Past Afrocentricity: Reassessing Cheikh Anta Diop's Place
Aug 23, 2020 20:38:13 GMT -5
anansi likes this
Post by zarahan on Aug 23, 2020 20:38:13 GMT -5
Author argues there is a divide between Molefi Asante's more cultural/rhetorical approach
versus Cheikh Anta Diop's more data based approach, in terms of the Afrocentric frame..
www.livefromplanetearth.org/2014/06/past-afrocentricity-reassessing-cheikh.html
Liberator Magazine excerpt- 2014
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Past Afrocentricity: Reassessing Cheikh Anta Diop's Place In the Afrocentric Frame
"I would like to see above all a greater number of researchers
— Afro-Americans — young Americans — even whites. Why
not? Because it’s the young who are least prejudiced. As a
consequence, they are the most capable of making triumph
ideas which frighten the older generation. Also, I think that it
will be necessary to put together polyvalent scientific teams,
capable of doing in-depth studies, for sure, and that’s what’s
important. It bothers me when someone takes me on my word
without developing a means of verifying what I say ... We must
form a scientific spirit capable of seeing even the weaknesses of
our own proofs, of seeing the unfinished side of our work and
committing ourselves to completing it. You understand?
Therefore we should then have a work which could honestly
stand criticism, because what we’ve done would have been
placed on a scientific plane."
—Cheikh Anta Diop, Interview with Harun Kofi Wangara
(Harold G. Lawrence)
These were among the words of the late Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop
(pronounced 'jop' -- like 'hope,' but with a 'j')[1] in his first
interview published in an English-language source conducted in
May 1973.[2] Diop's major theses (the African nature of ancient
Egypt, its contributions to the intellectual development of the
rest of the ancient world and the Nile Valley origins of West
African peoples) are well-known to many African Americans.
Diop has, however, also been the focus and target of the head
of a pseudo-polemic, which, in Western eyes, sees his work as
"Europe Upside Down," in an attempt to alter the balance of
power created by Western cultural and intellectual hegemony by
simply flipping the Western paradigm on its head,[3] perverting
his stated aims[4] despite the clear rejection of this mode of
thinking in Diop's work.[5]
Diop's expressed intent was to restore the historical
consciousness of African peoples on the continent[6] and, as his
remarks at Morehouse College in 1985 demonstrate, in the
Diaspora as well. Yet, as popular as the limited scope of Diop's
translated work has been in the States, there has been very little
work done outside of the Francophone world to extend his
ideas. Thus, Egypto-mania, though prevalent in the West, has
seen a particularly affectionate welcome among ‘black-folk’ in
the States, where it is said that in some ways his following, up
to the time of his death, was stronger than in his home country
of Sénégal,[7] leading at times uncritical praise. This article is
meant as an attempt to put Diop’s work into perspective,
touching on his contributions, detailing the paths taken by his
students and examining the difference between their work and
Dr. Molefi Kete Asante's metatheory, Afrocentricity.
Diop's Early Life And Work At A Glance[*]
Diop was born on December 29, 1923 in a village named Catyu
(pronounced 'ca'to'), about 150 km east of Dakar, Sénégal, in
the region of Diourbel, or Baol.[8] After earning his
baccalauréat in Sénégal, Diop, he enrolled at Lycée Henri-IV
and also at La Sorbonne, in Paris, desiring to become an aircraft
engineer, only to leave Lycée Henri-IV to begin studying in
linguistics.[9] Diop would later explain this change of heart
saying that his prior education had made him learned, but
cultured, leaving him with an "empty" feeling which he wished
to fulfill by exploring his own history and culture.[10] His first
published work was entitled Étude de Linguistique Ouolove.
Origine de la Langue et de la Race Walaf, and linguistics would
become his most powerful tool of analysis throughout his life as
a researcher.[11]
Following this sentiment, for more than ten years, while at times
simultaneously pursuing advanced studies in Physics, Diop
undertook the study of History at La Sorbonne. At La
Sorbonne, Diop's first doctorate theses, L’Avenir Culturel de la
Pensée Africaine (primary thesis: The Future of African Cultural
Thought) and Qu’étaient les Égyptiennes Predynastiques?
(secondary thesis: Who Were the Predynastic Egyptians?) were
not actually refused. The professors informed Diop that if he
wanted to complete his dissertation, he would have to choose
another topic.[12] Thus, Diop's theses were never even
defended. However, both were published in 1954 by Présence
Africaine as Nations Nègres et Culture (Black Nations and
Culture).[13] The first ten chapters (about half) of this work
would later be translated and republished under the title The
African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality?,[14] his most
popular work among English-speaking audiences.
Diop finally received his Ph.D. in Sociology[15] five years later
in January of 1960 (Diop's Ph.D. thus was not in Egyptology, as
is sometimes[16] stated). His primary and secondary theses
were later published as L’Afrique Noire Precoloniale (1959)
and L’Unité Culturelle de l’Afrique Noire (1960) respectively.
But, because of the marginalization Diop experienced at La
Sorbonne and his political opposition to then-President Léopold
Sédar Senghor, he was banished from Dakar University (later
renamed Université Cheikh Anta Diop) until the ascension of
Abdou Diouf (pronounced ‘ab'du juf’) in 1980. As a result,
after returning to Sénégal in 1960, Diop was unable to teach
collegiate until Diouf came to office.[17]
The 1974 Cairo Colloquium
Perhaps Diop's most famous exploit would come in 1974 in
Cairo, Egypt, under the auspices of UNESCO's General History
of Africa project, participating in one of a series of conferences
on a wide array of subjects pertaining to the African past. René
Maheu, Director General of UNESCO, asked Diop to write a
chapter in Volume II of the series. Diop set three conditions in
exchange for his participation. The first was a colloquium
gathering known researchers in the field to 1) engage in a
scientific debate concerning the ancient peopling of the Nile
Valley and 2) discuss the then current state of the decipherment
of the Meroitic Script. The third request was for an aerial
survey of the continent in search of potentially significant
archaeological sites.[18] Diop’s aim was to have an
international platform on which his ideas could be debated with
the top names in the field. Otherwise, he stated, his entry would
be written off, allowing his work to fall under a "conspiracy of
silence."[19]
The colloquium, entitled The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the
Deciphering of the Meroitic Script, consisted of twenty of the
top names in the Egyptology and the archaeology of the region.
Diop's paper was entitled Origine des Anciens Égyptiens, while
his protégé, Dr. Théophile Obenga of the Republic of Congo,
presented a paper on the relationship between Egyptian and
other African languages.[20] A summary description of the
debates is contained in the 1978 publication of the
proceedings.[21] The colloquium ended offering many of the
points Diop had stressed in Nations Nègres et Culture and an
article he'd published the year before as avenues of further
research. However, UNESCO's general conclusion speaks for
itself. The first paragraph reads as follows:
"Although the preparatory working paper ... sent out by Unesco
gave the particulars of what was desired, not all participants had
prepared communication comparable with the painstakingly
researched contributions of Professors Cheikh Anta Diop and
Obenga. There was consequently a real lack of balance in the
discussions."[22]
As a follow-up, Diop authored two linguistic works, Parenté
Génétique (1977) and Nouvelles Recherches (published
posthumously by this son Cheikh M’Backe Diop with the help
of Obenga in 1988) in keeping with the recommendations of the
colloquium.
Before the conference Diop communicated to Obenga that if the
two left Cairo defeated, he would no longer write on Egypt's
African origins -- that if he was wrong, he would let it go.[23]
Still, in Diop's later works he turned his attention to the topics
of iron in Africa, radiocarbon dating, linguistics and the political
situation in Sénégal.[24] His final finished book, Civilisation ou
Barbarie, published in 1981 by Présence Africaine, Diop
regarded as a summary of all his prior works.[25]
Diop in Atlanta
After the publication of African Origins of Civilization (1974),
Diop's following in American grew considerably[26] and during
the 1980s, an Atlanta study group invited Diop to a Nile Valley
Conference scheduled for September 1984. This push was
headed by Drs. Ivan Van Sertima and Charles S. Finch, M.D.
Van Sertima, of Guyana, had by this time become one of Diop’s
foremost followers in the United States and given Diop’s
familiarity Van Sertima’s previous work, the latter sent Diop a
letter ahead of Finch’s planned arrival in Dakar in August of
1983[27] to invite Diop to the conference scheduled for
September 1984 at Atlanta’s Morehouse College. Diop agreed
although complications with the flight blocked his first attempt
to come to the U.S.[28]
Diop finally arrived on his second attempt in April 1985, staying
nine days. Then-mayor Andrew Young proclaimed April 4,
1985, "Cheikh Anta Diop Day" and Diop received an honorary
degree from Morehouse,[29] also meeting Coretta Scott King
and conducting his well-known interview with Listervelt
Middleton of South Carolina’s Educational Television Network
(ETV).[30] Because of Diop's political position in Sénégal, he
had been isolated in many circles in Dakar. Hence, Diop's trip to
Atlanta was one of the few times in his life, if not the only, that
he was ever "treated like a VIP."[31] Diop passed not a year
later on Febrary 7, 1986,[32] leaving behind four sons, a widow
and a far-reaching legacy.
