Afrocentrism Revisited: Africa in the Philosophy of Black Nationalism

Abstract

In the 1990s, the political tradition of Afrocentrism came under attack in the Western academy, resulting in its glaring omission from most genealogies of Black thought today. This is despite the fact that Afrocentrism had roots dating back to the 15th century, shaping movements like Pan-Africanism and Négritude. It is also despite the fact that the tradition resulted in important cornerstones of Black American life: the holiday of Kwanzaa, the discipline of Black Studies, and independent Afrocentric schools. This essay revisits Afrocentrism as a foundation for the Black Radical Tradition. It argues that Afrocentrism presupposed the relationship between Blackness and Africa to be the central problem for emancipatory thought. Re-embracing Africa not only meant resistance; it targeted the originary thread of political modernity itself–that is, the separation of Blackness from Africa.

Keywords:

• Afrocentrism
• Pan-Africanism
• Black
• Nationalism
• black radical tradition
• Decolonization
• History

Notes

1 My definition of ‘tradition’ follows Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Raleigh: UNC Press, 1983).

2 On the imperial invention of Africa, see Phillip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850 (London: Springer, 1965); On the double invention, see V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996); D.A. Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994).

3 On genealogies of the European nation-state, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York and London: Verso, 1983); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1983); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990). Regarding Black nationalism, Wilson J. Moses argues that the nationalist spirit is defined by its search for a state. See W.J. Moses (ed.), Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey (New York and London: NYU, 1996). However, a substantial historiography has questioned this presumption, suggesting that Black nationalism’s aims have been more ontological and epistemological in nature. See Achille Mbembe, “African Modes of Self-Writing,” Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 239–273; RMichael C. Dawson, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001); Keisha N. Blain, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2018), 5–6.

4 Archie Mafeje, “Africanity: A Combative Ontology,” pp. 31–41 in The Postcolonial Turn, ed. René Devisch and Francis Nyamnjoh (Bamenda: Langaa, 2011).

5 Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).

6 Vincent Harding, “Beyond Chaos: Black History and the Search for the New Land,” in Amistad I, eds. John A. Williams and Charles F. Harris (New York: Institute of the Black World, 1970), 267–292.

7 Mudimbe, Invention of Africa, 120.

8 Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity (Buffalo: Amulefi Publishing Company, 1980).

9 Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa: How “Afrocentrism” Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History (New York: Basic Books, 1996).

10 As described in Molefi Kete Asante, “The Afrocentric Idea in Education,” Journal of Negro Education 60, no. 2 (1992), 173.

11 See Adam Ewing, “The Challenge of Garveyism Studies,” Modern American History (2018), 399-418.

12 John Blassingame, “Black Studies and the Role of the Historian,” in New Perspectives on Black Studies, ed. John W. Blassingame (Urbana, IL: ERIC, 1971), 222.

13 Martin Kilson, “Whither Black Education?” School Review 81.3 (1978), 432.

14 Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Afrotopia: The Roots of African-American Popular History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Stephen Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes (New York: Verso, 1998), 1.

15 Patricia Hill Collins, From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism and Feminism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 11.

16 K.A. Appiah, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press); K.A. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: Penguin, 2007); Achille Mbembe and Sarah Balakrishnan, “Pan-African Legacies, Afropolitan Futures,” Transition: An International Review 120, no. 1 (2016): 28–37; Sarah Balakrishnan, “The Afropolitan Idea: New Perspectives on Cosmopolitanism in African Studies,” History Compass 15.2 (2017); Paul Gilroy and Tommie Shelby, “Cosmopolitanism, Blackness, and Utopia,” Transition 98 (2008), 116–135; Sarah Balakrishnan, “Afropolitanism and the End of Black Nationalism,” pp. 585–595 in Routledge International Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies, 2^nd edition, ed. Gerard Delanty (New York: Routledge, 2018).

