Africology and the Question of Disciplinary Language

Abstract

This essay is a contribution to Africology’s discipline-building. It examines more particularly the importance of disciplinary language, stressing the need for clear language and consistent definitions. Of particular concern are terms like “African-centeredness” and “Africancentered” which have never been clearly defined although they are widely used. This clout, this essay argues, impedes discipline-building efforts by introducing and sustaining semantic and terminological incoherence.

Keywords

Black Studies Africology Disciplinary Language Afrocentricity Africancenteredness

Born out of the political effervescence of the 60s in the United States, Black Studies has overcome its tumultuous birth circumstances and managed to entrench itself academically and become institutionalized, to the point that in the eyes of most, the existence of Black Studies can be taken for granted today. Colin Palmer (2006), for example, notes that although Black Studies’ “trajectory has not been smooth given the hostile intellectual and societal environments in which it was conceived and, to some extent, continues to exist,” the discipline “has earned increasing academic respect over the years, and its existence, for the most part, is now taken for granted” (p. 18). Molefi Asante also shares this optimistic view about Black Studies’ solidified entrenchment, writing that, “African American Studies has evolved as an intellectual enterprise that no longer has to defend its reason to exist, although it has to defend its territory. This is a sign of movement in the proper direction” (Asante, 2009, p. 12).

This success is attributable in large part to the agency displayed by Black Studies students and scholars on two intertwined fronts, political and intellectual. On the political front sustained efforts and sacrifices were made to deflect white administrators’ efforts to dismantle Black Studies programs and departments while pushing for the creation of additional units. In addition to this resistance to white racist efforts to write Black Studies out of academic existence, the institutionalization of Black Studies received a formidable push from the creation of the first doctoral program in Black Studies at Temple University in 1988, under the leadership of Molefi Kete Asante. This was a monumental achievement since, as Swoboda (1979, p. 77) reminds us, “By the turn of the century, the doctorate had become the ticket of admission to membership in American academic life. The doctorate, of course, certified not only teaching ability but the ability to do research—and research of a strictly disciplinary nature at that.” At the time of this writing, there are seventeen doctoral programs in Black Studies. If one remembers that thirty years ago, there was only one such program, one may realize how much momentum Black Studies has actually gained over the past two decades.

On the intellectual front, Black Studies scholars waged and won a battle aimed at further developing, identifying, refining and ultimately strengthening Black Studies’ core, that is, in Palmer’s (2006) words, “the recovery of a usable black past and the centering of blacks in their own history and experiences” (p. 5). According to Perry Hall (2010), it is undoubtable that, “. . . the battle to establish Black Studies in the academy was ultimately fought and won on intellectual and epistemological grounds” (p. 16). The same author continues that, “The fundamental issue was how to determine what constitutes valid knowledge about the subject—the experiences, conditions, and aspirations of black folks. The very premise that there could be an intellectually valid “black perspective” on matters of knowledge and truth was a fundamental challenge to the epistemological foundations on which universities functioned” (Hall, 2010, p. 16). It is the purpose of this essay to examine the challenges that Black Studies still faces as it gains further intellectual and academic momentum. My particular focus is the development of Africology and its need for a coherent and cohesive disciplinary language.

Early and Persistent Challenges

According to Colin Palmer (2006), Black Studies faced four major issues at the time of its emergence: (1) Its acceptance as a legitimate field of studies accompanied with a fear of “ghettoization;” (2) The recruitment of qualified, knowledgeable professors; (3) Its approach as a discipline or an interdisciplinary field; and (4) Questions of nomenclature. While the first two issues have been more or less successfully resolved, the last two—whether Black Studies can/should be granted disciplinary status or not, and what it should be called- continue to plague Black Studies. After all, these questions could not be expected to be easily dealt with since, underlying them, are issues of an ideological nature. That Black Studies scholars were never on the same ideological page was made clear from the onset, by lasting tensions particularly between those who embraced Marxism and a materialist reading of the Black experience, and those who leaned toward Black Nationalism and found that race and culture were more relevant tools of analysis. Subsequent tensions arose from the camp of post-modernists who, seduced by the idea that identity is by nature fluid, contested the very notions of blackness and of Africanness.