The "Dakar School"[33]: The Building of an African Cadre of
Egyptologists
The foremost of Diop's students is his protégé Théophile
Obenga. Obenga, Mbochi, first learned about Diop's work in the
1960s,[34] meeting him through friends while studying at
L’Université de Bourdeux in France. The two eventually
became close, sharing ideas and traveling together. Diop,
having witnessed the ideological dogmatism of the academy in
his own attempt to obtain his Ph.D., advised Obenga to
concentrate on a topic that was 'less threatening.' Thus, after
having studied at l’Université de Genève, Obenga studied both
Egyptology and linguistics while at La Sorbonne, receiving his
Ph.D. in History. His dissertation was written on the Kingdom
of Congo.[35]
Obenga is currently one of the world’s foremost scholars in the
field of African history. He is an expert on historical linguistics
and has challenged the validity of the construction of the
Afrocasiatic language family.[36] Obenga is also former editor
of the review Muntu, a scholarly journal based in Gabon, which
publishes research on Central and West Central Africa. He is
also co-editor, of the Revue Ankh, another such journal which
provides a platform for African research in Egyptology and
other issues along with Cheikh M’Backé Diop, Cheikh Anta
Diop’s eldest son. Obenga currently teaches in the Africana
Studies Department at San Francisco State University.
Also following Diop is his student, Sénégalese professor
Aboubacry Moussa Lam, a Peul (branch of the Fulani) also
known as Boubacar Lam. Lam’s primary area of focus is Diop’s
migrations theory. As such, the bulk of his work is about
cultural and linguistic similarities between Ancient Egypt and
West African peoples, as well as the methodologies concerning
the study. His major work, entitled De l'Origine Égyptienne des
Peuls (1993),[37] is the published form of his dissertation,
completed in 1988 and for which Diop was the primary advisor
until his passing. Lam is currently Professor of Egyptology in
the Department of History at Cheikh Anta Diop University
(hereafter UCAD, from Université Cheikh Anta Diop).
Another of Diop’s students is Babacar Sall. Sall’s research
interests are the southernly influences on the Egyptian
Predynastic, Egypto-Nubian and -Libyan relations,[38] Greek
testimony concerning the ethnicity of the Egyptians and
subsequent cultural relations.[39] His published dissertation is
entitled Racines Éthiopiennes de l'Égypte Ancienne (1999,
prefaced by Obenga), for which Diop was also the primary
advisor.[40] Sall also teaches at UCAD.
There are also other schools of Egyptology in West Africa. The
most prominent of these is in Cameroon at the University of
Yaoundé, where both Gilbert Ngom and Oum Ndigi work.
Both focus primarily on linguistic links between Egyptians and
their native languages (Duala and Basaa respectively).[41]
Ngom also has a background in law and studied in Paris around
the same time as both Obenga and later Lam.[42] Similar
interest also exists in Benin[43] and Nigeria.[44]
Although Obenga, Lam and Sall are all trained in Egyptology
(Obenga’s Ph.D. is in African History), to this point Africans
working in the field have generally had to travel France in order
to gain the skills necessary to undertake their research (this is
how Ngom and Lam met at La Sorbonne during the
1980s).[45] In an attempt to change this, UCAD has recently
announced the establishment of an Egyptology Institute,[46]
which, when actualized, will facilitate study without requiring
students to go to Paris.[47] Thus, Diop’s legacy has certainly
been carried on by his students, though his legacy would have
been much greater had he been allowed to teach after returning
from Paris.
Pushing the Envelope: Diop on Diop
"We must stop being dilettantes, dabbling here and there, and
become well-trained, pluridisciplinary specialists!"
—Cheikh Anta Diop, Interview with Shawna Moore[48]
For all the praise that Diop's work has received from Africans
on the continent and the Diaspora, Diop himself was the first to
point out the shortcomings of his own 'oeuvre' and the necessity
to critique it. Indeed, one of the biggest misfortunes of Diop's
exile from the then-University of Dakar and the reactionary
nature of European rejections of his work was that rarely during
his life was he engaged on a "scientific" level.[49] Diop, in fact,
said so himself and told Finch in November of 1985 that he
wished to have a colloquium "in which an extensive and
exhaustive discussion, clarification and analysis of his ideas
[could] be carried out," feeling that his work never received
"proper feedback."[50] One such conference, organized by his
political opponent Professor Pathé Diagne, was held in the
Spring of 1982.[51] There have been several others since his
passing.[52]
Although the aim of his work, in part, was to establish a new,
multidisciplinary means of resurrecting the African past,[53] he
himself did not wish for everything he wrote to be taken at face
value. The critiques laid on him by his students and
followers[54] are evidence of this spirit. His stated wish
towards the end of his life, in addition to his political designs,
was the establishment of a team of scientists in various fields of
African history to find, analyze and publish cutting-edge work
in their respective areas.[55] Treating his findings as "proof" for
his assertions without developing a means to engage it does not
do his work justice. Diop once said that he did not "impose"
Nations Nègres, or any of this other works, but rather that they
were meant to be critiqued and analyzed.[56] However, since
Diop's passing, there have been very few people in the Diaspora
who have done this.
[Part II] Cheikh Anta Diop and the Afrocentric Frame: A
Critique of Afrocentricity
"They are caught up in indefensible ideological positions (and)
if you suffer just a bit to acquire first-hand knowledge, you all
can move beyond it -- I’m telling you..."
—Cheikh Anta Diop (Niamey, 1984)[57]
Temple University professor of African-American Studies,
Molefi Kete Asante, founder of the first ever Ph.D. program in
the field, is said to have coined the phrase "Afrocentricity."
Asante defines "Afrocentrism" as "the belief in the centrality of
Africans in post modern history,"[58] critiquing not the validity
of European culture, but its application to and imposition over
other traditions.[59] His stated aim is to have African peoples
live and be judged on their own terms.
Afrocentricity is guided by a set of principals known as
'Nija,'[60] the "cumulative expression of the Afrocentric
worldview," "represent[ing] the inspired Afrocentric spirit" and
"the product of … the cumulative experiences of African
people"[61] for which there are ten Quarters.[62]
Afrocentricity further envisages five stages of transformation
from a lesser to a greater stages of awareness and to capturing
"the true sense of our souls."[63] Asante’s aim is clear: the
application of African standards in both judging and informing
African and Diasporan ways of being. As such, Asante has
referred to himself as "a Diopian,"[64] citing Diop, along with
W.E.B. DuBois, as one of the foremost pioneers of the
theory.[65] Asante thus points to Diop's work as an exemplary
model of the Afrocentric approach to historical research.[66]
The recent public debate over Afrocentrism has featured a
significant amount of lumping whereby numerous African
writers have been marginalized and grouped as
"Afrocentrists"[67] (Though Asante clearly recognizes that not
all black writers who are labeled as such would accept such a
characterization and much of this marginalization would have
happened irrespective of Asante’s metatheory). Thus, an entire
intellectual genealogy has been further politicized by the
existence of a group of rather casual observers, creating added
difficulty for the propagation their work. It is thus necessary to
clearly distinguish the two groups and properly present the
work and aims of the "Dakar School."
Our contention is that Asante’s position is rhetorical rather than
expository, while Diop and his students have taken a distinctly
different path. Any explication of African peoples' "terms"
requires scholarly research to be done on the subjects' histories
and cultural phenomenon, which Asante has largely failed to do.
This failure hangs unnecessary appendages on the examination
of African ways of being, as opposed to allowing the evidence
speak for itself.
Perhaps the most glaring example of this point is Asante's rather
recent debate with the Classist Mary Lefkowitz of Wellesley
College, who has challenged the intellectual grounding of many
"Afrocentric" claims concerning Egyptian influence on ancient
Greece. In 1992, Lefkowitz wrote an article in the New
Republic entitled "Not Out of Africa,"[68] which was followed
by a 1996 book subtitled How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse
to Teach Myth as History (1997 paperback). Her 1996 work
follows on the impetus of the former, outlining and refuting the
arguments of a number of past African and African-American
scholars, as well as that of Cornell University professor Martin
Bernal, concerning Ancient Egypt's contribution to the rise of
Greek "civilization," examining Greek texts and with a
particular attention being given to George James' Stolen
Legacy.[69]
Asante responded to both works, first in a 1993/4 article
entitled "On the Wings of Nonsense,"[70] then in a 1996 entry
"The Many Fallacies of Mary Lefkowitz"[71] and later in his
2001 work, The Painful Demise of Eurocentrism.[72] The
difficulty with Asante's replies rest in the fact that they are each
wholly rhetorical. Never once does Asante cite a piece of
evidence that refutes any of Lefkowtiz’s claims, nor does he
ever so much as engage the arguments she put forth in the much
shorter New Republic article. The best that is done is to
mention the existence of two works which offer diverging
opinions.[73]
Asante questions Lefkowitz's motives,[74] contenting himself
with accusing Lefkowitz of supporting European hegemony and
stating that she must never have read anything that was actually
written by an "Afrocentrist"[75] (though Lefkowitz asserts that
she had).[76] One wonders why, if Asante took such issue to
Lefkowitz’s arguments, he does not refute them? Instead,
Asante asserts the possibility that such influential figures in the
Western world could have in fact been black,[77] then later
stating that this was not an assertion made by Afrocentric
scholars.[78] Asante states that he, in fact, knows scholars who
read glyphs and other languages,[79] and although Asante's
résumé claims that he reads both Greek and hieroglyphs,[80]
not one of Lefkowitz's scholarly critiques is ever engaged on
the basis of the evidence she presented. All he tells us is that he
is convinced from his readings that Egyptian influences on
ancient Greek are real.[81]
To be sure, Obenga has written a lengthy recent work on the
subject. These have also been cited by Asante’s students.[82]
Yet, Asante appears to be asserting the right to maintain a point
of view which is immune from critique and exempt from having
to demonstrate its truthfulness.[83]
"It bothers me when someone takes me on my word without
developing a means of verifying what I say."