17 Ewing, “The Challenge of Garveyism Studies,” 408-9.

18 Robinson, “The Invention of the Negro,” Black Marxism, 119–154.

19 Melville Herskovits, Myth of the Negro Past (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941); Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967); Roger Bastide, African Civilizations in the New World (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).

20 Paul Gilroy, Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993); Brent Hayes Edwards, Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2009).

21 Moses, Afrotopia.

22 Allen Callahan, The Talking Book: African-Americans and the Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006); Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Oxford University Press); Gosnell Yorke, “Translating the Bible in Africa: A Postcolonial and an Afrocentric Interrogation of a Long-Standing Tradition,” pp. 232–250 in Translation Revisited: Contesting the Sense of African Social Realities, ed. Jean-Bernard Ouédraogo et al. (New Castle: Cambridge Scholars, 2018).

23 James Sidbury, “Reading, Revelation, and Rebellion: the Textual Communities of Gabriel, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner,” pp. 119–133 in Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory, ed. Kenneth Greenberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

24 Charles Long, “Perspectives for a Study of African-American Religion,” in African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture, eds. Timothy Fulop and Albert Raboteau (New York and London: Routledge): 37-56.

25 John Parker, Making of the Town: Ga State and Society in Early Colonial Accra (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2000), 8; Philip S. Zachernuk, “Of Origins and Colonial Order: Southern Nigerian Historians and the ‘Hamitic Hypothesis’ c. 1870–1970,” Journal of African History 35.3 (1994), 427-455; Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Adam Ewing, “Kimbanguism, Garveyism, and Rebellious Rumor Making in Post-World War I Africa,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 20.2 (2018), 149–177.

26 Robinson, Black Marxism, 169.

27 Adam Ewing, The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014); Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

28 Maria Stewart, “Address at the African Masonic Hall,” in WJ Moses, Classical Black Nationalism, 95, 92.

29 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1903), 8.

30 Edward Wilmot Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1994), 131–132.

31 Moses, Afrotopia, 1-2.

32 W.E.B. Du Bois, “On the Beginnings of the [Encyclopedia Africana] Project,” reprinted from the front page of the magazine section, Afro-American (Baltimore: October 21, 1961), in Moses, Afrotopia, 161.

33 Nahum Chandler, Toward an African Future of the Limit of the World (London: Living Commons Collective, 2013).

34 Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 BC to 2000 AD (Chicago: Third World Press, 1987 [1974]), 20.

35 Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity (Buffalo: Amulefi Publishing Company, 1980).

36 Kelefa Sanneh, “After the Beginning Again,” Transition 87 (2001), 66-89.

37 Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change (Chicago: African American Images 2003 [1980]), 40.

38 Asante, Afrocentricity, 3.

39 Maulana Karenga, “The Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles): Their Meaning and Message,” pp. 276–287 in Modern Black Nationalism ed. William Van De Burg (New York: New York UP).

40 Manning Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion (London: MacMillan Press, 1984).

41 William Martin and Michael West, “Introduction: The Rival Africas and Paradigms of Africanists and Africans at Home and Abroad,” pp. 1-38 in Out of One, Many Africas: Reconstructing the Study and Meaning of Africa, ed. William Martin and Michael West (Champaign: University of Illinois Press).

