Handbook of Black Studies PDF

Sage Reference Handbook of Black Studies For the most optimal reading experience we recommend using our website. A free-to-view version of this content is available by clicking on this link, which includes an easy-to-navigate-and-sea...

Sage Reference Handbook of Black Studies For the most optimal reading experience we recommend using our website. A free-to-view version of this content is available by clicking on this link, which includes an easy-to-navigate-and-search-entry, and may also include videos, embedded datasets, downloadable datasets, interactive questions, audio content, and downloadable tables and resources. Author: Ama Mazama Pub. Date: 2010 Product: Sage Reference DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412982696 Disciplines: Race & Ethnicity, Race, Ethnicity & Migration, Black Studies, Sociology Access Date: July 8, 2024 Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks Online ISBN: 9781412982696 © 2010 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. Interdisciplinary, Transdisciplinary, or Unidiscipli- nary? Africana Studies and the Vexing Question of Definition AmaMazama It is commonplace knowledge that Africana Studies emerged primarily as a consequence of political demands made by Black students, and the Black community at large, on White institutions to break their racist silence about, or otherwise gross misrepresentations of, the Black experience. Alvin Rose (1975) aptly summarized this: It has been, of course, the magnificent insistence of Black students during this past decade that has forced higher education in America, however reluctantly, to begin to confront the horrendous silence of the school curriculum and classroom (at all levels—elementary, secondary and college) concerning the role of Blacks in the fabric of mankind. The consequences of this malignant neglect by American education have been (a) an adult white citizenry that has grossly misunderstood the American predicament—a misunderstanding that to a considerable degree is characterizable in the form of perceiving Blacks as pathologies to be cured, as deficits and deprivations to be repaired, as stains to be somehow washed white; and (b) an adult Black systematically deprecated, its African heritage cruelly ignored and unarticulated, its access to a fair share of contemporary scarce eco- nomic rewards and political instruments ingeniously withheld. (p. 1) These highly political beginnings certainly distinguish the Africana Studies discipline from European disci- plines, which developed, for the most part, at the turn of the 20th century, due to changes in the European intellectual and philosophical landscape in the 19th century, especially as a result of the rise of scientism. Thus, as Talmadge Anderson (1990) correctly remarks, The dramatic emergence and institution of Black Studies as an academic field at colleges and uni- versities have few if any parallels in the history of American education. As a branch of knowledge, Black Studies in the United States does not attribute its origin to any European scientific theorist or philosopher of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as in the cases of the “traditional” disci- plines. (p. 1) Handbook of Black Studies Page 2 of 15 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. Yet a correct appreciation of the challenges facing the discipline of Africana Studies requires a preliminary un- derstanding of the nature of the American academy, for that is where Africana Studies proceeded to create its own niche. In that respect, the work of Western sociologists of disciplines is useful. The dominant metaphor here is a spatial, and sometimes belligerent, one, with disciplines said to literally fight over turf and resources, to establish and protect their own space and borders from alien encroachments. Thus, and unsurprisingly, it appears rather clearly that, like any new discipline in the American academy, Africana Studies has also had to face what Camic and Xie (1994) refer to as “the new comer's dilemma” (p. 776), characterized by the need to meet two contradictory requirements, differentiation, and conformity. Differentiation implies the identification and demarcation of a discipline's space in the academic world, a process that equates with “boundary work”: Boundary-work is performed for various purposes. When the point is to establish or protect a disci- pline, boundaries mark it as a territory to be possessed by its owners, not appropriated by others, and they indicate the relations it may have with other disciplines. When the point is to regulate dis- ciplinary practitioners, boundary-work determines which methods and theories are included, which should be excluded, and which may be imported. (Shumway & Messer-Davidow, 1991, p. 209) Furthermore, and quite predictably, depending on the type of boundary work performed by the practitioners of a particular discipline, boundaries will vary with respect to their degree of permeability (Becher, 1989): Impermeable boundaries are in general a concomitant of tightly knit, convergent disciplinary commu- nities and an indicator of the stability and coherence of the intellectual fields they inhabit. Permeable boundaries are associated with loosely knit, divergent academic groups and signal a more fragment- ed, less stable and comparatively open-ended epistemological structure. (pp. 37–38) Disciplines with permeable boundaries are often encroached on by other disciplines, which claim parts, if not all, of their intellectual territory. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the establishment of impermeable disciplinary boundaries is an easy process. To begin with, the notion of discipline itself is “not a neat category” (Thompson Klein, 1996, p. 55), and the concept therefore lends itself to multiple and sometimes contradictory definitions. Although it is not uncommon for definitions to focus solely on the cognitive aspect of a discipline, equating it, as Anderson (1990) does for example, with a “specific body of teachable knowledge with its own set of interrelated facts, concepts, standardized techniques and skills” (p. 2), it is nonetheless obvious that disciplines are also, and just as importantly, organized social units (i.e., institutionalized groupings). Thus, Roy (1979) suggests that “a discipline is a term used to describe a subject matter area when there are more than approximately a dozen university departments using the same name for roughly the same subject matter” (p. 169). Although Roy's Handbook of Black Studies Page 3 of 15 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. definition may miss some other important aspects of what constitutes a discipline, in particular, epistemolog- ical and methodological ones, his definition has nonetheless the merit of stressing the necessary inclusion of the institutional character of a discipline in its very definition. This last point should help settle the debate about the dating of the beginning of the discipline of Africana Studies. Indeed, some scholars (e.g., Azibo, 1992; Stewart, 1992) have taken issue with the frequent assertion that Africana Studies started in the late 1960s. Stewart (1992), for example, believes that such a chronology deprives Africana Studies of a “contin- uous history” (p. 17) and Azibo (1992) asserts that Africana Studies started in the Nile Valley, thousands of years ago (p. 76). What both scholars fail to observe, however, is a distinction between possible forerunners of the discipline of Africana Studies and its actual founders in the 1960s and later. Thus, although W. E. B. Du Bois, Stewart's specific focus, may very well be considered one of the forerunners of Africana Studies, he may not be considered one of Africana Studies' founders because Africana Studies was not institutionalized during his lifetime. The same observation could be made about the priests-scholars of the Nile Valley. We must remember that when we talk about the emergence of Africana Studies, it is, whether we like it or not, within the implicit institutional context of the American academy, itself a rather recent development. Furthermore, the process of demarcation and maintenance of disciplinary territory is not uniform either, be- cause “disciplines differ in the ways they structure themselves, establish identities, maintain boundaries, reg- ulate and reward practitioners, manage consensus and dissent, and communicate internally and externally” (Thompson Klein, 1996, p. 55). There may also be serious disagreements within one discipline as to its defin- ition. For example, until relatively recently, economists were greatly divided over “their field's proper object of study” (Camic & Xie, 1994, p. 796). Likewise, a cursory reading of two current anthropology introductory text- books reveals divergent enough views over what anthropology is about, with one stating that “anthropology is concerned with understanding the ‘other’” (McGee & Warms, 1996, p. 1), whereas another one claims that “anthropology is the scientific and humanistic study of the human species” (Kottak, 2002, p. 4). In fact, what binds those who call themselves anthropologists is the sharing of a set of assumptions about human beings, their evolution, the significance of culture in that process, and certain methods of inquiry. Whereas it is clear that other disciplines may study the “human species” or even the “other,” (i.e., us, among others), it is equally clear that anthropologists ask certain questions about their topic that identify them as anthropologists. The point that must be emphasized here, therefore, is that an identification by subject matter alone often proves the weakest form of definition that disciplines may adopt in their quest for contrastive identification, because the same subject may be shared by different disciplines. The case mentioned above illustrates this unequiv- ocally: Anthropology does claim African people as its subject, as does Africana Studies, psychology, litera- ture, Women's Studies, social work, sociology, and philosophy. As Thompson Klein (1996) cogently observes, “generally speaking, boundaries are determined more by method, theory, and conceptual framework than by Handbook of Black Studies Page 4 of 15 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. subject matter” (p. 46). Then, how did, and how do, Africana Studies scholars go about defining and protecting their own turf? Before attending to that question, however, let us note that despite early days characterized by a fair amount of con- ceptual confusion, the absence of a standard curriculum, or even of a general agreement as to what Africana Studies was about, what its goals were, Africana Studies has nonetheless, over the years, confirmed and reinforced its institutionalization. In 1975, the National Council of Black Studies, the discipline's main pro- fessional organization, was created and became responsible for establishing professional standards, basic curricular guidelines, and a support network for Africana Studies scholars. Also, of critical importance