—Cheikh Anta Diop (May 7, 1973)[84]
"We must stop being dilettantes, dabbling here and there, and
become well-trained, pluridisciplinary specialists!"
—Cheikh Anta Diop (April 7, 1985)[85]
Moreover, while none of Asante's work amounts to reverse
racism,[86] it does not appear that he has completely broken
away from the paradigm of race. Asante states that Greece
"cannot impose itself as some universal culture that developed
full-blown out of nothing, without the foundations it received
from Africa" and was not "created … willy-nilly without
contact with the civilized world" via some "unique brand of
intelligence."[87] This sounds remarkably similar to something
that could be quoted from the German philosopher G.W.F.
Hegel and appears to be off the subject.
This position is ironic given that Asante spent most of his 1983
article on Great Zimbabwe protesting the tendency of European
writers to attribute its construction to outsiders.[88] Yet,
Asante states that "Afrocentrists," are simply doing what makes
sense by asserting that ancient testimony about the aspects of
Greek culture in question are to be taken as fact.[89] However,
none of Asante’s retorts use any textual evidence. Further,
numerous oral histories trace the origins of West African
peoples back to Asia Minor.[90] Both Diop[91] and Lam[92]
have advanced theories that go against this and Asante sites
Lam in his recent book on the history of Africa.[93] Besides, is
it not contradictory to hold the flowering of intellectual
traditions in Medieval Mali and Songhai as indigenous
outgrowths (though Asante never states this to be his
belief),[94] but to argue that Greek culture was not
substantially autochthonous?
To be sure, Diop made parallel assertions pertaining to the
Egyptian influence on Greece and is even critiqued by
Lefkowitz. One would, however, be in error to, in reading
Diop, charge him with a preoccupation with the concept of
race,[95] particularly in his later works. In fact, from the time of
his earliest work, Nations Nègres (1954)[96] and later,[97] he
shows a clear ambivalence toward and then rejection of the
theory.[98]
Egyptian influence on certain aspects of Greek civilization is
well-known (the use of stone architecture and the Egyptian
sculptural cannon, for example), and the possibility that it
carried on into other areas is certainly real. However, this ought
to read more as an interesting aspect of human history[99] than
an achievement that can be marked as a contribution to the
"Black Race," which is the message conveyed by a close
reading of Asante’s responses. If Greece rose to prominence
largely through indigenous practices and the influence and
economic impetus spurred from then-existing trade nexuses,
which current scholarship seems to support, then what’s the
problem? If Asante’s readings convince him otherwise,[100]
then what’s the issue with demonstrating this?
Scholarly arguments need none of the defensiveness present in
Asante’s responses concerning what "Afrocentrists" do and
don’t do or believe and don’t believe. Certainly, one would be
hard pressed to find parallel responses being used by Diop. In
fact, these are the very same types of tactics that Asante himself
decries in many of the critiques of Diop in work on the
scholar-activist-politician, whom he in fact met (i.e., demeaning
another’s point of view without engaging the veracity of his or
her claims).[101]
Case in point, when Boston University’s Daniel F. McCall
insulted Diop, calling his a "hedgehog" who "knows one big
thing,"[102] Diop’s response was "I [would] appreciate that
attitude of critics who have the strength to present correctly,
without defamation or caricature, the adverse point of view
before trying to demolish it." He continued "such was not the
attitude of Professor McCall in regard to the thesis which I
uphold with arguments, whose consistency he would have felt
had he tried to criticize them."[103] For more of Diop's
responses to critiques, see the section in Anteriorité (1967:
229-274) devoted entirely to such responses. To compare, the
Afrocentric response to critique: that Lefkowitz and others are
not interested in understanding Afrocentrism, but instead in
"fundamentally the same projection of Eurocentric hegemony
that we have seen for the past five hundred years."[104] This
argument amounts to a set of rather flimsy rhetorical outcries
about the mindset he attributes to Lefkowitz and others,
although it appears that Asante has misconstrued a number of
Lefkowitz’s arguments.[105]
Where one is convinced by all of Lefkowitz’s demonstrations or
not, she is clearly within her rights to question his methodology
-- haven’t Diop and Obenga, et al. done the same to countless
European writers, and to each other? If an idea is up for
question, the first step is always to refer to the primary source
evidence. For comparison, see Obenga’s demonstration against
Pascal Vernu’s thesis on the Afroasiatic language family in his
short work about European writers’ characterization of African
history and historians.[106]
For all Afrocentrism’s rage against the dogmatism of the last
five hundred years of European hegemony, it is itself dogmatic.
Asante stresses the importance of being "centered" on Africa,
but by the same vain admits the existence of an "African
Cultural System"[107] and advocates "the attraction to Africa
as a symbol."[108] Gregory Carr has critiqued Asante's concept
of "location," preferring the term "orientation," geared more
toward group identification which informs behavior than
assigning unnecessary appendages to analysis of the subject’s
behavior.[109] Further, with regards to Asante’s "African
Cultural System," if our "confraternity" is to huddle us around
symbolic Africa,[110] then which Africa are we talking about?
Without a push for the study and explication of said subject
along a time and space continuum with clear-cut antecedents,
we wind up with dichotomous and polarized archetypes of
idealized "essential Africanness."[111] As we will see below,
Asante’s work on Africa does not measure up to scholarly
standards.
It seems that it might be more useful to help fill in the enormous
gaps in the archaeological, written (untranslated) and oral
record of the Continent before we begin to talking about the
"African architecton"[112] or "composite African people."[113]
As Carr has noted, Asante has indeed correctly identified the
need for the African people to be viewed as agents in their own
stories.[114] However, this idea was not a new one. In fact it
would seem to be axiomatic. The concept is very apparent, if
not expressly stated in Diop’s writings, as well as in Chancellor
Williams' Destruction of Black Civilization,[115] and certainly
Walter Rodney made reference to the idea in his revised
dissertation A History of the Upper Guinea Coast,[116] to
name a few.
Ama Mazama, fellow Temple Professor and Afrocentric
theorist, has written that the presumptions that the
"metatheory" existed prior to Asante’s articulation of it are
rooted in "professional jealously."[117] This, however,
privileges Asante’s particular framing and expression of the
issue, which has been critiqued,[118] and ignores the facts that
not only did Asante not coin the term,[119] which Asante
admits,[120] but that there are major gaps linked to his failure
to contribute to what is known about African people. Thus, his
students contend that they themselves often have difficulty
determining what is or is not "Afrocentric" and the metatheory
has been criticized as being "self-referential" on Asante’s part,
rather than allowing the space for self definition.[121]
It is of interest to note that Obenga has protested the use of the
French term "Bantouïté," on the grounds that its connotations
are both “Eurocentriste” and ideological.[122] Further, this
constitutes the very same critique that Diop laid on "Négritude"
-- that such paradigms lean on generalities rather than
developing an understanding of self[123] (Although Asante has
differentiated "Afrocentricity" from "Négritude" on the basis
that the latter is said to be apologetic, while "Afrocentricity" is
an idea rooted in victory via the centeredness of African
people).[124]
To be sure, according to Carr,[125] Asante’s concept of the
"composite African people"[126] is based on Diop’s "cultural
unity" thesis. However, Diop did most of the research for
l’Unité Culturelle from 1950 until its publication in 1959.[127]
He then continued to do research both on the major themes in
Precolonial African history and fleshing out his thesis about the
nature of the inter-relatedness of African people across the
continent, primarily through the use of linguistics. Further, his
"cultural unity" thesis was written primarily focusing on one
noted commonality noted across a number of African cultures at
that time. Again, if we’re going to talk about "composite
African people," it stands to logic that African peoples ought
first to be studied in-depth across time and space as much as the
available evidence permits. Only then can common features to
be noted.[128] Diop’s main objective, as noted, was not to
define our "essential Africanness," but rather the restoration of
historical consciousness, which was to inform both present
behavior and future orientation on the basis of this shared
understanding of the full scope of African history[129] and a
grounding in our own particular cultural milieu.[130] Similarly,
Carr cites Obenga, pointing out the former’s construction of the
past as a means of establishing continuity and orientation for
different groups.[131] The connections Diop cites were to be
researched via "direct knowledge" of the primary source
material related to the subjects in question.[132] Again,
Asante’s work, in contrast, his historical work in particular, has
done little to engage this material and has not generally
contributed to our understanding of African people.
While Asante has learned glyphs more recently and in fact did
all the translations for his 1996 work with Abu Barry,[133] his
body of work on the Continent cannot be considered scholarly.
He has written an entire book on Egyptian philosophy without
citing Faulkner’s Middle Egyptian dictionary, the
Wörterbuch,[134] the five volume German dictionary used as
the standard reference for Egyptologists, or the most current
grammatical work in the field, Allen’s Middle Egyptian (i.e., it
appears that he has not done his own translations of the texts in
question). Volume III of Faulkner’s Coffin Texts, which he
cites, is translated and annotated, and there are only three texts
in the bibliography which feature any full-length translations.
Nowhere in the work is there an in-depth examination of
Egyptian thought based on textual comparisons. Yet in the text
we read references to the "African mind."
Asante’s recent book on the history of the Continent is sub-par.
The book mentions the "Saharan generator," but fails to cite any
of the major scholars on the Prehistory of the region, such as
Elena A.A. Garcea, Rudolph Kuper or Achilles Gautier.
