Americans, the European-American social power of whiteness to erase their racial identity and become any other identity (e.g., Native American, of Irish descent, of Italian descent) except an identity of African descent, the European-American social power to operate as individuals rather than as a monolithic racial identity (e.g., Black American), and a tradition of racism operating in the modern context of color-blindness, desegregation, and the illusion of equality.[22]

Following her characterized view of black nationalism, Asante (2007) indicates that Hill-Collins conflates black nationalism (e.g., Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam) with Afrocentricity (e.g., Molefi Kete Asante and Afrocentricity).[22] Asante indicates that black nationalism, as a political ideology, is distinct from Afrocentricity, which is a philosophical paradigm, and that both serve distinct purposes and operate in distinct spheres.[22] Rather than being a reformulation of black cultural nationalism and being a civil religion, Asante indicates that Black Studies derived and developed from black nationalism and that the development of Afrocentricity post-dates the development of Black Studies.[22] Asante indicates that the correct understanding that Hill-Collins has is that “Afrocentricity is a social theory in the sense that it explains the dislocation, disorientation, and mental enslavement of African people as being a function of white racial hegemony.”[22] In relation to this view, Asante indicates that mutilating one’s own people is one of the greatest forms of dislocation and that revering the instruction of a "slave master" to intellectually attacking one’s own people is a form of dislocated behavior.[22]

The centerpiece of Hill-Collins’ approach, as Asante (2007) characterized it, is that “Afrocentricity took the framework of American civil religion and stripped it of its American symbols and substituted a black value system.”[22] Asante indicates that the earliest Africologists (e.g., Nah Dove, Tsehloane Keto, Ama Mazama, Kariamu Welsh, Terry Kershaw) of the "Temple Circle" or contemporaneous scholars (e.g., Maulana Karenga, Wade Nobles, Asa Hilliard, Clenora Hudson-Weems, Linda Myers) had no conscious intention of creating a civil religion as Hill-Collins claims.[22]

List of Africologists

Temple Circle


References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Monteiro-Ferreira, Ana. "Afrocentricity and the Western Paradigm". Sage Journals. Journal of Black Studies.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Asante, Molefi Kete (Dec 17, 2007). An Afrocentric Manifesto: Toward an African Renaissance. Polity. p. 17. Search this book on
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Alkebulan, Adisa A. "Defending The Paradigm". Sage Publications, Inc.
  4. ↑ Pellerin, Marquita. "Benefits of Afrocentricity in Exploring Social Phenomena: Understanding Afrocentricity as a Social Science Methodology" (PDF). The Journal of Pan African Studies. The Journal of Pan African Studies. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2025-08-12. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 Asante, Molefi Kete; Mazama, Ama; Cérol, Marie-José (2005). Encyclopedia of Black Studies. SAGE. p. 445. Search this book on
  6. ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 Karenga, Maulana. "Founding the First PhD in Black Studies: A Sankofa Remembrance and Critical Assessment of Its Significance". SAGE Journals. SAGE Journals.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Davidson, Jeanette R (Oct 19, 2010). Jeanette R Davidson. Edinburgh University Press. p. 48-50. Search this book on
  8. ↑ Myers, Joshua. "Racial Economies of Academia: Africana Studies as Arbiter". SpringerLink. Journal of African American Studies.
  9. ↑ 9.00 9.01 9.02 9.03 9.04 9.05 9.06 9.07 9.08 9.09 Chawane, Midas. "The development of Afrocentricity: a historical survey". Scientific Electronic Library Online. The South African Society for History Teaching.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 Asante, Molefi Kete. "The Philosophy of Afrocentricity". SpringerLink. The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Mazama, Mambo Ama. "Afrocentricity And African Spirituality" (PDF). Journal of Black Studies. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-12-03. Retrieved 2021-06-09.
  12. ↑ Biney, Ama. "Nkrumah's Political Writings, 1958–1966". SpringerLink. The Political and Social Thought of Kwame Nkrumah.
  13. ↑ Maurice, Danielle. "The living museum and the centenary of the abolition of slavery: for the recognition of African cultures". Open Edition Journals. Colonial past and ways of remembering slavery.
  14. ↑ "Africology and African American Studies". College of Liberal Arts. 2021-01-20. Retrieved 2021-07-03.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Asante, Molefi Kete (Mar 1, 2001). Afrocentricity, Race, and Reason. Columbia University Press. p. 199. Search this book on
  16. ↑ Mazama, Ama. "The Afrocentric Paradigm: Contours and Definitions". JSTOR. Sage Publications, Inc.
  17. ↑ Gayles, Jonathan. "Anthropology, Afrocentricity, And African American Studies: Toward A Sincere Discipline". AnthroSource. American Anthropology Association.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Asante, Molefi Kete. "Afrocentricity: Critical Intercultural Communication Theories, Issues, and Concepts". Wiley Online Library. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Esonwanne, Uzo. "Review: [Untitled]". JSTOR. Indiana University Press.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Hill-Collins, Patricia (Jan 19, 2006). From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism. Temple University Press. pp. 85–92. Search this book on
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 21.5 21.6 21.7 21.8 Asante, Molefi Kete (1993). Malcolm X as Cultural Hero And Other Afrocentric Essays. Africa World Press. Search this book on
  22. ↑ 22.00 22.01 22.02 22.03 22.04 22.05 22.06 22.07 22.08 22.09 22.10 22.11 22.12 22.13 22.14 Asante, Molefi Kete (Dec 17, 2007). An Afrocentric Manifesto: Toward an African Renaissance. Polity. pp. 18–23. Search this book on
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 Asante, Molefi Kete (Dec 17, 2007). An Afrocentric Manifesto: Toward an African Renaissance. Polity. p. 23. Search this book on
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 Asante, Molefi Kete. "The Discipline of Africology at the Crossroads: Toward An Eshuean Response to Intellectual Dilemma". Taylor & Francis Online. The Black Scholar.


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