What Black Studies is Not: Moving from Crisis to Liberation in Africana Intellectual Work

Africana Studies: Definition and Aim

  • Africana Studies extends the Black Radical Tradition; seeks long-view genealogies of African intellectual work through translation and recovery.
  • Central goal: theorize from long-view histories of African thought, not just contemporary Black life.
  • Notable contributors to the long-view project include Cedric J. Robinson, Cheikh Anta Diop, Theophile J. Obenga, Aboubacry Moussa Lam, Babacar Sall, and Ayi Kwei Armah.
  • The field confronts a crisis: memory truncation in educational institutions, leading to a reduced view of Africana Studies as merely a regional or topical field rather than a liberatory project.
  • The crisis raises a question: are we asking relevant questions that connect past struggles to present conditions and future liberation?
  • The task of Africana Studies is to maintain a long-view memory of African intellectual work, linking origins to present challenges, and to resist turning the field into a distraction or mere history.

Intellectual genealogies: Approaches to African life and knowledge

  • The field uses multiple approaches to African meaning-making, all aiming to connect Africa’s past with its present and future.
  • Black Radical Tradition Approach
    • Links African cultural unity to Western racialization and racial hierarchy; grounds knowledge in a long-view pre-European context.
    • Key thinkers: Cedric Robinson, Ayi Kwei Armah, Cheikh Anta Diop, Zeleza, Michael A. Gomez, Marimba Ani, Gerald Horne, among others.
  • Emic/Etic Approach
    • Focuses on language, cultural contact, and localized meaning-making; questions long-view genealogies when appropriate.
    • Thinkers include Lorand Matory, Farah Griffin, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Yvonne Daniel.
  • Alternative Epistemology Approach
    • Seeks legitimacy for African-centered methods and standards; theorists aim to build credible, rigorous Africana scholarship.
    • Thinkers include Molefi Asante, Maulana Karenga, Abdul Alkalimat, Lucius Outlaw.
  • Unbroken Genealogy Approach
    • Emphasizes an unbroken arc of African meaning-making from classical Africa through contemporary life; links classical practices to modern forms.
    • Thinkers include Armah, Obenga, Carruthers, Mario Beatty, Anderson Thompson.
  • Sui Generis Approach
    • Treats the modern era as the starting point for theorizing Black identity; views Blackness as a social construct shaped by improvisation and contestation.
    • Thinkers include Stuart Hall, Eddie Glaude, Henry Louis Gates, Hortense Spillers, Paul Gilroy, Adolph Reed, Kenneth Warren, and others.
  • The contemporary struggle to define Africana Studies is essentially a contestation over methodologies derived from these approaches. The intellectual genealogy must be established as a first order task before articulating what Africana Studies is not.

Categories of contemporary African intellectual work: the Black intellectual as social commentator

  • This section categorizes the political orientations of scholars within Africana Studies; representatives often span categories.
  • Defenders of the African Way
    • Una apologetic advocates of African self-determination across ideologies: e.g., Marimba Ani, Edward W. Blyden, Jacob Carruthers, Alexander Crummell, Cheikh Anta Diop, Marcus Garvey, Vivian Gordon, William Leo Hansberry, Hubert Henry Harrison, Aboubacry Lam, Phillip M. Richards.
  • Grand Theorists
    • Theorize overall explanations for Pan-African struggle and liberation: e.g., Molefi Asante, Oliver C. Cox, Martin Delany, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Gilroy, Hosea Easton, E. Franklin Frazier, Ama Mazama, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Kwame Ture, Paul Zeleza, James Stewart, Ron Walters, etc.
  • Progressives
    • Emphasize achieving a more equal and humane American society through extra-national movements: e.g., Houston A. Baker, Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Harold Cruse, Michael A. Gomez, Toni Morrison, Cornel West, Armond White, Carter G. Woodson, and many others.
  • Liberals
    • Focus on individual responsibility and action within society: e.g., Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ralph J. Bunche, Michael Eric Dyson, bell hooks, John Hope Franklin, Eddie S. Glaude, Peniel Joseph, Albert Murray, Charles H. Wesley, etc.
  • Neo-Liberals
    • Market-driven approach to Africana intellectual work and state policy; academic entrepreneurship: e.g., Todd Boyd, Stanley Crouch, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Clarence Page, Ali Mazrui, Booker T. Washington.
  • Conservatives
    • Traditional/ cautious approaches favoring established institutions: e.g., T.D. Jakes, Tyler Perry, Juan Williams.
  • Neo-Conservatives
    • Moderate to strong conservative positions, including former liberals: e.g., Tunde Adeleke, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jacobus Capetein, Michael Steele, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Clarence Walker.

What Africana Studies is not: points of discursive departure

  • 1) Africana Studies is not a de-linking of intellectual work from Pan-African political movements and social policy; analysis must engage global contexts and transnational movements.
  • 2) Not merely mediation of Black identity within whiteness or mainstream narratives; Africana energy cannot be reduced to mainstream celebratory history.
  • 3) Not an attempt to suppress or avoid long-view genealogies of African thought; recovery of deep history is essential.
  • 4) Not reinforcement of Black American exceptionalism; Africana Studies should contribute to human society through African experience, not isolate it.
  • 5) Not a surrender to abandoning unbroken long-view narratives; rather, Africana Studies embraces long-view origins while addressing current realities.
  • 6) Not writing that re-inscribes existing knowledge orders; must test and develop methodologies from African-derived linguistic, cultural, and historical sources.
  • 7) Not evading essential questions of documentation, translation, recovery, and improvisation; Africana Studies respects foundational work and extends it.
  • 8) Not a sieve draining university resources for an anti-academic enterprise; should engage the general student body and foster methodological mastery.
  • 9) Not a romanticization or mythologizing of pasts; recovery work must connect African memory to present and future human knowledge, without erasing critical critique.

Conclusion and future directions

  • Clear articulation of what Africana Studies is and is not enables strategic planning for the field’s future work.
  • Du Bois urged destruction of color discrimination and preservation of African history and culture as a contribution to civilization; Africana Studies should advance those aims.
  • The field must reject “courtiers and mandarins” and leverage its social, political, and cultural capital to widen the tributaries from the African experience into human knowledge.
  • Historically Black Colleges and Universities offer opportunities to institutionalize graduate training in Africana Studies content areas and methods, expanding from earlier programs (e.g., Temple University) to strengthen foundational work and research.
  • A possible future trajectory is a formal renaissance or rebirth of Africana intellectual practice, termed here as a Weheme Mesu (Ancient Egyptian for “repetition of the birth” or “renaissance”), to re-center long-view Africana inquiry in the academy.