While those ideological differences may never be fully reconciled because they are irreconcilable, it remains nonetheless critical for Black Studies scholars and students alike to examine the developments that must take place to advance further the Black Studies intellectual and political project. While some may find that living in the “interstices” of European disciplines is intellectually sufficient and politically acceptable (Rojas, 2010), the author’s position is that it is Black Studies’ best advantage to claim and seek disciplinary status in order to protect its turf from current and future encroachments on the part of European disciplines and hostile administrators. Moreover, defining Black Studies as a discipline, rather than an interdisciplinary endeavor, is self-affirming and dignifying—an attitude consistent with the thrust that brought Black Studies into existence in the first place. In that regard, I totally agree with Molefi Asante’s (2009) assertion that Black Studies, “is a discipline designed by its very nature to see the world from the perspective of African people” (p. 12). It is this understanding of Black Studies as a discipline that led Asante to propose the name “Africology” as the most judicious name to stress the disciplinary status of Black Studies, and the Afrocentric paradigm as the discipline’s meta-paradigm (Asante, 1990, 2007; Mazama, 2001, 2003). Suggesting that we move away from a mere topical definition toward a perspectival definition, Asante (2009) aptly remarks that, “We are not engaged in this enterprise simply because we study African people; we are engaged in it because of how we study African people, and therefore, the name that I prefer is Africology” (p. 22). Indeed, while Black Studies may share with other disciplines its topic, Black people’s experiences, what should distinguish it and justify its existence must be a unique perspective on this topic. Thus, the definition of Black Studies by perspective rather than topic is a necessary component of any strategy aiming at reinforcing Black Studies’ presence and relevance. This essay is thus offered as a discussion about discipline-building in Africology.

The Marks of a Discipline

In his discussion of the typical attributes of a discipline, Davies (2010, pp. 6–7) identifies the following five necessary features: (1) The presence of a community of scholars; (2) The existence of a tradition or history of inquiry; (3) The presence of a mode of inquiry that defines how data is collected and interpreted; (4) The existence of a definition of the requirements for what constitutes new knowledge and (5) The existence of a communications network. From this list, it is clear that Africology meets those criteria. There can be no doubt that, thanks in great part to the establishment of the first doctoral program in Black Studies at Temple University, the very heart of Africology, and the subsequent production of well over 170 Ph.D.s in Africology, there exists a community of Afrocentric scholars who are engaged in Afrocentric research and meet at conferences such as the Cheikh Anta Diop International Conference or the National Council of Black Studies every year. Africology is also part of a long-standing intellectual tradition of inquiry. In that regard, it stands on the shoulders of pioneer scholars such as Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson, and most certainly Cheikh Anta Diop whose revolutionary African historiography serves as one of Africology’s pillars. Africology’s meta-paradigm is Afrocentricity and its mode of inquiry is, therefore, Afrocentric. As a meta-paradigm, Afrocentricity includes three major aspects: cognitive, structural, and functional. The cognitive aspect involves the metaphysical foundations—such as an organizing principle and a set of presuppositions, a methodology, methods, concepts, and theories (Mazama, 2003). The organizing principle of the Afrocentric paradigm is the centrality of the African experience for African people. Such centrality determines the perception of all reality. Most specifically, Afrocentric scholars rely on the African cosmology, ontology, epistemology, axiology and aesthetics that characterize African culture to make sense of African behaviors and attitudes. Imposing European criteria on African people to conclude that the latter are somehow deficient or deviant does not make sense. One would not expect from a dog that it behaves like a cat. In effect, the idea that the African experience must be apprehended through African cultural lenses is at the very heart of Afrocentricity. This notion of epistemological centeredness, that is, the fundamental and systematic grounding of inquiry in the African worldview, is the hallmark of Afrocentricity. Along with epistemological grounding, an emphasis on African agency and interests drives Africological research. Moreover, Afrocentrically-generated knowledge must be functional, that is, it must provide a path toward the disengagement of African people from the deadly grips of white racism. Thus, while Africologists must continue to refine, clarify, and thus strengthen Africology, which is after all only a few decades old, the presence of all the ingredients necessary for disciplinary status seems rather undeniable.

