The Field, Function, and Future of Africana Studies- Critical Reflections on its Mission, Meaning, and Methodology.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 here, which includes an easy to navigate and search entry, and may also include videos, embedded datasets, downloadable datasets, inter...

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 here, 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: Maulana Karenga Pub. Date: 2010 Product: Sage Reference DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412982696 Keywords: black studies, African culture, sankofa, black culture, African people, Egypt, Odu Ifa Disciplines: Race & Ethnicity, Race, Ethnicity & Migration, Black Studies, Sociology Access Date: August 1, 2023 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks Online ISBN: 9781412982696 © 2010 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. The Field, Function, and Future of Africana Studies: Critical Reflections on its Mission, Meaning, and Methodology MaulanaKarenga In raising the questions of the field, function, and future of Africana Studies, it is important to remember and duly respect W. E. B. Du Bois's admonition to begin to seek answers to present questions by exploring the historical background and directional development of the object under study. He (Du Bois, 1905) states that we can only understand the present by continually referring to and studying the past, when any one of the intricate phenomena of our daily lives puzzle us; when there arises religious problems, political problems, race problems, we must always remember that while their solution lies in the present, their cause and their explanation lie in the past. (p. 104) Now if the past is critical, even indispensable, to understanding the present and developing solutions to its pressing problems, this is no less true of understanding and seeking solutions for the future. For the past offers not only origins and explanations but also patterns of development that point toward both possibilities and problems, and tendencies toward careful consideration, reaffirmation, and reinforcement and toward negligence, recklessness, and certain ruin. Our raising the issues of the field, function, and future of Africana Studies, as well as its mission and methodology takes place in a context of ongoing change within the discipline. Certainly, the discipline of Africana/ Black Studies as a dynamic and evolving intellectual and practical project has, of necessity, undergone a series of significant changes since its inception. These changes, as might be anticipated, are the result of both the internal developmental dynamics of the discipline itself and its sharing and responding to similar challenges of other disciplines posed by a changing academy, society, and world (Conyers, 1997; Karenga, 2000a; Stewart, 1992, 2004). As I have indicated in Introduction to Black Studies (Karenga, 2002), five of the most important developments are (a) professional organizations of the discipline, (b) the methodology of Afrocentricity, (c) Black women studies, (d) multicultural studies, and (e) classical African studies. The National Council for Black Studies, the preeminent professional organization of the discipline, has been very instrumental in providing forums, models, advisers, and scholars for development of curriculum, programs of Page 2 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. assessment, service learning, community linkage, and international exchange. These initiatives have not only brought scholars together in mutually beneficial exchanges but have helped to expand the discipline as well as move it toward a flexible standardization in vital areas as expressed in the inaugural issues of the Afrocentric Scholar (May 1992, Vol. 1, Issue 1; May 1993, Vol. 2, Issue 1) dedicated to this project. The African Heritage Studies Association has also played a similar role in the development of the discipline. An earlier version of this essay was published as Chapter 9 in Maulana Karenga (2002), Introduction to Black Studies. Clearly, one of the most important developments in Black Studies is the emergence of Afrocentricity as a major conceptual framework within the discipline. A methodological initiative put forth by Molefi Asante (1990, 1998), professor of African American Studies at Temple University and founder of the first Ph.D. Africana Studies program, Afrocentricity quickly became a major focus and framework for discourse in Black Studies, the academy, and society. It invigorated academic and public discourse and posed challenges of methodology, pedagogy, and research to the discipline itself and the academy as a whole. Reaffirming Asante's definition of Afrocentricity, I define Afrocentricity as an orientation, methodology, and quality of thought and practice rooted in the cultural image and human interests of African people. Moreover, I share with Asante the fundamental understanding of Afrocentric methodology and work as the placing of African people at the center of their culture and history and at the center of the intellectual quest of our intellectual project (Asante, 1998; Karenga, 2002). Black women studies has also been essential to the discipline's development and the maintenance of its self-understanding as a liberatory project that offers moral critique and corrective for constraints on human freedom and human flourishing. The development of Black women studies as an integral and indispensable part of Black Studies reaffirms this position, enriches and expands Black Studies discourse and research, and reflects the discipline's capacity to constantly rethink its scope and content and to reconstruct itself in ever