Further, though attempting to stress Egypt’s place as an African
culture, Asante completely ignores evidence of Egypt’s link to a
larger Saharan/Central Sudanese/Nubian cultural tradition.[135]
The information he gives on the Predynastic is inaccurate: the
Gerzean is known as Naqada II and dates to c. 3700-3300
B.C.,[136] rather than 8000 B.C., as Asante states. For this
very period of c. 8000 B.C. the Lower Nile Valley is nearly
devoid of sites,[137] yet Asante writes as if this were the
beginning of the Egyptian Predynastic and only one of the major
authors on the period, past or present has been included in his
bibliography. There is no mention of any of the early Lower
Nubian cultures, the A-Group (contemporary with the
Predynastic) or the C-Group (coeval with the Old
Kingdom).[138] His lengthy section the 25th Dynasty is written
without citing George Reisner, who conducted the first
excavations at in and around the capital of Napata, or Timothy
Kendall, who is currently doing fieldwork there. Only passing
reference is given to Kerma just further north, which existed
from the end of the Old Kingdom to the invasion by the 18th
Dynasty.[139] The text does feature a few translations,[140]
but, one wonders how the professor writes about the Ramesside
Period[141] without referencing the Kitchen’s Ramesside
Index.[142] Old Ghana is mentioned with similar
omissions.[143] Asante’s section on the Songhay empire[144]
remarkably cites neither the old[145] nor the new[146]
translations of Tarikh as-Sudan directly (the text is referenced
only in passing), and completely ignores Kati’s Tarikh
al-Fettash. (Compare this is Diop’s treatment of Medieval West
African states in Precolonial Black Africa,[147] which,
ironically, is not cited). Similarly, Asante has written an entire
book on Diop without citing his protégé Obenga’s massive
historiographical biography on his mentor, yet claiming Diop to
be an exemplary model of an Afrocentric historian.[148]
The question posed here is how to be Afrocentric without doing
in-depth research into gleaning how African people move or
have moved in the world. Granted, each of the works critiqued
above are expressly written not to be exhaustive, however,
again, it is impossible to explicate anything about a proposed
subject without doing expository research on said group,
regardless of the field. Asante received his Ph.D. in 1968 from
UCLA in Speech. His dissertation work was on the 18th
century Bostonian Samuel Adams.[149] Thus, though the
professor writes about African people carving out a "place to
stand,"[150] this "place," regardless of the time/space juncture
in question, is rarely examined in his work, apart from a series
of works written in the 1970s on black rhetoric.[151]
Afrocentricity calls for the use of "Classical references"(defined
as ancient Egypt, Nubia, Axum and Meroë) for the proper
framing of African culture.[152] First, as we have seen,
Asante’s analysis of these cultures is lacking (although the
Meroitic script has not yet been deciphered).[153] Second, not
all present-day African or Diasporan "cultural phenomena" rest
on antecedents that are "Classical."[154] Hinging examination
of African subjects on preconceived notions of what it is
believed to be quintessentially 'African' in effect disregards their
own standards for modern, or post-modern, conceptions of the
ancient world, which does not allow for the culture's
development to be adequately traced over time or placed within
its own context.
Even if one is to argue the migrations theory for various groups
across the continent, we are still obliged to do the research (i.e.,
Aboubacray Moussa Lam). The author is from Maryland, where
it has been estimated that around 40 percent of the enslaved
Africans transported to the United States were taken from the
Bight of Biafra and that most of them were Igbo.[155] Then are
"cultural phenomena" in Montgomery or Prince Georges
Counties more informed by the nexus that arose from various
combinations of groups forging their own community on the
basis of commonality and in the face of oppression or by
references to the New Kingdom? Which frame of reference
needs to be used to understand Diasporan culture today? Which
allows for self discovery and definition? Our contention is the
former.
Diop’s migrations theory must necessarily be read with the
understanding that he noted what he perceived to be a "genetic"
relationship between Egyptian and his native language Wolof in
the late 1940s.[156] To say that he privileged Egypt is again
inaccurate. Diop gave priority to entire scope of African
history[157] (which is not to say that Asante does not), writing
his Dissertation on the historical trends in Medieval West
Africa.[158] The migrations theory was first fully laid out in
Nations Nègres (1954), then later in subsequent works. Diop’s
intentions were clearly stated in Niamey, Niger in 1984: "My
attitude is not that of one who is focused on the past. All my
work is directed towards the future. And [the] past I investigate
simply to make possible the edification of a chain of social
sciences."[159] History in general was meant to orient the
consciousness of African people back to their long
histories.[160]
Egypt’s role in historical reconstruction is then key primarily
because of the possibilities it holds for linguistic study due to its
place as the first appearance of a written language on the
Continent. Any use of Egypt as a reference point then was to be
fleshed out using all available tools to understand how groups
may or may not be related,[161] as opposed to assuming groups
to be related and basing ones judgment of present-day cultures
on so-called "Classical" ways of being. It is thus that Diop’s
students continue their research using his research paradigms.
So, while there are similarities in the viewpoints of the two
groups (for example, African liberation and the self-definition
for African and Diasporan peoples), the methods utilized to
achieve these goals are markedly different and in fact, Obenga
has even stated in print that he does not refer to himself as an
"Afrocentrist."[162] The types of studies Diop’s student have
undertaken require grounding in the history and culture of the
groups in decision. Minus this rhetoric about the Continent
quickly lends itself to static analysis of any and all subjects
under study.
Pushing Past Diop
Today Diop's work is woefully out-of-date, save for his
linguistic data. His most popular English-translated work The
African Origin of Civilization (1974) is, as was mentioned
before, the translation of Nations Nègres et Culture,[163] for
which the intellectual work was done/carried out between the
years 1949 and 1954.[164] As such, Diop's writings do not
reflect more recent developments in the fields in which he
wrote. There is thus a need to engage, extend and critique his
ideas and theories based on the current state of knowledge in
the fields with which his writings were concerned. In reference
to his study of Egypt, there are serious omissions in terms of the
range of primary source material that Diop worked with:
specifically, he was not a ceramicist and, therefore, was not able
to engage the primary means of following cultural change in
that area of the world during the Predynastic period, aside from
his generally sparse usage of archaeological data.
African people continent- and Diaspora-wide have made major
efforts in studying their own local histories -- as specialists in
their respective fields. Any reconstruction of the African or
Diasporic past must therefore necessitate the exchange of ideas
across the Atlantic, as well as the Caribbean, in multiple
European languages and in whatever languages necessary to
extract primary source information relevant to the fields in
question, which means continuing to obtain Master’s and Ph.Ds
in all related disciplines. Any and all assertions made ought to
stand the test of historical research. Both Diop[165] and
Lam[166] devoted significant sections of their work to
questions of methodology. Obenga is a stickler for it.[167]
Anything else undercuts the very scholars whose names we seek
to uplift and whose legacies to invoke by citing their work,
regardless of the period or culture under discussion.
As such, Diop’s work, for both its perspective and its rigor,
ought to serve as a point of departure, even if all his ideas may
not stand the test of time. It was not meant to be the gospel.
Diop’s aim was to have the history of all African peoples
examined and written on its own terms,[168] not to have his
readership adhere dogmatically to his positions because of the
chord his perceptive strikes or his elevation as the "gold
standard" for the study of all things African.
With respect to Diop's contributions, his son, Cheikh M'Backé
Diop, has devoted significant sections of his father's biography
on recent confirmations of major themes in Diop's work,[169]
as has Obenga.[170] For instance, we know that Diop was
correct concerning the origin of humanity and in his rejection of
the foundations of the concept of race,[171] although he hung
onto the use of the term until the end of his life.[172] In
addition, his thesis that Egypt emerged as an indigenous
development has been confirmed on a number of grounds.
Migrations from the Eastern Sahara between c.7000 and 5000
B.C. are generally accepted and have been proven via ceramic
analysis,[173] though the full picture of the peopling of the Nile
Valley is still very incompletely understood.[174] Archaeology
has borne out his thesis of the complexity of the cultural nexus
from which Egypt is seen in a number of traits shared
throughout the Nile Valley -- from Upper Egypt south to the
Sixth Cataract. These include rippled burnishing,[175]
black-topped and black-mouthed decoration,[176] incised
tulip-shaped libation vessels[177] and mace-heads[178], and
various combinations of burial practices (such as contraction,
the use of pillows, animal skin or reed matting, bucrania as
grave markers, ostrich eggshell and an assortment of other
adornment items, including malachite and galena).[179] The
thrust of his ideas on the "Falsification d'Histoire" have been
authoritatively written about,[180] cited by top scholars on the
area[181] and are taught in today in graduate-level Egyptology
courses. Lastly, the linguistic research he began in 1946 and
which he was in the process of expanding until his passing has
been extended by his students, most notably Obenga.[182] In
effect, the surface is only being scratched with respect to Diop's
research paradigms though there is still a great deal more to be
done.
A Proposed, Though by No Means Novel, Perspective on the
Study of Africa
Our attachment with history must cease to be "symbolic."[183]
History is meant to place us in proper context -- to give
perspective. The possibility of coherent regional histories
concerning 'black-folk' written for specific areas within the
United States is very real. We argue here that it is also
necessary to escape the trap that is the Western view of African
peoples and its systems' failure to nurture our sense of self. The
people we most readily identify with are in our immediate
families and communities. The nexus of historical events that
got these present communities to where they are now ultimate
leads by to the continent. However, this path always for black
people follows back to the Continent and to very specific,[184]
if not always traceable,[185] time and space contexts. These
contexts inform who we have become. Hence, the need for the
study of the African and Africanisms in Diasporic culture.
<<snip>>
versus Cheikh Anta Diop's more data based approach, in terms of the Afrocentric frame..
www.livefromplanetearth.org/2014/06/past-afrocentricity-reassessing-cheikh.html
Liberator Magazine excerpt- 2014
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Past Afrocentricity: Reassessing Cheikh Anta Diop's Place In the Afrocentric Frame
"I would like to see above all a greater number of researchers
— Afro-Americans — young Americans — even whites. Why
not? Because it’s the young who are least prejudiced. As a
consequence, they are the most capable of making triumph
ideas which frighten the older generation. Also, I think that it
will be necessary to put together polyvalent scientific teams,
capable of doing in-depth studies, for sure, and that’s what’s
important. It bothers me when someone takes me on my word
without developing a means of verifying what I say ... We must
form a scientific spirit capable of seeing even the weaknesses of
our own proofs, of seeing the unfinished side of our work and
committing ourselves to completing it. You understand?
Therefore we should then have a work which could honestly
stand criticism, because what we’ve done would have been
placed on a scientific plane."
—Cheikh Anta Diop, Interview with Harun Kofi Wangara
(Harold G. Lawrence)
These were among the words of the late Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop
(pronounced 'jop' -- like 'hope,' but with a 'j')[1] in his first
interview published in an English-language source conducted in
May 1973.[2] Diop's major theses (the African nature of ancient
Egypt, its contributions to the intellectual development of the
rest of the ancient world and the Nile Valley origins of West
African peoples) are well-known to many African Americans.
Diop has, however, also been the focus and target of the head
of a pseudo-polemic, which, in Western eyes, sees his work as
"Europe Upside Down," in an attempt to alter the balance of
power created by Western cultural and intellectual hegemony by
simply flipping the Western paradigm on its head,[3] perverting
his stated aims[4] despite the clear rejection of this mode of
thinking in Diop's work.[5]
Diop's expressed intent was to restore the historical
consciousness of African peoples on the continent[6] and, as his
remarks at Morehouse College in 1985 demonstrate, in the
Diaspora as well. Yet, as popular as the limited scope of Diop's
translated work has been in the States, there has been very little
work done outside of the Francophone world to extend his
ideas. Thus, Egypto-mania, though prevalent in the West, has
seen a particularly affectionate welcome among ‘black-folk’ in
the States, where it is said that in some ways his following, up
to the time of his death, was stronger than in his home country
of Sénégal,[7] leading at times uncritical praise. This article is
meant as an attempt to put Diop’s work into perspective,
touching on his contributions, detailing the paths taken by his
students and examining the difference between their work and
Dr. Molefi Kete Asante's metatheory, Afrocentricity.
Diop's Early Life And Work At A Glance[*]
Diop was born on December 29, 1923 in a village named Catyu
(pronounced 'ca'to'), about 150 km east of Dakar, Sénégal, in
the region of Diourbel, or Baol.[8] After earning his
baccalauréat in Sénégal, Diop, he enrolled at Lycée Henri-IV
and also at La Sorbonne, in Paris, desiring to become an aircraft
engineer, only to leave Lycée Henri-IV to begin studying in
linguistics.[9] Diop would later explain this change of heart
saying that his prior education had made him learned, but
cultured, leaving him with an "empty" feeling which he wished
to fulfill by exploring his own history and culture.[10] His first
published work was entitled Étude de Linguistique Ouolove.
Origine de la Langue et de la Race Walaf, and linguistics would
become his most powerful tool of analysis throughout his life as
a researcher.[11]
Following this sentiment, for more than ten years, while at times
simultaneously pursuing advanced studies in Physics, Diop
undertook the study of History at La Sorbonne. At La
Sorbonne, Diop's first doctorate theses, L’Avenir Culturel de la
Pensée Africaine (primary thesis: The Future of African Cultural
Thought) and Qu’étaient les Égyptiennes Predynastiques?
(secondary thesis: Who Were the Predynastic Egyptians?) were
not actually refused. The professors informed Diop that if he
wanted to complete his dissertation, he would have to choose
another topic.[12] Thus, Diop's theses were never even
defended. However, both were published in 1954 by Présence
Africaine as Nations Nègres et Culture (Black Nations and
Culture).[13] The first ten chapters (about half) of this work
would later be translated and republished under the title The
African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality?,[14] his most
popular work among English-speaking audiences.
Diop finally received his Ph.D. in Sociology[15] five years later
in January of 1960 (Diop's Ph.D. thus was not in Egyptology, as
is sometimes[16] stated). His primary and secondary theses
were later published as L’Afrique Noire Precoloniale (1959)
and L’Unité Culturelle de l’Afrique Noire (1960) respectively.
But, because of the marginalization Diop experienced at La
Sorbonne and his political opposition to then-President Léopold
Sédar Senghor, he was banished from Dakar University (later
renamed Université Cheikh Anta Diop) until the ascension of
Abdou Diouf (pronounced ‘ab'du juf’) in 1980. As a result,
after returning to Sénégal in 1960, Diop was unable to teach
collegiate until Diouf came to office.[17]
The 1974 Cairo Colloquium
Perhaps Diop's most famous exploit would come in 1974 in
Cairo, Egypt, under the auspices of UNESCO's General History
of Africa project, participating in one of a series of conferences
on a wide array of subjects pertaining to the African past. René
Maheu, Director General of UNESCO, asked Diop to write a
chapter in Volume II of the series. Diop set three conditions in
exchange for his participation. The first was a colloquium
gathering known researchers in the field to 1) engage in a
scientific debate concerning the ancient peopling of the Nile
Valley and 2) discuss the then current state of the decipherment
of the Meroitic Script. The third request was for an aerial
survey of the continent in search of potentially significant
archaeological sites.[18] Diop’s aim was to have an
international platform on which his ideas could be debated with
the top names in the field. Otherwise, he stated, his entry would
be written off, allowing his work to fall under a "conspiracy of
silence."[19]
The colloquium, entitled The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the
Deciphering of the Meroitic Script, consisted of twenty of the
top names in the Egyptology and the archaeology of the region.
Diop's paper was entitled Origine des Anciens Égyptiens, while
his protégé, Dr. Théophile Obenga of the Republic of Congo,
presented a paper on the relationship between Egyptian and
other African languages.[20] A summary description of the
debates is contained in the 1978 publication of the
proceedings.[21] The colloquium ended offering many of the
points Diop had stressed in Nations Nègres et Culture and an
article he'd published the year before as avenues of further
research. However, UNESCO's general conclusion speaks for
itself. The first paragraph reads as follows:
"Although the preparatory working paper ... sent out by Unesco
gave the particulars of what was desired, not all participants had
prepared communication comparable with the painstakingly
researched contributions of Professors Cheikh Anta Diop and
Obenga. There was consequently a real lack of balance in the
discussions."[22]
As a follow-up, Diop authored two linguistic works, Parenté
Génétique (1977) and Nouvelles Recherches (published
posthumously by this son Cheikh M’Backe Diop with the help
of Obenga in 1988) in keeping with the recommendations of the
colloquium.
Before the conference Diop communicated to Obenga that if the
two left Cairo defeated, he would no longer write on Egypt's
African origins -- that if he was wrong, he would let it go.[23]
Still, in Diop's later works he turned his attention to the topics
of iron in Africa, radiocarbon dating, linguistics and the political
situation in Sénégal.[24] His final finished book, Civilisation ou
Barbarie, published in 1981 by Présence Africaine, Diop
regarded as a summary of all his prior works.[25]
Diop in Atlanta
After the publication of African Origins of Civilization (1974),
Diop's following in American grew considerably[26] and during
the 1980s, an Atlanta study group invited Diop to a Nile Valley
Conference scheduled for September 1984. This push was
headed by Drs. Ivan Van Sertima and Charles S. Finch, M.D.
Van Sertima, of Guyana, had by this time become one of Diop’s
foremost followers in the United States and given Diop’s
familiarity Van Sertima’s previous work, the latter sent Diop a
letter ahead of Finch’s planned arrival in Dakar in August of
1983[27] to invite Diop to the conference scheduled for
September 1984 at Atlanta’s Morehouse College. Diop agreed
although complications with the flight blocked his first attempt
to come to the U.S.[28]
Diop finally arrived on his second attempt in April 1985, staying
nine days. Then-mayor Andrew Young proclaimed April 4,
1985, "Cheikh Anta Diop Day" and Diop received an honorary
degree from Morehouse,[29] also meeting Coretta Scott King
and conducting his well-known interview with Listervelt
Middleton of South Carolina’s Educational Television Network
(ETV).[30] Because of Diop's political position in Sénégal, he
had been isolated in many circles in Dakar. Hence, Diop's trip to
Atlanta was one of the few times in his life, if not the only, that
he was ever "treated like a VIP."[31] Diop passed not a year
later on Febrary 7, 1986,[32] leaving behind four sons, a widow
and a far-reaching legacy.