in this institutionalization process has been the creation of several doctoral programs, the first one at Temple Uni- versity, in 1988, a true milestone in the development of Africana Studies. Indeed, the significance of the ability of Africana Studies to grant the Ph.D. cannot be underestimated, given that, as Swoboda (1979) reminds us, “By the turn of the century, the doctorate had become the ticket of admission to membership in American aca- demic life. The doctorate, of course, certified not teaching ability but the ability to do research—and research of a strictly disciplinary nature at that” (p. 77). The creation of the first Ph.D. program in Africana Studies tran- scended “the parochial and provincial role which had been assigned to the field by keepers of the Academy” (Asante, 1991, p. 173). Therefore, despite great odds and challenges in an often openly racist academic en- vironment, Africana Studies was able not only to maintain its presence but also to thrive, at least to a certain extent. However, it is also painstakingly clear that Africana Studies continues to be plagued by some significant prob- lems. The challenges facing Africana Studies are both internal and external. Both, however, ultimately refer to the question of definition and are therefore related. It is my contention that Africana Studies' definitional problems result, in part, because Africana Studies is still, to a large extent, primarily defined by its subject matter—the “Black experience” and its “mutidimensional aspects,” to quote Karenga's often-cited definition (1993, p. 21). Reflecting this subject matter approach to Africana Studies is a general and consensual definition of Africana Studies as interdisciplinary or multidiscipli- nary, the two terms being used interchangeably most of the time. The justification for such a label has taken two forms, which are not mutually exclusive. On the one hand, most claim that Africana Studies deals with such a broad range of phenomena that it cuts, by necessity, through many disciplines, thus compelling Karen- ga (1993) for instance, to define Africana Studies as “an interdisciplinary discipline” (p. 25). On the other hand, some scholars have argued against the fragmentation of knowledge about Africana people and in favor of a holistic model, which they label interdisciplinary. The result of this interdisciplinary perspective, however, has been the establishment of quite weak and permeable boundaries for Africana Studies. According to Stewart's Handbook of Black Studies Page 5 of 15 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. schematic representation (1992, p. 23), Africana Studies overlaps with anthropology, archaeology, econom- ics, geography, political science, English, history, philosophy, religious studies, dance, music, drama, visual, broadcast, film, journalism, speech, adult curriculum, preschool education, primary education, secondary ed- ucation, special education, vocational education, higher education, architecture, business, and engineering, as well as biology, chemistry, genetics, mathematics, and physics. This is an open-ended list. In other words, all the above-listed disciplines would be considered Africana Studies' “parent disciplines,” a somewhat em- barrassing label. Concretely, such a conception of Africana Studies manifests itself through a profusion of cross-listed courses. Sometimes, the situation borders on delirium, with some programs bragging that their “interdisciplinary program” offers no less than “eighty-nine courses” taught by faculty distributed in “twenty departments housed in four colleges” (Cleveland State University). Obviously, this is a case of extreme disci- plinary fragmentation. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon. At Yale, students anxious to get a Ph.D. in Africana Studies must major in a European discipline as well and will eventually receive a “joint” Ph.D. Likewise, at Harvard, Afro-American Studies Ph.D. candidates must take half their required courses in a European disci- pline, which is defined as their “primary” discipline. These students, obviously, are being prepared for the joint faculty appointments that they are most likely to hold. Indeed, those remain the rule, with an administration incapable of recognizing the legitimacy of Africana Studies and faculty still unwilling to give up their identifica- tion with their European reference group, because the latter carries greater academic prestige. Africana Studies scholars commonly identify themselves as “economists,” “sociologists,” “linguists,” “psychol- ogists,” and the like. As a result of these highly permeable boundaries, Africana Studies is also under the continuous threat of encroachment by other disciplines while it continues, in many cases and after several decades, to function as an “ethnic” adjunct to European disciplines. Fights with other disciplines over the “right” to teach courses on African people are not unheard of. Nelson (1997, p. 62), for example, reports how, in 1972, at Ohio State University, the history department attempted to prevent the Africana Studies depart- ment from teaching African history courses. More recently, a similar battle took place at California State Uni- versity at Northridge. What this points to is the highly elusive nature of the Africana Studies core. Becher's (1989) comments about “disciplinary groups which are divergent and loosely knit” unfortunately apply to many Africana Studies scholars: “In their case the cognitive border zones with other subject fields are liable to be