Afrocentricity is an academic theory, school of philosophy, and approach to scholarship that seeks to center the experiences and peoples of Africa and the African diaspora within their own historical, cultural, and sociological contexts. First developed as a systematized methodology by Molefi Kete Asante in 1980, he drew inspiration from a number of African and African diaspora intellectuals including Cheikh Anta Diop, George James, Harold Cruse, Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and W. E. B. Du Bois. The Temple Circle, also known as the Temple School of Thought, Temple Circle of Afrocentricity, or Temple School of Afrocentricity, was an early group of Africologists during the late 1980s and early 1990s beginning at Temple University in Philadelphia that helped to further develop Afrocentricity, which is based on concepts of agency, centeredness, location, and orientation.
Definition
Afrocentricity was coined to evoke "African-centeredness", and, as a unifying paradigm, draws from the foundational scholarship of Africana studies and African studies. Those who identify as specialists in Afrocentricity, including historians, philosophers, and sociologists, call themselves "Africologists" or "Afrocentrists." Africologists seek to ground their work in the perspective and culture common to African peoples, and center African peoples and their experiences as agents and subjects.
Ama Mazama defined the paradigm of Afrocentricity as being composed of the "ontology/epistemology, cosmology, axiology, and aesthetics of African people" and as being "centered in African experiences", which then conveys the "African voice". According to her, Afrocentricity incorporates African dance, music, rituals, legends, literature, and oratures as key features of its expository approach. Axiological features of Afrocentricity that Mazama identifies include explorations of African ethics, and the aesthetic aspects incorporate African mythology, rhythm, and the performing arts. Mazama also argues that Afrocentricity can integrate aspects of African spiritualities as essential components of African worldviews. Mazama sees spirituality and other intuitive methods of acquiring knowledge and emotional responses used in the paradigm as a counterbalance to rationality, and firsthand experience of these cultural and spiritual artifacts can inform Afrocentricity. Mazama indicates that many of the terms and concepts used in Afrocentricity are meant to shift the conceptual status of Africans from being objects that are acted upon to subjects who are agents that act.
In contrast to the hegemonic ideology of Eurocentrism, the paradigm of Afrocentricity is argued by Africologists to be non-hierarchical and pluralistic and not intended to supplant "'white knowledge' with 'black knowledge'". As a holistic multidisciplinary theory with a strong focus on the location and agency of Africans, Afrocentricity is designed not to accept the role of subaltern prescribed to Africans by Eurocentrism. An important aspect of Afrocentricity is therefore a deconstruction and criticism of hegemony, racism, and prejudice.
Africologists, who produce Afrocentric academic works, identify their professional field as Afrocentricity – not Afrocentrism. Crucially, not all academic works that focus on African or African-American topics are necessarily Afrocentric and neither are works on melanist theories nor those rooted in matters of color of the skin, biology, or biological determinism; this means that some claims to Afrocentricity are not strictly part of the paradigm, and certain critiques of supposedly Afrocentric ideas may not be critiques of Afrocentricity per se.
History
Midas Chanawe outlined in his historical survey of the development of Afrocentricity how experiences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Middle Passage, and legal prohibition of literacy, shared by enslaved African-Americans, followed by the experience of dual cultures (e.g., Africanisms, Americanisms), resulted in some African-Americans re-exploring their African cultural heritage rather than choosing to be Americanized. Additionally, the African-American experience of ongoing racism emphasized the importance that culture and its relative nature could have on their intellectual enterprise. All of this cultivated a foundation for the development of Afrocentricity. Examples of the kinds of arguments that presaged Afrocentricity include pieces published in the Freedom's Journal (1827) that drew connections between Africans and ancient Egyptians, African-American abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass and David Walker, who highlighted the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians as Africans to undermine the white supremacist assertion that Africans were inferior, and the assertions of the Pan-Africanist, Marcus Garvey, who argued that ancient Egypt laid the foundation for civilization in world history. These would be echoed in the contexts of Black Nationalism, Negritude, Pan-Africanism, Black Power movement, and the Black is Beautiful movement that served as harbingers for the formal development of Afrocentricity.
