REVISITING THE DISCOURSE ON AFROCENTRICITY AND AN AFROLOGICAL METHOD

Abstract

The debate on Afrocentrism and its place in the communication theorizing has not been settled. While few colonizing nations pursued a policy of assimilation of the colonized, language, and by extension culture is gained through habituation, there ought to have been a deliberate effort by the African intellectuals to propose other world views in addition to the Eurocentric view which had had already been codified. Afrocentricity, presented in the manner in which it has been so far appear to be rebellion against anything European. This should not be the case. In this article, I have established that there is a strong case to recognize that there are different worldviews which emanate from the diversity of human race and none is inferior or superior. The Afrocentricism paradigm is an invitation by and for scholars to begin to deconstruct cosmological, ontological, epistemological, axiological and aesthetic issues from an African orientation as opposed to seeing these issues in the Eurocentric manner in which they are packaged and presented to the academy. First, while agreeing Afrocentric paradigm is a metatheory and can be applied in any human inquiry, we are involved in from agriculture to mathematics as and when the paradigm gets fully developed, probably we need to rename it Afrological Theory to avoid the ‘centric’ tag which tend to be antagonistic or sees everything in binary opposition to that other. Secondly, in response to African-American unique position and experiences, I propose we isolate an African-American orientation or Afriamericentric tradition to capture their unique cosmological and epistemological views. Thirdly, since Ubuntu appear to cut across many African settings, it should be Africa’s contribution to humanity, and we should codify its tenets and develop into it into the Ubuntu theory or philosophy, an idea alluded to in Obonyo’s article or in the very least as an organizing framework from which many frames of Africa may be explored. Article visualizations: