Africa and Afrocentric Historicism: A Critique

Tunde Adeleke

doi:10.4236/ahs.2015.43016

Abstract

Since the dawn of slavery in America, black activists have used Africa to construct a countervailing frame of resistance to oppression. Africa had functioned both as the justification for enslavement and racial discrimination for the dominant white society, and as the counter-hegemonic weapon of resistance and empowerment for blacks. Reacting to subordination and marginalization, modern black intellectuals, borrowing from the past, have equally invoked Africa in their quest for a useable and instrumental historical past with which to counteract the Eurocentric constructions of their heritage and experiences. However, the resultant Afrocentric historicist framing of Africa, as well as its racialized and essentialist character, had only replicated precisely the negative shortcomings of the Eurocentric historiography and black intellectuals were attempting to debunk.

Highlights

The black experience in America, and the black experience worldwide, has borne the burden of Western history: the history of negation
The negation of African history and culture to justify enslavement and white superiority nurtured in blacks what Samuel DuBois Cook characterized as a tragic historical consciousness (Cook, 1960)
Franklin cautioned against combating Eurocentrism with a black substitute that replicated negative, racist and anti-intellectual ethos

Summary

Introduction

The black experience in America, and the black experience worldwide, has borne the burden of Western history: the history of negation. Franklin cautioned against combating Eurocentrism with a black substitute that replicated negative, racist and anti-intellectual ethos He acknowledged that “the task of remaining calm and objective is a formidable one”, and that the black intellectual is always tempted to “pollute his scholarship with polemics, diatribes, arguments...” (Ibid: 73). The black scholar, in Franklin’s words, “Must rewrite the history of this country and correct the misrepresentations and falsifications in connection with the Negro’s role in our country” (Ibid) Though he acknowledged that there is “a place for advocacy” in scholarship, Franklin underlined the importance of developing a clear understanding of the distinction between advocacy and scholarship (Ibid: 74-76). Building on the nineteenth century “Afrocentric” ideas and themes in the writings of Martin Delany, Henry Garnet, and Henry McNeal Turner, among others, Afrocentric scholars such as Molefi Asante, MaulanaKarenga, Na’im Akbar, Dona Marimba Richards (aka Marimba Ani), the late John Henrik Clarke, and Chancellor Williams developed Afrocentrism into a full-fledged and combative ideology of intellectual resistance

Historical Roots and Antecedents

Afrocentrism

Afrocentrism and Globalization

Conclusion