more valuable and vital ways (Aldridge, 1997; Dove, 1998; Gordon, 1987; Hudson-Weems, 1994, 2004; Kolawole, 1997; Reed, 2001). Multicultural studies actually were initiated with and through the struggles for Black Studies with its critique of and demand for an end to a monocultural and Eurocentric education. Our contention, then and now, was and is that a quality education is, of necessity, a multicultural education and that comparative engagement in analysis and understanding can only enrich our learning and teaching experience (Bowser, Jones, & Young, 1995; Karenga, 1995a; Reed, 1997). Classical African Studies, especially ancient Egyptian but also Nubian, Yoruba, Ashanti, and other cultures of antiquity, has brought an expanded and enriched understanding and exchange to the Africana Studies project. It has provided an ancient and instructive point of departure for framing and pursuing critical issues, reaffirming the centrality of African history to the history of humanity and Page 3 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. human civilization and providing useful and expansive paradigms of human excellence and human possibility (Diop, 1974, 1991; Karenga, 1984, 1999, 2004; Gyekye, 1987; Obenga, 1992). It is in this context of ongoing development that Africana Studies, like every project of value and vision, is rightfully compelled to engage regularly and with sufficient rigor in sustained and sober reflection on its achievements and unfinished business, its theoretical and empirical possibilities, its self-understanding as an academic and social practice, and its rootedness, relevance, and future in an era of increasing possibilities and contradictions (Conyers, 1997; Hall, 1999; Karenga, 2000a; Stewart, 1992, 2004). The point here is to look back and face forward in an ongoing effort to understand and engage the world in new and meaningful ways from an African-centered standpoint. And it is also to raise and pursue this self-questioning and quest within the core self-understanding of the discipline as a self-conscious project directed, not only toward a critical grasp of the world but also toward improving the human condition and enhancing the human prospect (Karenga, 1988). At such a point of critical engagement in consideration of the state and future of the discipline, it is useful to remember and bring into focus the ancient Yoruba teaching on the appropriate posture for such a serious and sustained undertaking. The ancient Yoruba context, Odu If a (1:1), says, Let us not engage the world hurriedly. Let us not grasp at the rope of wealth impatiently. That which should be treated in a mature manner, Let us not deal with it in a state of uncontrolled passion. When we arrive at a cool place, Let us rest fully. Let us give continuous attention to the future. Let us give deep consideration to the consequences of things. And this, because of our eventual passing. (Karenga, 1999, p. 1) So we are charged here, then, not to approach a serious matter hurriedly, impatiently, or irrationally. On the contrary, we are to approach the matter calmly and in a manner that reflects adequate pause and mature judgment. Also, in our deliberations, we are charged rightly with the responsibility of giving “continuous atPage 4 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. tention to the future” and “deep consideration to the consequences of things.” This critical and measured approach and its deep and future-focused thrust are in the interest of leaving a worthy legacy, given the reality and consequences of “our eventual passing” and our implicit obligation to the generations who come after us. Always open to fruitful engagement, the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois also offer us an instructive parallel concern with the future and developmental demands of an evolving discipline. In an essay written at the end of the 19th century, Du Bois noted that development of sociological study was then at a critical period “without settled principles and guiding lines and subject ever to the pertinent criticism; what, after all has been accomplished?” His response to this was to reason that the answer to the question of accomplishment is found in the scholarly commitment and realization that the phenomena of society are worth the most careful and systematic study and whether or not this study may eventually lead to a systematic body of knowledge deserving the name of science, it cannot in any case fail to give the world a mass of truth worth the knowing. (quoted in Foner, 1982, p. 102) As I read Du Bois's advice, it is counsel to a developing discipline to welcome “pertinent criticism,” accept the need of constant assessment, and realize that key to the relevance of its work is the rigor of its research, the meticulous and systematic character of its studies. For as he argues, it is through such criticism—that is, external challenge and self-questioning—and through rigorous research that we produce and give to the world “a mass of truth worth knowing.” From an African-centered standpoint, we must read this “mass of truth worth knowing” as a body of knowledge that contributes in a real and meaningful way to improving the condition and enhancing the future of our community, society, and the world. Indeed, it is within this understanding that the early concept of the dual mission of Africana Studies, academic excellence and social responsibility, evolved (Hare, 1969). The central question here, then, becomes one of how do we continue to understand in new and various ways this project, and how do we honor the implications of this mission to create, sustain, and constantly develop a discipline defined not simply by