TITLE:
Africa and Afrocentric Historicism: A Critique
AUTHORS:
Tunde Adeleke
KEYWORDS:
Afrocentrism, Eurocentrism, Historiography, Diaspora, Mis-Education, Pan-Africanism
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Historical Studies,
Vol.4 No.3,
June
30,
2015
ABSTRACT: Since the dawn of slavery in America, black activists have used Africa to construct a countervailing
frame of resistance to oppression. Africa had functioned both as the justification for enslavement
and racial discrimination for the dominant white society, and as the counter-hegemonic weapon of
resistance and empowerment for blacks. Reacting to subordination and marginalization, modern
black intellectuals, borrowing from the past, have equally invoked Africa in their quest for a useable
and instrumental historical past with which to counteract the Eurocentric constructions of
their heritage and experiences. However, the resultant Afrocentric historicist framing of Africa, as
well as its racialized and essentialist character, had only replicated precisely the negative shortcomings of the Eurocentric historiography and black intellectuals were attempting to debunk.