ragged and ill-defined, and hence not so easy to defend” (p. 37). It should be clear, therefore, that the theorization of Africana Studies as interdisciplinary has not necessarily served the discipline well, creating, in fact, much confusion and vulnerability. However, this confusion should come as no surprise given that the notion of interdisciplinarity itself is quite unclear (Kockelmans, 1979, pp. 11–48). According to Shumway and Messer-Davidow (1991), interdisciplinarity is by definition integrative and Handbook of Black Studies Page 6 of 15 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. may refer to four different scenarios: cross-disciplines borrowing, collaborative work for the sake of problem solving, bridge building between disciplines that retain their own integrity, and finally, the constitution of new fields from overlapping areas of discrete disciplines. It is unclear, however, which one of these scenarios those who define Africana Studies as interdisciplinary have in mind, because, in reality, there has been little or no disciplinary integration for lack of a clearly defined Africana Studies core. Instead, what the dominant intellectual practice seems to have been is not a reconceptualization but a “Blackenization” of European dis- ciplines—that is, the exploration of the Black experience within the confines of European disciplines. Thus, we have “Black sociology,” “Black psychology,” “Black literature,” and “Black history.” However, as noted by Stewart (1992, p. 10), there is no guarantee that the prefixation of the word Black necessarily entails any major epistemic transformation of the European disciplinary construct. After all, according to Staples (1973), Black sociology has as its main theoreticians C. Wright Mills and Karl Manheim, two major European sociolo- gists who had no insight or particular interest in African people. In reality, the defining criterion, as mentioned above, is the shared subject: Black people's historical and cultural experiences, with Blackness functioning as a, granted, powerful unifying theme. Clark Hine, still using Blackness as the ultimate definitional criterion, shifted the focus onto those who produce scholarship to suggest that Africana Studies is, after all, simply the sum total of the scholarship produced by Black professors. Indeed, according to Clark Hine (1997), “As long as black scholars remain productive and competitive, and devote considerable attention to recruiting and training the next generation of scholars, Black Studies will enjoy a presence on American campuses” (p. 12). This position is reminiscent of Hountondji's (1996) controversial argument that anything written by a philoso- pher born in Africa qualifies as African philosophy. In my view, this very loose and quasi-epidermic—that is, superficial—approach can only exacerbate the problematic question of definition. However, this somewhat extreme reliance on European disciplines may very well be explained, in part, by the second requirement identified above as part of the newcomer's dilemma—that is, conformity. The conformity in question has to do with “acceptable models or standards of scientific practice” (Camic & Xie, 1994, p. 776). In other words, to be tolerated and survive, Africana Studies had to fit into a particular, preestablished Amer- ican academic model. But this conformity requirement has been further exacerbated by the racism that per- meates the American academy. As rightly noted by Blake and Cobb (1976), “In Black Studies, as in practically all other endeavors, Blacks had to ‘prove’ themselves” (p. 2). And as we all know too well, many still question the Africana Studies project, on the basis of quality and relevance. In fact, according to one European scholar (Becher, 1989), the “intellectual validity” of Africana Studies “is under challenge from established academic opinion” (p. 19). This unfortunate reality is echoed many years later by Aldridge and Young (2000), who write that “there are Handbook of Black Studies Page 7 of 15 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. still too many in the academy who resent the ‘intrusion’” and, as a consequence, agitate for the demise of African American Studies. “It is important to note,” they continue, “that the mere existence of an African-Amer- ican Studies program serves as a commentary on a historical reality embedded in slavery, racism, segrega- tion, and discrimination” (p. 5). After all, and to illustrate the comment, when Molefi Asante submitted the proposal for the first Ph.D. program at Temple University, one White professor from sociology promised that his proposal would only be adopted over her “dead body.” What is suggested here, is that the safest path to conformity, which increased one's chance to survive and thrive, may have appeared to many professors to coincide with a strict alignment with European structures, divisions of knowledge, and methods of inquiry. This alignment, however, is particularly problematic in the case of Africana Studies, which erupted onto the academic scene with the mandate to transform and improve the life experiences of African people. It is cor- rect that, generally speaking, in addition to the intellectual and social dimensions of a discipline, the latter is also a form of social practice, meant to inculcate specific habits and values to its practitioners. Africana Studies students were supposed to learn, as part of their training, to commit themselves to the bet- terment of their community and to become “scholar-activists.” Those