its academic presence and discourse but also by its self-conscious linking in thought and practice the campus with the community and no intellectual grounding with social engagement (Hare, 1972). As has been noted, Africana Studies came into being as an agency of change in the academy and community, as a key participant in the challenge to the university to reconceive and reconstruct itself. We challenged not only its intellectual project but also its structure and functioning as an agent of the established order rather than as an agent of human development. It is Africana Studies that first issued the intellectual obituary of the Eurocentric project and raised the concept of relevance in education (Hare, 1975). And it is Africana Studies that revitalized and expanded the challenge to what counted as knowledge and its canonical imposition in the project of Afrocentricity (Asante, 1990). Now, Africana Studies is challenged by its own history—that is to Page 5 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. say, by the legacy it has left as well as the imperatives of a quality and meaningful education inherent in that legacy. That is why Africana Studies must continuously engage in critical self-questioning concerning things “achieved and undone,” things still to be thought out and transformed, the quality of its practice, and the central mission, meaning, and methodology of its project. To pursue this project of critical self-questioning, I would like to employ the African, in this case the Dogon, concept of knowledge acquisition, which is posed as a continuous becoming-in-thought-and-practice at ever higher levels. The knowledge process for the Dogon is conceived as a continuous becoming-in-thought-andpractice because “it forms or models the individual at the same time he [or she] is assimilating the knowledge it offers” (Griaule & Dieterlen, 1986, p. 70). The point here is that our quest for and production of knowledge is part and parcel of our self-formation as scholars and of the shaping of the discipline. And it is thus key to our self-understanding and self-assertion in the world as both scholars and a discipline to proceed with our project in the most meticulous and measured ways so that the rigor and range of our process constantly yield the quality products our self-understanding as a discipline demands. The Dogon conception that the production and possession of knowledge at ever higher levels is central to our constantly becoming and our ongoing self-formation is useful, then, in its offering a framework for an open-textured developmental process, both for scholars in the discipline and for the discipline itself. It is also to speak to our constant reassessment and ongoing development of the elements and initiative of our mission and methodology. The Dogon posit four fundamental stages of knowledge that are directed toward understanding the story of the world and one's place and responsibility in it. The first level of knowledge is called giri-so or “fore-word.” It consists of basic facts and descriptive explanations. This is also called “first knowledge.” The second stage of knowledge is benne-so or the “side-word” and involves a deeper encounter with the given, categorization, and the search for meaning. The third stage in the Dogon knowledge process is bolo-so or the “back-word,” which is directed toward comparison and linking of parts into a meaningful and instructive whole. And the final stage is so-dayi, “the clear word,” which “concerns itself with the edifice of knowledge in its ordered complexity” and its application in practice in the assumption of responsibility in and for the world. The categorization of the stages of knowledge as fore-word, back-word, side-word, and clear-word suggests a multidimensional and holistic approach to knowledge. It requires looking at its various dimensions, analyzing each, comparing and linking them within a holistic framework, and then extracting a clear conception from both the product and the process. It is clear that these stages of knowledge and kinds of knowledge are at the same time reflective of both mission and methodology, and it is in this way I wish to approach them. These kinds of knowledge, thus, may be categorized as (a) giri-so, descriptive knowledge; (b) benne-so, analytic knowledge; (c) bolo-so, comparative knowledge; and (d) so-dayi, active knowledge. Within this framework, I Page 6 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. will delineate and discuss some current challenges and possibilities of Africana Studies in terms of its mission and methodology and their meaning for the field, function, and future of Africana Studies. By mission, I mean the self-understanding of the role, relevance, and goals of our engagement in and with the world. And by methodology, I mean the philosophical foundation and framework that informs this engagement. Here we distinguish methodology, philosophical orientation, from method that is a series of concrete steps taken to do and evaluate research. I will pursue this initiative from a Kawaida perspective—that is, a critical cultural perspective that privileges tradition, requires reason, and insists on practice in both the grasping of knowledge and proving its ultimate value (Karenga, 1997; 2000b). Kawaida is a philosophy of culture and social change that has as one of its central tenets the assumption that culture is the ground of self-understanding and self-realization and that it requires and rewards dialogue with it, as I will discuss below. Inherent in this presentation is the assumption that each general stage of development of Africana Studies, must of necessity identify, engage, and resolve a series of