42 J.A. Rogers, World’s Great Men of Color (New York: Touchstone, 1946); George G.M. James, Stolen Legacy: The Greeks were not the Authors of Greek Philosophy, but the People of North Africa, commonly called the Egyptians, were (Newport: African Publication Society, 1954); Chancellor Williams, Destruction of Black Civilization (Chicago: Third World Press, 1976); Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus (New York: Random House, 1976); Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Africa: Mother of Western Civilization (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1988); Martin Bernal, Black Athena Volume I (Rutgers: Rutgers University Press, 1987), Black Athena Volume II (Rutgers: Rutgers University Press, 1991) and Black Athena Volume III (Rutgers: Rutgers University Press, 2006); Runoko Rashidi and Ivan Van Sertime, African Presence in Early Asia (Picataway: Transaction, 1988); Runoko Rashidi, Black Star: African Presence in Early Europe (London: Books of Africa, 1985); John Henrik Clarke, Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and The Rise of European Capitalism (New York: A&B, 1992); Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1992 [1907]); Marimba Ani, Yurugu: An African-Centred Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behaviour (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1994); Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Black Man of the Nile and His Family (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1996); Wayne Chandler, Ancient Future: The Teachings and Prophetic Wisdom of the Seven Hermetic Laws of Ancient Egypt (Atlanta: Black Classic Press, 1999); Innocent Chilaka Onyewuenyi, The African Origin of Greek Philosophy: An Exercise in Afrocentrism (Nsukka: University of Nigeria Press, 2005); Runoko Rashidi, African Star Over Asia: The Black Presence in the East (London: Books of Africa, 2012); Thomas Slater (ed.), Afrocentric Interpretations of Jesus and the Gospel Tradition (Leiden, 2015); Rover Bauval and Thomas Brophy, Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt (Rochester: Bear and Company, 2015).

43 A.J. Binder, Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009); Terry Kershaw, “Afrocentrism and the Afrocentric Method,” Journal of Black Studies 16, no. 3 (1992): 160–186.

44 Keith Mayes, Kwanzaa: Black Power and the Making of the African-American Holiday Tradition (New York: Routledge, 2009).

45 Algernon Austin, Achieving Blackness: Race, Black Nationalism, and Afrocentrism in the Twentieth Century (New York: NYU Press, 2006).

46 Hill Collins, From Black Power to Hip Hop, 11.

47 For recent work centering women in the Black nationalist tradition, see Blain, Set the World on Fire; Ashley D. Farmer, Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

48 Jean-Paul Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” Massachusetts Review 6.1 (1964): 13–52.

49 Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership (New York: William Marrow & Company 1967).

50 Vincent Bakpetu Thompson and Basil Davidons, Africa and Unity: The Evolution of Pan-Africanism (London: Longman, 1969); Errol Anthony Henderson, Afrocentrism and World Politics: Towards a New Paradigm (Westport: Praeger, 1995).

51 Léopold Senghor, On African Socialism (New York: Praeger, 1964); Julius Nyerere, Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968); Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964); Emmanuel Akyeampong, “African Socialism; or, the Search for an Indigenous Model of Economic Development?” Economic History of Developing Regions 33.1 (2018), 69–87; Jeffrey S. Ahlman, Living with Nkruahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana (Ohio: Ohio UP, 2017); Priya Lal, African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015).

52 Manthia Diawara, In Search of Africa (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998), 163.

53 Aimé Césaire, “Culture and Colonization,” trans. Brent Hayes Edwards, Social Text 28, no. 2 (2010): 127-144.

54 Césaire, Discours sur le colonialism, 82.

55 Amilcar Cabral, “National Liberation and Culture,” Transition no. 45 (1974): 15; Frantz Fanon, Toward the African Revolution (New York: Grove Press, 1964).

56 Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonization (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964).

57 Nkrumah, Consciencism, 62.

58 Nkrumah, Consciencism, 75.

59 Molefi Kete Asante, “Decolonizing the Universities in Africa,” in Contemporary Critical Thought in Africology and Africana Studies, ed. Molefi Kete Asante and Clyde E. Ledbetter (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), 8.

60 Diawara, In Search of Africa, 6.

61 Nahum Chandler, X: The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Thought (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 113.

62 Nahum Chandler, “The African Diaspora,” Palimpsest: A journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International 3, no. 1 (2014): 1–7.

63 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Moving the Centre (Portsmouth: Heinemann Publishers, 1998), 31.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Balakrishnan

Sarah Balakrishnan is a doctoral candidate in History at Harvard University. In writing this article, she would like to thank Adam Ewing, John & Jean Comaroff, Anthony Farley, Efe Igor, Kirk McLeod and Iman Mohamed.