The "Dakar School"[33]: The Building of an African Cadre of
Egyptologists
The foremost of Diop's students is his protégé Théophile
Obenga. Obenga, Mbochi, first learned about Diop's work in the
1960s,[34] meeting him through friends while studying at
L’Université de Bourdeux in France. The two eventually
became close, sharing ideas and traveling together. Diop,
having witnessed the ideological dogmatism of the academy in
his own attempt to obtain his Ph.D., advised Obenga to
concentrate on a topic that was 'less threatening.' Thus, after
having studied at l’Université de Genève, Obenga studied both
Egyptology and linguistics while at La Sorbonne, receiving his
Ph.D. in History. His dissertation was written on the Kingdom
of Congo.[35]
Obenga is currently one of the world’s foremost scholars in the
field of African history. He is an expert on historical linguistics
and has challenged the validity of the construction of the
Afrocasiatic language family.[36] Obenga is also former editor
of the review Muntu, a scholarly journal based in Gabon, which
publishes research on Central and West Central Africa. He is
also co-editor, of the Revue Ankh, another such journal which
provides a platform for African research in Egyptology and
other issues along with Cheikh M’Backé Diop, Cheikh Anta
Diop’s eldest son. Obenga currently teaches in the Africana
Studies Department at San Francisco State University.
Also following Diop is his student, Sénégalese professor
Aboubacry Moussa Lam, a Peul (branch of the Fulani) also
known as Boubacar Lam. Lam’s primary area of focus is Diop’s
migrations theory. As such, the bulk of his work is about
cultural and linguistic similarities between Ancient Egypt and
West African peoples, as well as the methodologies concerning
the study. His major work, entitled De l'Origine Égyptienne des
Peuls (1993),[37] is the published form of his dissertation,
completed in 1988 and for which Diop was the primary advisor
until his passing. Lam is currently Professor of Egyptology in
the Department of History at Cheikh Anta Diop University
(hereafter UCAD, from Université Cheikh Anta Diop).
Another of Diop’s students is Babacar Sall. Sall’s research
interests are the southernly influences on the Egyptian
Predynastic, Egypto-Nubian and -Libyan relations,[38] Greek
testimony concerning the ethnicity of the Egyptians and
subsequent cultural relations.[39] His published dissertation is
entitled Racines Éthiopiennes de l'Égypte Ancienne (1999,
prefaced by Obenga), for which Diop was also the primary
advisor.[40] Sall also teaches at UCAD.
There are also other schools of Egyptology in West Africa. The
most prominent of these is in Cameroon at the University of
Yaoundé, where both Gilbert Ngom and Oum Ndigi work.
Both focus primarily on linguistic links between Egyptians and
their native languages (Duala and Basaa respectively).[41]
Ngom also has a background in law and studied in Paris around
the same time as both Obenga and later Lam.[42] Similar
interest also exists in Benin[43] and Nigeria.[44]
Although Obenga, Lam and Sall are all trained in Egyptology
(Obenga’s Ph.D. is in African History), to this point Africans
working in the field have generally had to travel France in order
to gain the skills necessary to undertake their research (this is
how Ngom and Lam met at La Sorbonne during the
1980s).[45] In an attempt to change this, UCAD has recently
announced the establishment of an Egyptology Institute,[46]
which, when actualized, will facilitate study without requiring
students to go to Paris.[47] Thus, Diop’s legacy has certainly
been carried on by his students, though his legacy would have
been much greater had he been allowed to teach after returning
from Paris.
Pushing the Envelope: Diop on Diop
"We must stop being dilettantes, dabbling here and there, and
become well-trained, pluridisciplinary specialists!"
—Cheikh Anta Diop, Interview with Shawna Moore[48]
For all the praise that Diop's work has received from Africans
on the continent and the Diaspora, Diop himself was the first to
point out the shortcomings of his own 'oeuvre' and the necessity
to critique it. Indeed, one of the biggest misfortunes of Diop's
exile from the then-University of Dakar and the reactionary
nature of European rejections of his work was that rarely during
his life was he engaged on a "scientific" level.[49] Diop, in fact,
said so himself and told Finch in November of 1985 that he
wished to have a colloquium "in which an extensive and
exhaustive discussion, clarification and analysis of his ideas
[could] be carried out," feeling that his work never received
"proper feedback."[50] One such conference, organized by his
political opponent Professor Pathé Diagne, was held in the
Spring of 1982.[51] There have been several others since his
passing.[52]
Although the aim of his work, in part, was to establish a new,
multidisciplinary means of resurrecting the African past,[53] he
himself did not wish for everything he wrote to be taken at face
value. The critiques laid on him by his students and
followers[54] are evidence of this spirit. His stated wish
towards the end of his life, in addition to his political designs,
was the establishment of a team of scientists in various fields of
African history to find, analyze and publish cutting-edge work
in their respective areas.[55] Treating his findings as "proof" for
his assertions without developing a means to engage it does not
do his work justice. Diop once said that he did not "impose"
Nations Nègres, or any of this other works, but rather that they
were meant to be critiqued and analyzed.[56] However, since
Diop's passing, there have been very few people in the Diaspora
who have done this.
[Part II] Cheikh Anta Diop and the Afrocentric Frame: A
Critique of Afrocentricity
"They are caught up in indefensible ideological positions (and)
if you suffer just a bit to acquire first-hand knowledge, you all
can move beyond it -- I’m telling you..."
—Cheikh Anta Diop (Niamey, 1984)[57]
Temple University professor of African-American Studies,
Molefi Kete Asante, founder of the first ever Ph.D. program in
the field, is said to have coined the phrase "Afrocentricity."
Asante defines "Afrocentrism" as "the belief in the centrality of
Africans in post modern history,"[58] critiquing not the validity
of European culture, but its application to and imposition over
other traditions.[59] His stated aim is to have African peoples
live and be judged on their own terms.
Afrocentricity is guided by a set of principals known as
'Nija,'[60] the "cumulative expression of the Afrocentric
worldview," "represent[ing] the inspired Afrocentric spirit" and
"the product of … the cumulative experiences of African
people"[61] for which there are ten Quarters.[62]
Afrocentricity further envisages five stages of transformation
from a lesser to a greater stages of awareness and to capturing
"the true sense of our souls."[63] Asante’s aim is clear: the
application of African standards in both judging and informing
African and Diasporan ways of being. As such, Asante has
referred to himself as "a Diopian,"[64] citing Diop, along with
W.E.B. DuBois, as one of the foremost pioneers of the
theory.[65] Asante thus points to Diop's work as an exemplary
model of the Afrocentric approach to historical research.[66]
The recent public debate over Afrocentrism has featured a
significant amount of lumping whereby numerous African
writers have been marginalized and grouped as
"Afrocentrists"[67] (Though Asante clearly recognizes that not
all black writers who are labeled as such would accept such a
characterization and much of this marginalization would have
happened irrespective of Asante’s metatheory). Thus, an entire
intellectual genealogy has been further politicized by the
existence of a group of rather casual observers, creating added
difficulty for the propagation their work. It is thus necessary to
clearly distinguish the two groups and properly present the
work and aims of the "Dakar School."
Our contention is that Asante’s position is rhetorical rather than
expository, while Diop and his students have taken a distinctly
different path. Any explication of African peoples' "terms"
requires scholarly research to be done on the subjects' histories
and cultural phenomenon, which Asante has largely failed to do.
This failure hangs unnecessary appendages on the examination
of African ways of being, as opposed to allowing the evidence
speak for itself.
Perhaps the most glaring example of this point is Asante's rather
recent debate with the Classist Mary Lefkowitz of Wellesley
College, who has challenged the intellectual grounding of many
"Afrocentric" claims concerning Egyptian influence on ancient
Greece. In 1992, Lefkowitz wrote an article in the New
Republic entitled "Not Out of Africa,"[68] which was followed
by a 1996 book subtitled How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse
to Teach Myth as History (1997 paperback). Her 1996 work
follows on the impetus of the former, outlining and refuting the
arguments of a number of past African and African-American
scholars, as well as that of Cornell University professor Martin
Bernal, concerning Ancient Egypt's contribution to the rise of
Greek "civilization," examining Greek texts and with a
particular attention being given to George James' Stolen
Legacy.[69]
Asante responded to both works, first in a 1993/4 article
entitled "On the Wings of Nonsense,"[70] then in a 1996 entry
"The Many Fallacies of Mary Lefkowitz"[71] and later in his
2001 work, The Painful Demise of Eurocentrism.[72] The
difficulty with Asante's replies rest in the fact that they are each
wholly rhetorical. Never once does Asante cite a piece of
evidence that refutes any of Lefkowtiz’s claims, nor does he
ever so much as engage the arguments she put forth in the much
shorter New Republic article. The best that is done is to
mention the existence of two works which offer diverging
opinions.[73]
Asante questions Lefkowitz's motives,[74] contenting himself
with accusing Lefkowitz of supporting European hegemony and
stating that she must never have read anything that was actually
written by an "Afrocentrist"[75] (though Lefkowitz asserts that
she had).[76] One wonders why, if Asante took such issue to
Lefkowitz’s arguments, he does not refute them? Instead,
Asante asserts the possibility that such influential figures in the
Western world could have in fact been black,[77] then later
stating that this was not an assertion made by Afrocentric
scholars.[78] Asante states that he, in fact, knows scholars who
read glyphs and other languages,[79] and although Asante's
résumé claims that he reads both Greek and hieroglyphs,[80]
not one of Lefkowitz's scholarly critiques is ever engaged on
the basis of the evidence she presented. All he tells us is that he
is convinced from his readings that Egyptian influences on
ancient Greek are real.[81]
To be sure, Obenga has written a lengthy recent work on the
subject. These have also been cited by Asante’s students.[82]
Yet, Asante appears to be asserting the right to maintain a point
of view which is immune from critique and exempt from having
to demonstrate its truthfulness.[83]
"It bothers me when someone takes me on my word without
developing a means of verifying what I say."