specific problematics that serve as a subset of challenges within the larger framework of the four overarching challenges I pose here. Moreover, I pose all the challenges here as also possibilities, for in the midst of every structural and processual challenge are the possibilities of growth and change, as well as failure, digression, and decline. Giri-So, Descriptive Knowledge The initial and ongoing challenge for Africana studies is to continue to define itself in ways that reaffirm its original and fundamental mission and yet reflect its capacity and commitment to continuously extend the range of its concerns to deal with new problematics and new understandings within the discipline and within an ever-changing world. Within the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS), we have consistently maintained that the mission of Black Studies is a dual one—academic excellence and social responsibility. The first focus, academic excellence, was and is to reaffirm and ensure our commitment to the highest level of intellectual production as scholars and to a similar profound intellectual grounding for our students. And the second focus, social responsibility, was and is to reaffirm our commitment to the principle and practice of social responsibility and our dedication to cultivating in our students a similar commitment. But in spite of this generally accepted and explicit dual focus, there has always been a third implicit focus that undergirds and informs both our emphasis on academic excellence and social responsibility. This invisible but unavoidably present element is cultural grounding, which was not included in the explicitly stated mission and motto of NCBS, although implicitly it is always present. Page 7 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. From its very inception, Black Studies/Africana Studies has stressed the Black or African character—that is, the cultural character—of its project. In fact, it was a fundamental point of our criticism of the White or European educational system that it lacked an adequate presence and presentation of the African or Black experience as well as the experience of other peoples of color. Inherent in this criticism was the concern that the cultural representation of African people in the educational process exhibits three things: (a) accuracy in fact, (b) competence in interpretation, and (c) an adequacy of African presence in appropriate places. Furthermore, in the NCBS community, culture is constantly identified as an indispensable element in both the conception and practice of the Black Studies discipline. And no Black Studies scholar denies the centrality of culture to the Africana Studies project. For African culture is literally the ground of our intellectual project, the indispensable source of our identity, purpose, and direction as a discipline and a people. It is from African culture—continental and diasporan—that we draw the data, the intellectual and practical paradigms to frame, establish, and pursue the Africana Studies project. And it is because of our considered judgment that African people have a culture that offers a unique and valuable way of being human in the world and one worthy of study in its own right that we demanded and struggled to bring Black Studies into being as a discipline. Moreover, as I state in Introduction to Black Studies (2002), my courses and the book are organized around my understanding of Black/Africana Studies as a holistic project and thus a cultural one. I define Black Studies as the critical and systematic study of the multidimensional aspects of Black thought and practice in their current and historical unfolding. This stress on the many-sidedness of Black thought and practice, joined with concern for historical and current unfolding, points toward emphasis on a holistic approach. This context of wholeness, in turn, points to the Kawaida concept of culture, which is the totality of thought and practice by which a people creates itself; celebrates, sustains, and develops itself; and introduces itself to history and humanity. This activity occurs in at least seven basic areas: (a) history, (b) religion (spirituality and ethics), (c) social organization, (d) economic organization, (e) political organization, (f) creative production (art, music, literature, dance, theater), and (g) ethos. These areas of culture translate in Black Studies as core areas of focus and core courses in the discipline. Political, economic, and social organization are posited as politics, economics, and sociology; creative production is taught in its various distinct areas, and ethos is covered in psychology. But in any case, Black Studies is clearly about Black culture and Black people's initiative and experience within that culture as well as within the world. Most Black Studies programs and departments, then, have some version of these seven subject areas or subfields as core course areas. It, thus, becomes important to introduce the student to these seven core subject areas in the introductory course as a foundation for the various other courses that they will take in the discipline and that will also fit within the framework of Page 8 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. African intellectual and social culture—continental and diasporan. So it is clear that culture is the foundation and framework for the Africana Studies project and from the inception of Black Studies as a discipline has been the hub and hinge on which the project turns. The need, then, is to self-consciously concede cultural grounding as a third fundamental focus in the discipline's mission and to expand the discourse and dialog around its significance and