Disciplinary Language

An important aspect of discipline-building is the development and teaching of a relevant and specific language. Language carries and conveys the concepts and methodology of a discipline. As such, as observed by Davies (2010, pp. 21–22), “In addition to providing the requisite cognitive maps for students, a discipline must also teach a distinct, discipline-specific vocabulary(ies).” Africology’s disciplinary language is informed and dominated by spatial terms: center, location, place, space, situatedness, dislocation, fringes, margins, footnote, relocation, agency are indeed key words in the Afrocentric vocabulary advanced by Asante, as part of Africology’s conceptual and terminological apparatus. All of these terms (with the exception of agency) refer either to a geometrical figure or point, or a physical position or movement. What those spatial terms allow Asante to convey is the intrinsically dynamic nature of Afrocentricity which involves transformation from the status of acted upon to the status of actor. Afrocentricity, Asante (1990) tells us, is “a process of reconstruction” (p. 39), a “pilgrimage” to regain our freedom. However, while Afrocentric disciplinary language has generally not been contested, the words “Afrocentricity” and “Afrocentric” themselves have. This contestation has been, at least in the beginning, part of a counter-story whose aim was to deny Asante’s paternity over Afrocentricity.

Counter-story: Genealogical Contestation

The need to use internally-generated criteria to describe and assess the experiences of African people had been expressed by many, usually in the form of general demands for cultural and historical relevance. We could mention here, for instance, Marcus Garvey’s (1986) exhortation, a century or so ago, that we put on “black spectacles” and reject the white perspective on ourselves. In effect, several scholars have contested that Afrocentricity was even born in 1980 with the publication of Afrocentricity. The Theory of Social Change by Molefi Asante, whose status as creator of Afrocentricity is by the same token denied. Ferguson (2015), one of those scholars, insists that, “Despite Asante’s numerous claims to be the “father of Afrocentricity,” there is a long and rich history of the concept prior to Asante’s usage. We find Black scholars such as John Henrik Clarke, Carlos Russell, Clovis Semmes, and Anderson Thompson utilizing the concept years before Asante. It would seem, however, that the first to use the term “Afrocentric,” was Du Bois. In his efforts to unveil Africa’s gifts to the world, Du Bois wrote such works as Black Folk Then and Now and The Gift of Black Folk in addition to The World and Africa. Between 1961 and 1962, the eminent scholar utilized the term, “Afro-centric,” to describe his Encyclopedia Africana project” (p. 61). A few lines later, however, Ferguson admits that DuBois’s quest was “not governed” by a “Black epistemological framework,” hence rendering moot his claim that Afrocentricity could have originated with DuBois. Obviously, coining or using a term cannot be equated with the creation of a paradigm.

Another scholar who is adamantly opposed to giving Asante credit for creating Afrocentricity is Daudi Azibo. According to him (Azibo, 1992, p. 63), while “Molefi Asante has done much to popularize the term Afrocentricity,” his paternity is “contradicted by well known facts.” The facts in question are the prior uses of the word “Afrocentric” by scholars such as Nobles (1978). Carruthers in particular had created the Association of African Historians (AAH) along with The Afrocentric World Review, the journal charged with the dissemination of the work of the AAH. The objective of the AAH, as cited by Azibo (1992, p. 64), was to foster an “ethnic awareness and racial consciousness. . . that point[ed] the way to. . . A World Wide African Community.” They defined the concept and the approach of Africentricity: “Putting Black interests first, [is] the view of Afrocentrality. . . Afrocentrism strives for. . . a collective identity [and is] founded on Black ideas, rather than the ideas of nonBlacks. . . the best place to begin this endeavor is with our collective experience, rather than the preconceived theories of aliens” [Association of African Historians (1973, p. 1)]. A close reading of these objectives does not suggest epistemological centeredness as an organizing principle, nor does it suggest an emphasis on Africanity, but rather on blackness. Instead, the emphasis seems to be on the fostering of a sense of identity based on Black common interests and ideas. As for Wade Nobles, Azibo argues that the latter “laid out an Africentric approach in the systematic, theory development sense prior to Asante’ s Afrocentricity. Nobles articulated an African worldview conceptual base from which to inquire. Then, he called for and initiated systematic study using this base, all under the nomenclature of “An Afro-Centric Analysis of the Black Family” (Nobles [1978, p. 686]). Again, to “call for” and “initiate” the study of African phenomena from the standpoint of African people as agents and narrators of their own story, is not the same thing as proposing a full-fledged theoretical apparatus to do so.

In truth, the question of the paternity of Afrocentricity would be laid to rest once for good if only one was honest enough to recognize that, while the idea of African epistemological relevance had been around for quite a while, it is Asante who operationalized it by proposing a conceptual apparatus susceptible to describe and assess what epistemological centricity means and looks like in the African context. Until the advent of Afrocentricity as a theory and a methodology, the notion of “Afrocentricity” had remained quite vague. It is therefore childish for both Ferguson (2015) and Azibo, as well as like-minded individuals, to list all the scholars, who prior to 1980 might have used the term “Afrocentric” or “Afrocentricity” as proof that Molefi Asante could not have created the Afrocentric paradigm. Asante must be given credit for creating the Afrocentric paradigm in the same fashion as Diop must be given credit for offering a new African historiographic paradigm, based on the centrality of the blackness of the ancient Egyptians, or in the same fashion as Crenshaw must be given credit for creating intersectionality, grounded in the centrality of the conflated impact of multiple oppressions.

Let us note here that disputes about the paternity or maternity of a new theory or paradigm are not uncommon. The case of intersectionality is a perfect illustration of this. In her recent book about the place of intersectionality in Black feminist discourse, Nash (2019) reports how Patricia Hill-Collins, for instance, takes issue with Kimberlé Crenshaw receiving credit for creating intersectionality, exclaiming with obvious and palpable bitterness that it is as if, “Crenshaw was Columbus. . . . She came back from the native lands from far, far away with the gift of intersectionality. Wow, she brought us a present!” (cited in Nash, p. 41). According to Collins, Black women activists such as Sojourner Truth and Ana Julia Cooper (among many) should be credited for creating intersectionality rather than solely Crenshaw. Focusing on a single source, Crenshaw, has the disadvantage of masking the fact that, “intersectionality has undergirded black feminist practice for generations.” In fact, what Collins is engaged in regarding intersectionality, or Azibo and Ferguson regarding Afrocentricity, is the elaboration of a counter-narrative, one that claims to take into consideration each theory’s alleged numerous historical antecedents and long intellectual roots. Here, this exercise in historicization aims at denying that the theory in question came about as the result of the insights of a particular individual. Yet, it seems rather undeniable that Afrocentricity emerged as a coherent theoretical construct with the publication by Molefi Asante, in 1980 (2003), of Afrocentricity. The Theory of Social Change, followed by The Afrocentric Idea in 1987, and Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge, in 1990. This foundational trilogy was followed in 2007 by the publication of An Afrocentric Manifesto. A more fruitful and beneficial exercise would be to trace the intellectual genealogy of Afrocentricity. As I have suggested elsewhere (2003), from hints provided by Asante himself, Afrocentricity’s roots drew from already well-established bodies of thought and practices, in particular from Marcus Garvey’s Black nationalism, absolute refutation of white superiority and relentless exercise of agency to make Africans strong and independent; Diop’s African historiography and its definitive reintroduction of African agency in the African historical narrative; Negritude’s methodology of liberation through the awareness of a unique African cultural personality; Kawaida’s theoretical and practical emphasis on African cultural nationalism and reconstruction; as well as Frantz Fanon’s insistence of the imperative of dismantling racist constructs and exercising unconditional agency in the process of personal and collective liberation. The danger of the counter-story offered by Azibo or Ferguson is that, not only it is misleading and intellectually dishonest, but it also gives the false impression that Black Studies scholars had been conducting Afrocentric analyses of African phenomena all along—which is simply not true, unfortunately.