Molefi Kete Asante dates the first use of the term, "Afro-centric", to 1964, when the Institute of African Studies was being established in Ghana and its founder, Kwame Nkrumah, said to the editorial board of the Encyclopedia Africana: "[T]he Africana Project must be frankly Afro-centric in its interpretation of African history, and of the social and cultural institutions of the African and people of African descent everywhere." Other antecedents to Afrocentricity identified by Asante include the 1948 work of Cheikh Anta Diop when he introduced the idea of an "African Renaissance", J.A. Sofala's 1973 treatise The African Culture and Personality, and the three 1973 publications of The Afrocentric Review. Following the example of these and other preceding African intellectuals, Asante formally proposed the concept of Afrocentricity in a 1980 publication, Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change, and further refined the concept in The Afrocentric Idea (1987). Other influential publications that helped to develop Afrocentricity include Linda James Myers' Understanding the Afrocentric Worldview (1988), Asante's Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (1992), Ama Mazama's edited compilation The Afrocentric Paradigm (2003), and Asante's An Afrocentric Manifesto (2007).
Temple University, the institutional home of Molefi Kete Asante and site of the first PhD program in the field of Africana Studies, which at Temple is named Africology and African American Studies, is widely regarded as the leading institution for scholarship in Afrocentricity. In addition to Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity developed among the "Temple Circle" (e.g., Abu Abarry, Kariamu Welsh Asante, Terry Kershaw, Tsehloane Keto, Ama Mazama, Theophile Obenga). As a result of the scholarly development of Afrocentricity, several scholarly journals and professional associations have developed throughout the United States of America and Africa. As a global intellectual enterprise, Afrocentricity is studied, taught, and exemplified at institutions and locations, such as Quilombismo (which was initiated by Abdias Nascimento) in Brazil, the Universitario del Pacifico in Buenaventura, Colombia, the programs of Africamaat in Paris, France, the Centre for African Renaissance at the University of South Africa in South Africa, a training program operated by Stanley Mkhize at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, and the Molefi Kete Asante Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Africological conferences also developed, some which operate by invitation, and some which occur on a yearly basis, such as the Cheikh Anta Diop Conference. The theory of Afrocentricity also had subsequent impact on other academic fields and theories, such as anthropology, education, jazz theory, linguistics, organizational theory, and physical education.
Differences between Afrocentricity and Afrocentrism
Afrocentricity and Afrocentrism are not synonymous, but, instead, are distinct from one another, and should not be mistaken for one another. Molefi Kete Asante explains:
By way of distinction, Afrocentricity should not be confused with the variant Afrocentrism. The term "Afrocentrism" was first used by the opponents of Afrocentricity who in their zeal saw it as an obverse of Eurocentrism. The adjective "Afrocentric" in the academic literature always referred to "Afrocentricity." However, the use of "Afrocentrism" reflected a negation of the idea of Afrocentricity as a positive and progressive paradigm. The aim was to assign religious signification to the idea of African centeredness. However, it has come to refer to a broad cultural movement of the late twentieth century that has a set of philosophical, political, and artistic ideas which provides the basis for the musical, sartorial, and aesthetic dimensions of the African personality. On the other hand, Afrocentricity, as I have previously defined it, is a theory of agency, that is, the idea that African people must be viewed and view themselves as agents rather than spectators to historical revolution and change. To this end Afrocentricity seeks to examine every aspect of the subject place of Africans in historical, literary, architectural, ethical, philosophical, economic, and political life.
In addition to Molefi Kete Asante, many other academics have explained that Afrocentricity and Afrocentrism are distinct from one another, and that critics have often conflated the two when criticizing Afrocentricity. Further, Asante indicates that by conflating Afrocentricity with Afrocentricism, critics of Afrocentrism have mischaracterized Afrocentricity as being a "'religious' movement based on an essentialist paradigm." Other academics have also been critical of the criticism of Afrocentricity that seek to define it as a religious movement. Historian and medical anthropologist Katherine Bankole-Medina notes that rather than seeking to understand the theory of Afrocentricity or engage in constructive discourse with the scholars of the theory, many critical academics seek to critique and discredit the theory as well as engage in intellectual militarism. Consequently, between Afrocentrism and Afrocentricity, many critical academics tend to overlook their key suffix distinction (i.e., -ism and -icity). Philosopher Ramose indicated that, in contrast to Afrocentricity, Afrocentrism has been characterized as a notion that negates the notion of Afrocentricity being a "positive and progressive paradigm."