values are definitely at odds with the agenda of White institutions, which are particularly conservative and resistant to change. Thus, by integrating a White-controlled institution, Africana Studies was ipso facto placed in a difficult position, bound to generate multiple tensions between the administration and Africana Studies scholars and students. However, the process of professionalization, which requires Africana Studies professors and students to de- vote their energies to academic work—on which professional advancement is supposedly predicated—may have been detrimental to social activism and the fulfilling of the initial mission of Africana Studies. This was done, and continues to be done, most effectively via joint appointments, with European Studies departments controlling the tenure and promotion process. This dominant role accorded European Studies departments is, needless to say, an expression of the racist hierarchy that holds anything African inferior and by necessity subordinate to anything European. Such appointments not only marginalize Africana Studies, but they also undermine its intellectual legitimacy. Let us note, here, that the “dilemma of professionalization” is not unique to Africana Studies, but the common lot of all those disciplines that came about in its wake, with the avowed purpose of challenging and upsetting the White patriarchal and racist order on which the American society is built. Women's Studies, which also defines itself as “interdisciplinary,” is a case in point. Although it has also reached a considerable level of in- stitutionalization, this has not been without a price—namely, the loss of much of its transformational power: Handbook of Black Studies Page 8 of 15 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. “The difficulty of transformation can be seen in the contradictions that exist between feminist knowledge and the organizational structure of the universities that house this inquiry” (Shumway & Messer-Davidow, 1991, p. 215). In the end, the real danger, for Women's Studies, as it is for Africana Studies, is “being reduced to a con- tributing role in a framework whose analytic categories are not of one's making” (Thompson Klein, 1996, p. 123). In other words, the institutionalization of disciplines such as Women's Studies and Africana Studies has also meant, to a considerable degree, their “mainstreaming” and taming. This poses the real question about the extent to which Africana Studies can “belong” in the Western academy and, at the same time, remain true to its initial goal—the uplifting and liberation of African people. Although there may be strength, indeed, in marginality, that very status also reinforces one's secondary status even in one's own eyes, a particularly cruel state of affairs. The rather precarious intellectual standing of Africana Studies has compelled several scholars to attempt to strengthen the core of the discipline. Stewart (1992), whose efforts toward that end must be commended, suggested the need to define an Africana Studies “disciplinary matrix” (p. 12) that would make up a meta- physical component, shared values, symbolic generalizations, a common language, and research methods, as well as exemplars. The metaphysical dimension, for example, would entail a definite orientation to data that would apprehend Black people as actors rather than victims—a clear, although unacknowledged, Afro- centric influence. In terms of methods, Stewart suggested a reliance on orality as a method to record the historical experiences of Black people. This method, Stewart argues, would be true to the cultural preferences of African people for the spoken word. Still concerning the question of appropriate methods for Africana Stud- ies, an issue that has proven quite thorny, Stewart believes that it may also be possible to “appropriate and transform selected methodologies used in other disciplines such that value contamination is not introduced in Black/Africana Studies-based research” (p. 15). However, although Stewart's (1992) concern with methodological contamination is a legitimate one, it is somewhat paradoxical for the same author not to be concerned with paradigmatic contamination as well, which could have a potentially much greater negative impact on Africana Studies. Indeed, Stewart's final rec- ommendation “to refine the collective disciplinary matrix in a manner that can help Black/Africana Studies scholar/activists to reach higher ground” is a synthesis of Africana studies' “major systems of thought” (p. 46)—namely, cultural nationalism (Afrocentricity and Kawaida) and Marxism, assorted with an “amelioration” of each one of those traditions. Particularly puzzling to this author is Stewart's insistence that Marxism, an eminently European metatheory, loaded with evolutionary, materialistic, and ethnocentric metaphysical as- sumptions, be given such a prominent role in the construction of an Africana Studies disciplinary core and thus allowed to contaminate the whole Africana Studies enterprise with alien, if not hostile, values. It seems Handbook of Black Studies Page 9 of 15 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. that the inclusion of Marxism at the core of Africana Studies might in fact preclude the refinement of its disci- plinary matrix by de facto placement of it within a transdisciplinary framework given Marxism's grand attempts to transcend disciplinary worldviews and boundaries (Thompson Klein, 1996, p. 11). To put the matter square- ly, Africana Studies could be brought under the same