centrality But in reshaping the mission, we also need, perhaps, to rethink the category “social responsibility” and ask ourselves how the concept of responsibility speaks to the level of active commitment we seek to cultivate and reaffirm in faculty members and students. It is an open and ongoing question, but it is clear that one of the defining distinctions some of us make between ourselves as activist-scholars and the nouveau venu public intellectuals is that we are more concretely engaged. Our role, we argue, is not to explain Black people to the established order or its various kinds of members as, we reason, they are doing. It is rather to produce and use knowledge in the service of our people and the world. And this ultimately means that we seek to play an active role in developing public philosophy and policy and engage in social practices that aid in both understanding the world and changing it in profound and promising ways. This is, at one level, certainly related to a broad concept of social responsibility. But on a deeper level, such an activist position calls for a more concrete intervention that is, perhaps, better captured in the concept of social engagement that involves active commitment and meaningful intervention. Thus, it is important to stress that the social responsibility sought here, then, is active engagement with the critical issues facing community, society, and the world in both intellectual and practical ways. With these delineations and distinctions, then, the triple focus and thrust of the Africana Studies mission can be defined as cultural grounding, academic excellence, and social responsibility. Within the context of these three fundamental foci and commitments of its mission, the Africana Studies project is informed by five overarching goals: (a) the critical and persistent search for truth and meaning in human history and social reality from an African vantage point; (b) a deep intellectual grasp and appreciation of the ancient, rich, varied, and instructive character of the African initiative and experience in the world and of the essential relevance of African culture as a unique and valuable way of being human in the world; (c) a rigorous intellectual challenge and alternative to established-order ways of viewing social and human reality; (d) a moral critique and social policy corrective for social constraints on human freedom and development, especially those rooted in race, class, and gender considerations; and (e) cultivation of commitment and contribution to the historical project of creating the truly multicultural, democratic, and just society and good world based on mutual respect of the rights and needs of persons and peoples, mutual cooperation for mutual benefit, and shared responsibility for building the good world all humans want and deserve to live in as expressed Page 9 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. in the Odu Ifa (Karenga, 1999, pp. 228ff). In realizing these overarching goals, some of the fundamental objectives of Africana Studies are (a) to provide students with a critical integrated overview of the origins, scope, and relevance of the discipline; its seven core subject areas; its academic, cultural, and social mission; and its major research issues and schools of thought; (b) to enhance critical thinking through engaging the oppositional propositions and thinking in the discipline that challenge established-order ways of approaching the world; (c) to engage historical and current events as a mode of cultivating and expanding the capacity for critical analysis and social ethical concern for the human condition and the human prospect from within an African cultural and intellectual framework; (d) to heighten awareness of the role of race, class, and gender in human community and exchange; and (e) to use the African initiative and experience in the world to cultivate critical appreciation of diversity as both an engaging problematic and a rich resource of human community, human exchange, and human self-understanding. Again, it is in this process of faculty and student collaboration and exchange that both they and the discipline develop and produce what the Dogon understand as a constant becoming in thought and practice at ever higher levels. Finally, Africana Studies is of necessity challenged to continue to define itself through its ongoing intellectual production of a defining and definitive basic literature. For as I (Karenga, 1988) have noted, “a discipline is by definition a self-conscious organized system of research and communication in a defined area of inquiry and knowledge” (p. 399). And the product of this research is a literature that is the basic source of what James Stewart (1984) calls “a coherent intellectual enterprise.” Moreover, as James Turner (1984) has argued, “Black Studies is a conceptual paradigm that principally tells us like other academic discourse what counts as facts and what problems of explanation exist” (p. xviii). But we cannot effectively posit “what counts as facts” if there is no literature that adequately assembles them. And we cannot delineate “what problems of explanation exist,” if the discipline must depend on those outside it to provide its central library or basic literature. So the challenge of giri-so here is to produce a body of literature that assembles basic definitive facts and explanations of the discipline and makes them available for discipline discourse and development. For it is in this process that boundaries of the discipline are delineated, essential content is identified, and indispensable and definitive explanations are provided. It is here too that discipline language and essential paradigms