Terminological Contestation

There has been to this date no general agreement regarding the name Black Studies should receive, with a proliferation of possible terms being suggested (Asante & Karenga, 2006), the latest being “Africana Studies.” Africology, the name proposed by Asante, has not been widely adopted. Reid-Meritt (2009) suggests fear on the part of other scholars as the main motivation for not adopting the name “Africology”: “Unfortunately, she writes, few were willing to embrace Africology as the proper nomenclature. The reasons are many. However, opposition to Asante and other Afrocentric theorists, amid fears that their approach to the study of African people would dominate the discipline, was central to blocking this endeavor” (p. 85). Likewise, shortly after the advent of Afrocentricity, two new terms appeared, pushed by some of those engaged in the counter-narrative reviewed earlier: African-centeredness and African-centered. Those terms have become so widely used that it is legitimate to wonder if this might signal a cognitive split with the emergence of a new theoretical thrust. In other words, is African-centeredness a new school of thought within Black Studies? Or does it simply represent a split in nomenclature?

Cognitive or Nominal Split?

The terms “African-centered” and “African-centeredness” surfaced in the late 1980s, most specifically in an article published by African psychologist Azibo on an “Africentric nosology of personality disorganization in Africans” (Azibo, 1989). From the field of African psychology, the terms spread to other fields, in particular education, with the emergence of an “African-Centered Education” (ACE) thrust. In an essay published in the early 90s, for instance, Lee et al. (1990) discussed the significance of what they labeled an “African-centered pedagogy” for the proper education of African American children. Disturbingly enough, though, the scholars who embraced and introduced “African-centeredness” in those early days of the term, never cared to define it clearly. This may be the case because of a lack of conceptual clarity which has led, over the years, to much confusion. A close reading of Azibo’s uses of the term, for instance, reveals a problematic conflation of African cultural orientation and self-consciousness. While “African-centeredness” is taken to be synonymous with Africentricity/Afrocentricity, it also means, at the same time, Africanity since it is informed by the African cultural orientation and response to reality, most specifically by the cosmology, axiology, ontology, epistemology and esthetics that characterize African culture and define what is commonly referred to as “the African worldview” (Baldwin, 1989). Thus, Azibo writes about “African-centered thought,” “African-centered worldview,” and about “African-centered cosmology” to actually refer to the African thought, worldview and cosmology. In other words, “African-centered” means “African,” and “centered” thus becomes largely redundant. African thought will be, by definition, centered in Africa, or else it will not be African. Thus understood, African-centeredness refers to a state of being defined by a particular culture, in other words, to Africanity.

Afrocentricity, on the other hand, refers to a state of consciousness that implies systematic deliberateness. From that standpoint, being African does not equate with being Afrocentric. Indeed, being Afrocentric is not simply a matter of having an African worldview, it is above all about intentionally occupying one’s human space as an African. It is an “ideological posture” which aims at removing African people from the position of marginality, invisibility, and anomy in which Europeans have placed us. In other words, the purpose of Afrocentricity is to put an end to our dislocation by helping us move back to our center, so that ultimately, we become grounded again, free from shame and oppression, liberated from all forms of cognitive hiatus.

Critical to the re-centering process is the activation and identification of African agency: “The Afrocentric idea is unthinkable without agency,” for “To be Afrocentric is to seek African agency in every situation, analysis, or critique” (Asante, 2009, p. 21). Agency itself is a function of consciousness, another cornerstone of Afrocentricity. The Afrocentric theory itself, Asante (2007) explains, “emerged as a process of political consciousness for a people who existed on the edge of education, art, science, economics, communication, and technology as defined by Eurocentrists. If the process were successful, then the re-centering of the people would create a new reality and open another chapter in the liberation of the minds of African people” (p. 32). Clearly, then, African (-centered) and Afrocentric cannot be held to mean the same thing, contrary to what many scholars carelessly assert: “Only those who are consciously African, given to appreciating the need to resist annihilation culturally, politically, and economically, can claim to be adequately in the arena of Afrocentricity. This is not to say that they [who are not consciously African] are not African, just not Afrocentric” (Asante, 2007, p. 47).