umbrella as those European fields that share Marxism as their main paradigm. In addition to not being necessarily beneficial to Africana Studies, the introduction of Marxism as a main paradigmatic source for the discipline may also not be compatible with cultural national- ism, the other paradigmatic pillar identified by Stewart. Unfortunately, Stewart did not address the question of metaphysical incompatibility between those two paradigms and did not, therefore, describe the ways in which the synthesis he envisioned could actually be realized. What is clear, on the other hand, is that for Stewart, Black cultural nationalism is not sufficient to sustain Africana Studies. This view is also shared by Perry Hall (2000), for whom the existence of a multiplicity of paradigms or schools of thought within Africana Studies is necessary and positive. Hall identifies three main paradigms in Africana Studies: “integrationist,” Afro-centric, and “transformationism,” informed by Marxism. According to Hall, the main merit of the “transformationist” paradigm is its ability to deal with the economic, social, and structural factors affecting African people today. Furthermore, the adoption of an European paradigm is not incompatible with contemporary African sensitiv- ities due to the Europeanization of African consciousness, resulting in “double consciousness”: “This dyadic opposition of sensibilities, pervades not only our identities, cultural orientations, and communities as African Americans, but in fact, those of Africans in all parts of the Diaspora,” Hall writes. “This is a current condition, as well as a historical fact” (p. 31). The conclusion is thus inescapable: “Afro-centrism, while necessary, is of itself insufficient as a theoretical base to address the complete set of issues facing us as Black Studies schol- ars” (p. 30). This simply echoes Stewart's (1992) own pronouncement that “the extent to which a system of thought is Afrocentric is only one of many criteria that are relevant for judging the overall usefulness of a con- ceptual framework” (p. 46). It is true that Stewart (1992), too, had expressed doubts about African Americans' ability to maintain their Africanness over time (p. 37). Unlike Stewart, however, Hall does not recommend a synthesis but the coexistence of parallel paradigms. This, in Hall's (2000) views, will encourage a continuous dialogue, which “makes greater clarity possible among all scholars in the area” (p. 31). One can only agree with Hall (2000) that dialogue is indeed a sine qua non condition to the further and much- needed clarification of the Africana Studies intellectual project. In that respect, I would like to suggest that the transformationist paradigm, which Hall espouses, is also an integrationist paradigm, from an episte-mo- logical—that is, cultural—sense. Indeed, it may not be integrationist in a political or social sense, as Wilson's work is, which suggests the further integration of African people within the American social fabric as a solution to “our” problems. However, it is integrationist to the extent that it recommends that the African experience be perceived through European cultural lenses. Marxism, regardless of its proponents' claim to the contrary, re- Handbook of Black Studies Page 10 of 15 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. mains profoundly embedded within the worldview that produced it. As such, it rests on a number of very prob- lematic assumptions for African people. Of particular relevance here is the belief that human history is one and that human history is Western history. Indeed, Marx, like many of his 19th-century contemporaries, be- lieved in the linear and universal progress of humankind, with Europeans at the vanguard of human evolution and inferior Africans following in their footsteps. Hence, Iggers (1982) correctly notes that within that concep- tual framework, “The history of mankind thus becomes identical with the history of Western civilization. Implicit in the idea of progress (e.g., in Hegel, Marx, Comte, and Spencer) is the notion of the civilizing mission of the European nations” (p. 44). This is precisely why Marx could make the rather revealing and troubling following statement about European colonialism and oppression: “The question is, can mankind fulfill its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution” (cited in Sanderson, 1990, p. 55). One would also need to raise the issue of the materialistic determinism that permeates Marxism and question its appropriateness within the African cultural context, because Africans have certainly never believed in the primacy of the material over other aspects of life. Therefore, although Hall (2000) and Stewart (1992) insist on including Marxism as a major paradigmatic source for Africana Studies, they nonetheless fail to address the questions raised above. This may very well be the case because they claim the European cultural tradition as part of their American selves. Thus, it should be clear at this point, that in my view, Marxism will not be able to provide Africana Studies with the criterion of demarcation that the discipline needs to establish its autonomy from European disciplines; rather, much to the contrary. The insistence to include Marxism as a major Africana Studies paradigmatic component may stem, in part, from one's assumption that only Marxism can provide one with the conceptual tools necessary to deal with the economic dimension of the African experience. However, this assumption is unwarranted. Africana