—Cheikh Anta Diop (May 7, 1973)[84]
"We must stop being dilettantes, dabbling here and there, and
become well-trained, pluridisciplinary specialists!"
—Cheikh Anta Diop (April 7, 1985)[85]
Moreover, while none of Asante's work amounts to reverse
racism,[86] it does not appear that he has completely broken
away from the paradigm of race. Asante states that Greece
"cannot impose itself as some universal culture that developed
full-blown out of nothing, without the foundations it received
from Africa" and was not "created … willy-nilly without
contact with the civilized world" via some "unique brand of
intelligence."[87] This sounds remarkably similar to something
that could be quoted from the German philosopher G.W.F.
Hegel and appears to be off the subject.
This position is ironic given that Asante spent most of his 1983
article on Great Zimbabwe protesting the tendency of European
writers to attribute its construction to outsiders.[88] Yet,
Asante states that "Afrocentrists," are simply doing what makes
sense by asserting that ancient testimony about the aspects of
Greek culture in question are to be taken as fact.[89] However,
none of Asante’s retorts use any textual evidence. Further,
numerous oral histories trace the origins of West African
peoples back to Asia Minor.[90] Both Diop[91] and Lam[92]
have advanced theories that go against this and Asante sites
Lam in his recent book on the history of Africa.[93] Besides, is
it not contradictory to hold the flowering of intellectual
traditions in Medieval Mali and Songhai as indigenous
outgrowths (though Asante never states this to be his
belief),[94] but to argue that Greek culture was not
substantially autochthonous?
To be sure, Diop made parallel assertions pertaining to the
Egyptian influence on Greece and is even critiqued by
Lefkowitz. One would, however, be in error to, in reading
Diop, charge him with a preoccupation with the concept of
race,[95] particularly in his later works. In fact, from the time of
his earliest work, Nations Nègres (1954)[96] and later,[97] he
shows a clear ambivalence toward and then rejection of the
theory.[98]
Egyptian influence on certain aspects of Greek civilization is
well-known (the use of stone architecture and the Egyptian
sculptural cannon, for example), and the possibility that it
carried on into other areas is certainly real. However, this ought
to read more as an interesting aspect of human history[99] than
an achievement that can be marked as a contribution to the
"Black Race," which is the message conveyed by a close
reading of Asante’s responses. If Greece rose to prominence
largely through indigenous practices and the influence and
economic impetus spurred from then-existing trade nexuses,
which current scholarship seems to support, then what’s the
problem? If Asante’s readings convince him otherwise,[100]
then what’s the issue with demonstrating this?
Scholarly arguments need none of the defensiveness present in
Asante’s responses concerning what "Afrocentrists" do and
don’t do or believe and don’t believe. Certainly, one would be
hard pressed to find parallel responses being used by Diop. In
fact, these are the very same types of tactics that Asante himself
decries in many of the critiques of Diop in work on the
scholar-activist-politician, whom he in fact met (i.e., demeaning
another’s point of view without engaging the veracity of his or
her claims).[101]
Case in point, when Boston University’s Daniel F. McCall
insulted Diop, calling his a "hedgehog" who "knows one big
thing,"[102] Diop’s response was "I [would] appreciate that
attitude of critics who have the strength to present correctly,
without defamation or caricature, the adverse point of view
before trying to demolish it." He continued "such was not the
attitude of Professor McCall in regard to the thesis which I
uphold with arguments, whose consistency he would have felt
had he tried to criticize them."[103] For more of Diop's
responses to critiques, see the section in Anteriorité (1967:
229-274) devoted entirely to such responses. To compare, the
Afrocentric response to critique: that Lefkowitz and others are
not interested in understanding Afrocentrism, but instead in
"fundamentally the same projection of Eurocentric hegemony
that we have seen for the past five hundred years."[104] This
argument amounts to a set of rather flimsy rhetorical outcries
about the mindset he attributes to Lefkowitz and others,
although it appears that Asante has misconstrued a number of
Lefkowitz’s arguments.[105]
Where one is convinced by all of Lefkowitz’s demonstrations or
not, she is clearly within her rights to question his methodology
-- haven’t Diop and Obenga, et al. done the same to countless
European writers, and to each other? If an idea is up for
question, the first step is always to refer to the primary source
evidence. For comparison, see Obenga’s demonstration against
Pascal Vernu’s thesis on the Afroasiatic language family in his
short work about European writers’ characterization of African
history and historians.[106]
For all Afrocentrism’s rage against the dogmatism of the last
five hundred years of European hegemony, it is itself dogmatic.
Asante stresses the importance of being "centered" on Africa,
but by the same vain admits the existence of an "African
Cultural System"[107] and advocates "the attraction to Africa
as a symbol."[108] Gregory Carr has critiqued Asante's concept
of "location," preferring the term "orientation," geared more
toward group identification which informs behavior than
assigning unnecessary appendages to analysis of the subject’s
behavior.[109] Further, with regards to Asante’s "African
Cultural System," if our "confraternity" is to huddle us around
symbolic Africa,[110] then which Africa are we talking about?
Without a push for the study and explication of said subject
along a time and space continuum with clear-cut antecedents,
we wind up with dichotomous and polarized archetypes of
idealized "essential Africanness."[111] As we will see below,
Asante’s work on Africa does not measure up to scholarly
standards.
It seems that it might be more useful to help fill in the enormous
gaps in the archaeological, written (untranslated) and oral
record of the Continent before we begin to talking about the
"African architecton"[112] or "composite African people."[113]
As Carr has noted, Asante has indeed correctly identified the
need for the African people to be viewed as agents in their own
stories.[114] However, this idea was not a new one. In fact it
would seem to be axiomatic. The concept is very apparent, if
not expressly stated in Diop’s writings, as well as in Chancellor
Williams' Destruction of Black Civilization,[115] and certainly
Walter Rodney made reference to the idea in his revised
dissertation A History of the Upper Guinea Coast,[116] to
name a few.
Ama Mazama, fellow Temple Professor and Afrocentric
theorist, has written that the presumptions that the
"metatheory" existed prior to Asante’s articulation of it are
rooted in "professional jealously."[117] This, however,
privileges Asante’s particular framing and expression of the
issue, which has been critiqued,[118] and ignores the facts that
not only did Asante not coin the term,[119] which Asante
admits,[120] but that there are major gaps linked to his failure
to contribute to what is known about African people. Thus, his
students contend that they themselves often have difficulty
determining what is or is not "Afrocentric" and the metatheory
has been criticized as being "self-referential" on Asante’s part,
rather than allowing the space for self definition.[121]
It is of interest to note that Obenga has protested the use of the
French term "Bantouïté," on the grounds that its connotations
are both “Eurocentriste” and ideological.[122] Further, this
constitutes the very same critique that Diop laid on "Négritude"
-- that such paradigms lean on generalities rather than
developing an understanding of self[123] (Although Asante has
differentiated "Afrocentricity" from "Négritude" on the basis
that the latter is said to be apologetic, while "Afrocentricity" is
an idea rooted in victory via the centeredness of African
people).[124]
To be sure, according to Carr,[125] Asante’s concept of the
"composite African people"[126] is based on Diop’s "cultural
unity" thesis. However, Diop did most of the research for
l’Unité Culturelle from 1950 until its publication in 1959.[127]
He then continued to do research both on the major themes in
Precolonial African history and fleshing out his thesis about the
nature of the inter-relatedness of African people across the
continent, primarily through the use of linguistics. Further, his
"cultural unity" thesis was written primarily focusing on one
noted commonality noted across a number of African cultures at
that time. Again, if we’re going to talk about "composite
African people," it stands to logic that African peoples ought
first to be studied in-depth across time and space as much as the
available evidence permits. Only then can common features to
be noted.[128] Diop’s main objective, as noted, was not to
define our "essential Africanness," but rather the restoration of
historical consciousness, which was to inform both present
behavior and future orientation on the basis of this shared
understanding of the full scope of African history[129] and a
grounding in our own particular cultural milieu.[130] Similarly,
Carr cites Obenga, pointing out the former’s construction of the
past as a means of establishing continuity and orientation for
different groups.[131] The connections Diop cites were to be
researched via "direct knowledge" of the primary source
material related to the subjects in question.[132] Again,
Asante’s work, in contrast, his historical work in particular, has
done little to engage this material and has not generally
contributed to our understanding of African people.
While Asante has learned glyphs more recently and in fact did
all the translations for his 1996 work with Abu Barry,[133] his
body of work on the Continent cannot be considered scholarly.
He has written an entire book on Egyptian philosophy without
citing Faulkner’s Middle Egyptian dictionary, the
Wörterbuch,[134] the five volume German dictionary used as
the standard reference for Egyptologists, or the most current
grammatical work in the field, Allen’s Middle Egyptian (i.e., it
appears that he has not done his own translations of the texts in
question). Volume III of Faulkner’s Coffin Texts, which he
cites, is translated and annotated, and there are only three texts
in the bibliography which feature any full-length translations.
Nowhere in the work is there an in-depth examination of
Egyptian thought based on textual comparisons. Yet in the text
we read references to the "African mind."
Asante’s recent book on the history of the Continent is sub-par.
The book mentions the "Saharan generator," but fails to cite any
of the major scholars on the Prehistory of the region, such as
Elena A.A. Garcea, Rudolph Kuper or Achilles Gautier.