Conflating those two dimensions, cultural being (Africanity) and self-consciousness (Afrocentricity), in one term, “African-centeredness,” is, to put it kindly, a major conceptual flaw. More tragically, it has turned out to be the source of incredible theoretical stickiness, with scholars who venture into the ill-defined territory of African-centeredness often drowning in its muddy waters. Azibo (2012) makes a pitiful attempt to disentangle himself from the “African-centeredness” imbroglio that he has largely contributed to create by writing of an “African-centered worldview perspective” (p. 12). Such a wordy and clumsy expression only betrays even more poignantly Azibo’s (1988) own lack of clarity and contradictions. Already in an article published in 1988 he had revealed his misunderstanding of Afrocentricity when he wrote about “the collectivism and Maat” that “are characteristic of the Africentric way,” and the “Africentric worldview construct” (1988, p. 86). In truth, there is no such thing as an “Africentric/Afrocentric way,” nor is there any such thing as an “Africentric/Afrocentric worldview.” Afrocentricity is a perspective informed by a particular consciousness, not a worldview. That consciousness is dictated by African cultural nationalism, an expression of Black nationalism. Failure to realize the distinction that exists between Africanity and Afrocentricity can only be a source of confusion at a time when, more than ever, we seek and need clarity.

The term “African-centered” got a major push in the mid-90s from the publication of Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior, a masterful engagement of European thought that became widely read and referenced in Black Studies circles. Yet, although announcing in her title “African-centeredness” as the conceptual framework that would guide her analysis, Marimba Ani (1994), however, also defines “African-centeredness” quite vaguely and loosely. Indeed, she writes in the introduction that, “African-centered social theory is the collective creation of every aspect of our history of struggle and victory. It began when we began; challenged by the first invaders of the Motherland. It received new life from the Middle Passage. It was shaped during the crucible of the Maafa. And now encompasses the visions, thoughts, and creations of every African soul; every mother and father, every child.” On one hand, Ani equates being African-centered with being African, since “It began when we began.” Then, she enlarges her conception by adding the notion of resistance to oppression as a sine qua non to African-centeredness. But, in a surprising move, as quickly as she had introduced it, she goes on to remove the resistance criterion to include all African people, men, women and children, regardless of their resisting oppression or not. Being African suffices to be considered African-centered. One would seek in vain greater clarification in Yurugu’s glossary for the term “African-centered” is not even listed there. Let us note, however, and this is quite significant, that Ani does not include any epistemological criterion in her definition of “African-centeredness.” It is thus clear that in Ani’s understanding of “African-centeredness,” “centered” is also redundant, that is, useless. My point here is that “African-centeredness” and “African-centered” have been used in a disturbingly inconsistent manner, as further revealed by a survey of 70 texts that use the term “African-centered” or “African-centeredness” in their title. Four different scenarios are observable.

No Definition of African-centeredness

In many cases, African-centeredness is simply not defined at all, as if the author takes for granted that all know and agree upon the definition of “African-centeredness.” Yet, as explained above, such assumption is unwarranted, and may simply be a form of intellectual evasion given the conceptual clout that surrounds “African-centeredness.” Thus, often-cited texts such as Murrell’s (2002) African-centered pedagogy: developing schools of achievement for African American children do not include any definition of African-centeredness. One would also search in vain for such a definition in Bangura (2017) (“African-Centered Internet Literacy: An Ubuntugogy Metadata Approach); Decastro-Ambrosetti (2003) (“Sociolinguistic Foundations to African Centered Pedagogy: A Literature Review“); or Christian (2002) (“An African-Centered Perspective on White Supremacy”), to cite but a few.

African-centeredness and Afrocentricity as Synonyms

Another typical case involves the equation of “African-centeredness” with “Afrocentricity,” the two terms being presented as synonymous. This semantic equation leads Karenga and Tsuruta (2012), for instance, to write about “African-centered or Afrocentric womanism;” and Hopkins (2013) about “Afrocentricity or African-centered thought.” Likewise, Shockley and Cleveland (2011) hold the two terms to mean the same thing: “Afrocentric (Africentric/African centered) education is the only culturally centered comprehensive approach to addressing problems of miseducation . . .”. Bent-Goodley and Smith’s article (2017) also falls within that category as they write that,

“This article focuses on how Afrocentricity can be applied to community policing as an option to address these issues. While much has been stated about community policing, nothing has been discussed that grounds the experience and the response in an African-centered perspective.”

And so convinced are Watson-Vandiver and Wiggan (2018) that “African-centeredness” and “Afrocentricity” are the same thing, that they even attribute to Asante the spread of African-centeredness: “Researcher and theorist Molefi Asante (1990, 1991) popularized African-centeredness in the 1980s. As a framework, African-centeredness can be defined as the re-centering of African agency from objects to participants in world history (Asante, 1991).” This is the definition par excellence of Afrocentricity.

African-centeredness as Africanity

In other cases, the word “African-centered” is used to mean “African.” This is when “African-centeredness” derails into utter meaninglessness. We have already mentioned “Yurugu” as an illustration of this thrust. But many other scholars have fallen into the trap of redundancy. Let us cite for example DetenuHe (2016) who writes that “Sankofa is of particular importance, as it means to look back and fetch that which has been forgotten-including African-centered philosophical concepts in transpersonal notions of self and personhood” (p. 118). Adeeba D. DetenuHe also talks about “African-centered” spirituality to describe the practices of African people, thus, clearly equating “African-centered” with “African.” Also, according to Mickel (2013), “The African centered world view approaches human behavior as an interdependent relationship between the mind, body and spirit.” Mickel then goes on to list African cultural values such as interdependence, etc. as characteristic of the “African centered world view,” that is, of the African worldview. The list would be quite long of examples of such improper use of the term “African-centered” in lieu of “African.”

Oscillation between African-centeredness and Afrocentricity

The last, and yet quite common scenario, is the swinging back and forth between “African-centeredness” as cultural practice and “African-centeredness” as epistemological grounding, that is, Afrocentricity. Graham’s (1999) article entitled “The African-Centered Worldview: Toward a Paradigm for Social Work” provides a good illustration of the oscillation between African-centeredness as cultural orientation (African worldview) and African-centeredness as epistemological positioning (Afrocentricity), as she writes that,

The African-centered worldview has a core philosophical foundation derived from the classic African civilizations of Kemet, Nubia, Kush, and Axum as its baseline for conceptions of human beings and the universe (Asante & Abarry, 1995; Asante, 1988; Diop, 1978; Hilliard, 1985; Williams, 1987). The African-centered perspective postulates that African epistemologies, ideals, and values must be at the center of any analysis involving African Black peoples.”

In the first occurrence, it is clear that what Graham has in mind is the African worldview, while in the second occurrence African-centeredness refers to Afrocentricity without naming it.

Wade Nobles’ wordy definition of “African-centeredness” also exhibits a similar oscillation. According to him, “African centeredness represents a concept which categorizes a “quality of thought and practice,” is rooted in the cultural image and interest of people of African ancestry and represents and reflects the life experiences, history and traditions of people of African ancestry as the center of analyses” (Nobles, 1998, p. 190). On one hand, African-centeredness coincides with “the cultural image” of people of African ancestry, thus it means “African.” On the other hand, though, it places the “life experiences, history and traditions” of African people as “the center of analysis.” It then means “Afrocentric.”