are introduced and the subject areas delineated (Karenga, 2002; Stewart, 1992; Turner, 1984). But to do this, Black Studies scholars must avoid certain pitfalls, such as exclusive focus on developing grand theories of social life, superficial reference to areas of inquiry outside their scope, failing to bring forward the lessons of the past in the interest of the present and the future, and interpreting the demands of descriptive Page 10 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. knowledge as the need for statements of faith rather than presentations of facts. The collection of facts is often tedious and never ending and in no way compares with heady discourse that passes as theoretical insight or to the cataloging of injustices and urgent and often misconceived calls for survival. But it is a noble, necessary, even indispensable enterprise, and no discipline is either conceivable or possible without this. True, one can always borrow literature from scholars in other disciplines for intellectual diversity, but not for intellectual grounding. For a discipline must justify itself in its own terms and by its own research and intellectual production. And literature is an indispensable product and expression of this. Benne-So, Analytic Knowledge The descriptive knowledge of a discipline is by definition first knowledge or beginning knowledge. It thus requires critical explanation, a below-the-surface search for relevance and meaning that results in benne-so, knowledge at an analytical level. The fact that Africans introduced the concept of human dignity in the Book of Kheti in ancient Egypt in 2140 BCE is clearly relevant as a reference. But it is more meaningful as a point of departure for moral philosophy, which establishes both the contextual and theoretical origins of such a concept and explores its value as an expression of African ethical discourse about what it means to be human (Karenga, 2004, pp. 317ff). This is why it is imperative that Black Studies scholars challenge students and colleagues to engage African culture as a perennially fruitful resource rather than as an ungrounded reference. So if we are to use Black culture as a resource rather than a simple reference, then the process of analysis must begin, as noted above, with a dialogue with this culture. In fact, there is no greater challenge to Africana Studies than that it move from simple description of Black life and culture to an African-centered analysis of its meaning in the most insightful and incisive ways. In a word, the essential and ongoing challenge it is to engage African culture in dialogue. By dialogue, here, I mean intellectual engagement of the texts, thought, and practices of the culture, to ask the texts questions and extract answers with analytical incisiveness. By texts, I mean oral, written, and living-practice texts—that is, those texts whose lessons are the lived lives of the people whether they wrote or not. Within this framework, the living-practice text of Harriet Tubman is instructive. It is a narrative that has as its central focus her decision to free herself and then share the good of freedom with others. Her report of her reasoning that freedom was a good to be shared shows her redefining freedom from an act of individual escape to a collective act of self-determination in community. In this single Page 11 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. yet instructive act, and in what Quarles (1988) calls her “unlikely” yet extraordinary leadership, she enriches our modern discussion on the personal and collective nature of freedom, our moral responsibility to significant others, and the grounds and delimitations of a morality of sacrifice. And clearly, there are numerous others who “specialize in the wholly impossible” and leave similarly instructive legacies (Cooper, 1988; Clark Hine, King, & Reed, 1996). It is important to note that this process of analytically engaging African texts—oral, written, and living-practice texts—is, of necessity, distinguished from the words wizardry, hyperabstraction, and deconstructionism, which shape and inform so much of current humanities discourse. In such a context, there is a deconstructionist tendency to expose the defective rather than raise up paradigms of possibility. In the process, so-called subversive discourse on texts becomes an alternative to subversive thought about social change and new and improved ways of being human in the actual world. The language of subversion is borrowed from a tradition of radical social thought and practice, but talk of “transgression,” “boundary crossing,” and the like is at best a gentle rattling of the bars of the conceptual prisons society has constructed as part of its edifice of oppression and domination. At worst, it is little more than flights of linguistic fantasy, a diversionary discourse of individualistic self-indulgence that leaves the paradigms of possibility unengaged and the actual social borders and barriers intact and unconfronted. Again, as I explained in IBS, my approach to Black Studies is essentially an Afrocentric cultural approach rooted in Kawaida philosophy. Kawaida philosophy defines itself as an ongoing synthesis of the best of African thought and practice in constant exchange with the world (Karenga, 1997). It poses culture as the fundamental framework and way of being human in the world and maintains that as persons in general and intellectuals in particular, we must constantly dialogue with African culture, asking it questions and seeking from it answers to the fundamental and enduring concerns of humankind. Among these fundamental questions are the following: What constitutes the good life? How do we