Further, though attempting to stress Egypt’s place as an African
culture, Asante completely ignores evidence of Egypt’s link to a
larger Saharan/Central Sudanese/Nubian cultural tradition.[135]
The information he gives on the Predynastic is inaccurate: the
Gerzean is known as Naqada II and dates to c. 3700-3300
B.C.,[136] rather than 8000 B.C., as Asante states. For this
very period of c. 8000 B.C. the Lower Nile Valley is nearly
devoid of sites,[137] yet Asante writes as if this were the
beginning of the Egyptian Predynastic and only one of the major
authors on the period, past or present has been included in his
bibliography. There is no mention of any of the early Lower
Nubian cultures, the A-Group (contemporary with the
Predynastic) or the C-Group (coeval with the Old
Kingdom).[138] His lengthy section the 25th Dynasty is written
without citing George Reisner, who conducted the first
excavations at in and around the capital of Napata, or Timothy
Kendall, who is currently doing fieldwork there. Only passing
reference is given to Kerma just further north, which existed
from the end of the Old Kingdom to the invasion by the 18th
Dynasty.[139] The text does feature a few translations,[140]
but, one wonders how the professor writes about the Ramesside
Period[141] without referencing the Kitchen’s Ramesside
Index.[142] Old Ghana is mentioned with similar
omissions.[143] Asante’s section on the Songhay empire[144]
remarkably cites neither the old[145] nor the new[146]
translations of Tarikh as-Sudan directly (the text is referenced
only in passing), and completely ignores Kati’s Tarikh
al-Fettash. (Compare this is Diop’s treatment of Medieval West
African states in Precolonial Black Africa,[147] which,
ironically, is not cited). Similarly, Asante has written an entire
book on Diop without citing his protégé Obenga’s massive
historiographical biography on his mentor, yet claiming Diop to
be an exemplary model of an Afrocentric historian.[148]
The question posed here is how to be Afrocentric without doing
in-depth research into gleaning how African people move or
have moved in the world. Granted, each of the works critiqued
above are expressly written not to be exhaustive, however,
again, it is impossible to explicate anything about a proposed
subject without doing expository research on said group,
regardless of the field. Asante received his Ph.D. in 1968 from
UCLA in Speech. His dissertation work was on the 18th
century Bostonian Samuel Adams.[149] Thus, though the
professor writes about African people carving out a "place to
stand,"[150] this "place," regardless of the time/space juncture
in question, is rarely examined in his work, apart from a series
of works written in the 1970s on black rhetoric.[151]
Afrocentricity calls for the use of "Classical references"(defined
as ancient Egypt, Nubia, Axum and Meroë) for the proper
framing of African culture.[152] First, as we have seen,
Asante’s analysis of these cultures is lacking (although the
Meroitic script has not yet been deciphered).[153] Second, not
all present-day African or Diasporan "cultural phenomena" rest
on antecedents that are "Classical."[154] Hinging examination
of African subjects on preconceived notions of what it is
believed to be quintessentially 'African' in effect disregards their
own standards for modern, or post-modern, conceptions of the
ancient world, which does not allow for the culture's
development to be adequately traced over time or placed within
its own context.
Even if one is to argue the migrations theory for various groups
across the continent, we are still obliged to do the research (i.e.,
Aboubacray Moussa Lam). The author is from Maryland, where
it has been estimated that around 40 percent of the enslaved
Africans transported to the United States were taken from the
Bight of Biafra and that most of them were Igbo.[155] Then are
"cultural phenomena" in Montgomery or Prince Georges
Counties more informed by the nexus that arose from various
combinations of groups forging their own community on the
basis of commonality and in the face of oppression or by
references to the New Kingdom? Which frame of reference
needs to be used to understand Diasporan culture today? Which
allows for self discovery and definition? Our contention is the
former.
Diop’s migrations theory must necessarily be read with the
understanding that he noted what he perceived to be a "genetic"
relationship between Egyptian and his native language Wolof in
the late 1940s.[156] To say that he privileged Egypt is again
inaccurate. Diop gave priority to entire scope of African
history[157] (which is not to say that Asante does not), writing
his Dissertation on the historical trends in Medieval West
Africa.[158] The migrations theory was first fully laid out in
Nations Nègres (1954), then later in subsequent works. Diop’s
intentions were clearly stated in Niamey, Niger in 1984: "My
attitude is not that of one who is focused on the past. All my
work is directed towards the future. And [the] past I investigate
simply to make possible the edification of a chain of social
sciences."[159] History in general was meant to orient the
consciousness of African people back to their long
histories.[160]
Egypt’s role in historical reconstruction is then key primarily
because of the possibilities it holds for linguistic study due to its
place as the first appearance of a written language on the
Continent. Any use of Egypt as a reference point then was to be
fleshed out using all available tools to understand how groups
may or may not be related,[161] as opposed to assuming groups
to be related and basing ones judgment of present-day cultures
on so-called "Classical" ways of being. It is thus that Diop’s
students continue their research using his research paradigms.
So, while there are similarities in the viewpoints of the two
groups (for example, African liberation and the self-definition
for African and Diasporan peoples), the methods utilized to
achieve these goals are markedly different and in fact, Obenga
has even stated in print that he does not refer to himself as an
"Afrocentrist."[162] The types of studies Diop’s student have
undertaken require grounding in the history and culture of the
groups in decision. Minus this rhetoric about the Continent
quickly lends itself to static analysis of any and all subjects
under study.
Pushing Past Diop
Today Diop's work is woefully out-of-date, save for his
linguistic data. His most popular English-translated work The
African Origin of Civilization (1974) is, as was mentioned
before, the translation of Nations Nègres et Culture,[163] for
which the intellectual work was done/carried out between the
years 1949 and 1954.[164] As such, Diop's writings do not
reflect more recent developments in the fields in which he
wrote. There is thus a need to engage, extend and critique his
ideas and theories based on the current state of knowledge in
the fields with which his writings were concerned. In reference
to his study of Egypt, there are serious omissions in terms of the
range of primary source material that Diop worked with:
specifically, he was not a ceramicist and, therefore, was not able
to engage the primary means of following cultural change in
that area of the world during the Predynastic period, aside from
his generally sparse usage of archaeological data.
African people continent- and Diaspora-wide have made major
efforts in studying their own local histories -- as specialists in
their respective fields. Any reconstruction of the African or
Diasporic past must therefore necessitate the exchange of ideas
across the Atlantic, as well as the Caribbean, in multiple
European languages and in whatever languages necessary to
extract primary source information relevant to the fields in
question, which means continuing to obtain Master’s and Ph.Ds
in all related disciplines. Any and all assertions made ought to
stand the test of historical research. Both Diop[165] and
Lam[166] devoted significant sections of their work to
questions of methodology. Obenga is a stickler for it.[167]
Anything else undercuts the very scholars whose names we seek
to uplift and whose legacies to invoke by citing their work,
regardless of the period or culture under discussion.
As such, Diop’s work, for both its perspective and its rigor,
ought to serve as a point of departure, even if all his ideas may
not stand the test of time. It was not meant to be the gospel.
Diop’s aim was to have the history of all African peoples
examined and written on its own terms,[168] not to have his
readership adhere dogmatically to his positions because of the
chord his perceptive strikes or his elevation as the "gold
standard" for the study of all things African.
With respect to Diop's contributions, his son, Cheikh M'Backé
Diop, has devoted significant sections of his father's biography
on recent confirmations of major themes in Diop's work,[169]
as has Obenga.[170] For instance, we know that Diop was
correct concerning the origin of humanity and in his rejection of
the foundations of the concept of race,[171] although he hung
onto the use of the term until the end of his life.[172] In
addition, his thesis that Egypt emerged as an indigenous
development has been confirmed on a number of grounds.
Migrations from the Eastern Sahara between c.7000 and 5000
B.C. are generally accepted and have been proven via ceramic
analysis,[173] though the full picture of the peopling of the Nile
Valley is still very incompletely understood.[174] Archaeology
has borne out his thesis of the complexity of the cultural nexus
from which Egypt is seen in a number of traits shared
throughout the Nile Valley -- from Upper Egypt south to the
Sixth Cataract. These include rippled burnishing,[175]
black-topped and black-mouthed decoration,[176] incised
tulip-shaped libation vessels[177] and mace-heads[178], and
various combinations of burial practices (such as contraction,
the use of pillows, animal skin or reed matting, bucrania as
grave markers, ostrich eggshell and an assortment of other
adornment items, including malachite and galena).[179] The
thrust of his ideas on the "Falsification d'Histoire" have been
authoritatively written about,[180] cited by top scholars on the
area[181] and are taught in today in graduate-level Egyptology
courses. Lastly, the linguistic research he began in 1946 and
which he was in the process of expanding until his passing has
been extended by his students, most notably Obenga.[182] In
effect, the surface is only being scratched with respect to Diop's
research paradigms though there is still a great deal more to be
done.
A Proposed, Though by No Means Novel, Perspective on the
Study of Africa
Our attachment with history must cease to be "symbolic."[183]
History is meant to place us in proper context -- to give
perspective. The possibility of coherent regional histories
concerning 'black-folk' written for specific areas within the
United States is very real. We argue here that it is also
necessary to escape the trap that is the Western view of African
peoples and its systems' failure to nurture our sense of self. The
people we most readily identify with are in our immediate
families and communities. The nexus of historical events that
got these present communities to where they are now ultimate
leads by to the continent. However, this path always for black
people follows back to the Continent and to very specific,[184]
if not always traceable,[185] time and space contexts. These
contexts inform who we have become. Hence, the need for the
study of the African and Africanisms in Diasporic culture.
<<snip>>