Likewise, Ricard et al. (2010, p. 57) define African-centeredness as “the interpretation of reality from perspectives that are centered by and within the processes that maintain and perpetuate the life and culture of people of African descent. African-centered education is part of the same process of cultural restoration and promulgation that is inherent to African-centeredness. African-centered education is the outcome of the African world-view, a term coined by Senegalese anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop.” The “interpretation of reality” from perspectives that are germane to African people obviously refers to the epistemological posture that defines Afrocentricity, while “African-centered education is the outcome of the African world view,” that is, of Africanity. Thus, on one hand, African-centeredness is about consciousness, while on the other hand, it is about the promotion of the practice of Africanity. But, again, let us remember that practicing African culture does not automatically entail an Afrocentric stance. Our dislocation remains severe.

This survey of the puzzling and inconsistent usages of “African-centeredness” thus compels us to conclude that “African-centeredness” only has meaning when it coincides with Afrocentricity. When it simply refers to the African worldview, then, the “centeredness” suffix becomes redundant and confusing because it seems to suggest something that it simply does not.

Yet, instead of admitting that African-centeredness has not been cogently conceived by its proponents from the very beginning, some, like Itibari Zulu (2018) suggests, in a sorry mumbo-jumbo, that Afrocentricity is “an intellectual orientation,” while the “African-centered paradigm” is “a process of implementation,” thus betraying his complete misunderstanding of the nature of a paradigm. A paradigm is, by definition, structured around an organizing principle along with a set of metaphysical assumptions which, together, give it a distinctive and unique intellectual facture. A paradigm can therefore not be reduced to a mere “process of implementation.” If African-centeredness is simply about implementation, then the question is: What is it implementing? The answer is too obvious to be answered.

Likewise, Maat and Carroll (2012) add to the confusion by wrongly arguing that there are “four schools of African-centered thought”: ASCAC, African-centered psychology, African-centered education, and finally, “Asantean Afrocentricity.” First of all, the authors use the term “schools of thought” wrongly because what they describe are simply different areas of focus, that is, psychology, education or the study of Ancient Egypt. Secondly, the term “Asantean Afrocentricity” is meaningless because of its redundancy. Has anyone ever talked about “Marx’s Marxism?” to suggest that there could be another form of Marxism not fundamentally linked to Marx? In fact, in their clumsy discussion of the relationship between African-centered psychology, education, and the study of Kemet to Afrocentricity, the same authors have to admit that, “African-centered scholars often borrow (my emphasis) varying interpretations of the African worldview as a lens to ground theory development from within the Asantean Afrocentric school of thought as well.” The reason for this “borrowing” is simply that it is Afrocentricity that defines the theory that undergirds all those other so-called “African-centered schools of thought.” As Piper-Mandy and Rowe (2010) correctly state, “Following Asante’s work, a paradigmatic shift occurred regarding the conceptualization of the behavior of persons of African descent. Asante’s constructs have been used by scholars in a number of disciplines including education (Murrell, 2002), history (Diop, 1989), African Studies (Karenga, 1993), social work (Schiele, 1996) and psychology (Akbar, 1984; Azibo, 1989; Nobles, 2006).” Pellebon (2011) reaches a similar conclusion: “Some authors, he remarks, use variations of the term Afrocentricity (e.g., Africentricity, Afrocentrism, Afro-centric, and African-centered) to discuss the paradigm. Despite the varied terms, Asante’s paradigm includes the foundational constructs found in most of these works.”

The question becomes then why it is that so many scholars use “African-centeredness” rather than “Afrocentricity,” or “Africentricity”? Could it be that, just like many were reluctant to adopt “Africology” as the name of the discipline because they feared Asante’s domination over Black Studies, the avoidance of “Afrocentricity” is also a convenient way to avoid acknowledging Molefi Kete Asante’s formidable intellectual and political tour de force when he created not only a paradigm, Afrocentricity, but also a discipline, Africology? Surely, one’s ego should not be so toxic as to blind them or lead them to making dishonest or misguided claims.

Most importantly, the inconsistent use and definition of the terms “African-centeredness” and “African-centered” have impeded discipline-building efforts by introducing and sustaining epistemological incoherence in our disciplinary language. These terms should therefore be avoided by those who seek to develop clear and functional analyses.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Ama Mazama is a Professor and Graduate Director in the Department of Africology at Temple University. She has worked extensively on Afrocentric theory and praxis.

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