Studies' greater autonomy will be achieved only through a redefinition of the discipline not by subject matter, but as some scholars have suggested (Asante, 1990, 1991), by the systematic and conscious adop- tion of a conceptual framework generated by Africana people. This conceptual framework, also known as Afro-centricity, should function as a metaparadigm and foster the creation of theories, the articulation of spe- cific research questions, and the use of certain methods of inquiry, all providing Africana Studies scholars with unique disciplinary insights and Africana Studies with more resistant boundaries. Thus far, much of what that has passed for African American Studies has been nothing but European Studies of African phenomena. Such confusion and usurpation were rendered possible mainly by the unquestioned and unproblematized acceptance of the European perspective as universal. This also points to the fact that Handbook of Black Studies Page 11 of 15 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. the perspective—more so, the focus of study—is the most important criterion to locate a particular study. In that respect, Azibo (1992) is right, in my view, to remark that Africana Studies needs not be exclusively de- voted to the study of the African experience. Africana Studies could study other people as well, as Marimba Ani did, for example, in her essay Yurugu (1994). However, what ought to ultimately bind Africana Studies together, despite different areas of interest, and allow it to reflect African people's reality with a considerable degree of faithfulness and eventually improve it when necessary, is an approach grounded in the African perspective—that is, Afrocentricity. To stress the crucial metaphysical connection between the study of African lives and African groundedness, orientation, and per- spective—that is, Afrocentricity—Asante (1990) adopted the term Africology, which he defined as the Afrocentric study of phenomena, events, ideas, and personalities related to Africa. The mere study of phenomena of Africa is not Africalogy but some other intellectual enterprise. The scholar who generates research questions based on the centrality of Africa is engaged in a very different research inquiry than the one who imposes Western criteria on the phenomena. (p. 14) The Afrocentric idea is a profound one, with complex implications. Unfortunately, it has often been misunder- stood, oversimplified, or both. At its core, however, Afrocentricity is a theory concerned with African epistemo- logical relevance, also referred to as centeredness or location. Afrocentricity insists that it must be realized that any idea, concept, or theory, no matter how “neutral” it claims to be, is nonetheless a product of a par- ticular cultural and historical matrix. As such, it carries specific cultural assumptions, often of a metaphysical nature. Thus, to embrace a European theory or idea is not as innocent an academic exercise as it may seem. In fact, it is Afrocentricity's contention that unless African scholars are willing to reexamine the process of their own intellectual conversion, which takes place under the guise of “formal education,” they will continue to be the easy prey of European intellectual hegemony. What is suggested, instead, is that African intellectu- als must consciously and systematically relocate themselves in their own cultural and historical matrix, from which they must draw the criteria by which they evaluate the African experience. Their work must be informed by “centrism,” that is, “the groundedness of observation and behavior in one's own historical experiences” (Asante, 1990, p. 12). Thus, it can be said that Afrocentricity emerged as a new paradigm to challenge the Eurocentric paradigm responsible for the intellectual disenfranchisement and the making invisible of African people, even to them- selves, in many cases. Afrocentricity presents itself therefore as the Africana Studies metaparadigm. As such, it includes three major aspects: cognitive, structural, and functional. The cognitive aspect involves the meta- physical foundations—such as an organizing principle and a set of presuppositions, a methodology, methods, Handbook of Black Studies Page 12 of 15 Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. concepts, and theories (Mazama, 2003). The structural aspect refers to the existence of an Afrocentric intel- lectual community, such as that found at Temple University. Finally, the functional aspect of the Afrocentric paradigm refers to the ability of the latter to activate African people's consciousness and to bring them closer to freedom, the ultimate goal of Afrocentricity and, it was once said, of African American Studies as well. References Aldridge, D., & Young, C. (2000). Historical development and introduction to the academy. In D. Aldridge & C. Young (Eds.), Out of the revolution: The development of Africana Studies (pp. 3–10). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Anderson, T. (Ed.). (1990). Black Studies. Theory, method, and cultural perspectives. Pullman: Washington State University Press. Ani, M. (1994). Yurugu: An African centered critique of European cultural thought and behavior. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Asante, M. (1990). Kemet, Afrocentricity, and knowledge. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Asante, M.The Afrocentric idea in education. Journal of Negro Education60 (1991). 170–179. Asante, M. (1998). The Afrocentric idea. 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