create the just and good society? What are our obligations to each other as fellow human beings and fellow citizens? How do we establish and maintain a rightful relationship with the environment? How do we define and secure the dignity and rights of the human person and the well-being and flourishing of community? And what are some essential ways we might improve the human condition and enhance the human prospect? Through this process of posing questions of enduring human concern and seeking answers within the framework of our culture and in constant exchange with the world, we discover the rich and varied resources in African cultures. And these resources not only provide the basis for reflective problematics indispensable to the educational enterprise but also aid us in our ongoing efforts to bring forth paradigms and propositions of the best of what it means to be African and human in the fullest Page 12 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. sense. This dialogue with African culture requires that Africana Studies scholars ask at every critical juncture of research, writing, and discourse, the crucial question of what does Africa—African people and African culture,—have to offer in efforts toward understanding and improving the human condition and enhancing the human prospect. The dialogue or ongoing conversation with African culture becomes even more significant when one realizes that Europe continues for the most part to monologue with itself and to offer a curriculum that is often little more than one long self-congratulatory narrative about itself in every discipline. Indeed, it has never dialogued in any meaningful sense with Africa or for that matter with any other people of color. By “meaningful dialogue,” I mean engaging African culture as a valuable site and source for generating and providing reflective problematics—that is to say, problems of thought, practice, and experience that form the foundation and framework for the educational and intellectual enterprise. Even that part of Africa called Egypt (Kemet) was not engaged in dialogue by Europe. In spite of its gifts to Europe and Israel, and indeed the world, there is no real or relevant discussion in the established order curriculum of ancient Egypt's literature, philosophy, ethics, and other contributions to humanity, using its own texts, the words, expressed ideas, and concerns of its own people (El-Nadoury, 1990; Diop, 1991, 1974; Harris, 1971). Instead, Egypt was relegated to mythological and monumental reference, archaeological study, and museum placement. Even at the height of European romantic fascination with Egypt outlined by Bernal (1987), it was never more than an idealized reference. This was, in great part because by the time modern Europe “discovered” or “rediscovered” Egypt, it had already chosen Greece and Israel as the undisputed source of its fundamental paradigms of knowledge (Greece) and religion (Israel). And a dialogue with Egypt would have made these paradigms more problematic, given their debt to Egypt and thus their contradictory claim to uniqueness and exclusivity. Therefore, Egypt's rich and expansive ethics and spirituality were hidden under biblical myths of its being a land of bondage for ancient Israel. Its scientific achievements were rendered irrelevant by the need to see ancient Greece as the source of all substantive science. And its relationship to Africa was denied by geographical and cultural redefinition of it as a part of the Middle East or Western Asia (Karenga, 2004; Obenga, 1992). This is why Diop's posing Egypt as a classical source of paradigms is so important. For as he (Diop, 1981, pp. 10ff) says, it is not his assertion of the fact of the Blackness of Egypt that is so important but that he made it an intellectually and scientifically operational fact. Thus, he challenged Africana Studies scholars to dialogue with Egypt to extract ancient paradigms that point toward modern possibilities and ways of building a new body of human sciences and humanities and of renewing African culture. It is in this spirit and understanding that Africana Studies scholars began to introduce ancient Egyptian studPage 13 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. ies in the departmental curriculum and to explore ancient Egyptian studies as a rich resource in the ongoing developmental thrust of the discipline (Karenga, 2002, pp. 60–67). Here the right approach to the Akan intellectual and cultural challenge of sankofa must be correctly grasped and interpreted. For the sankofa call to “go back and retrieve it” is not a call to make our history a mere point of descriptive facts and references but an intellectual project of recovery of essential data and a critical analysis of issues of truth and meaning concerning the African initiative and experience in the world. As Niangoran-Bouah (1984) states, sankofa literally means “come back, seek and take or recover.” He reads the sankofa ideogram, a bird reaching back with its beak into its feathers, as “a symbol representing the quest for knowledge and the return to the source.” Niangoran-Bouah further states that the ideogram implies that the resulting knowledge “is the outcome of research, of an intelligent and patient investigation” (p. 210). As an Afrocentric methodological practice of historical recovery, then, sankofa is not simply the collection of data but also a critical analysis of meaning from an African-centered standpoint (Keto, 1995). In its most expansive understanding and definition, sankofa contains three basic elements and processes: (a) an ongoing quest for knowledge,—that is to say, a continuing search for truth and meaning in history and the world; (b) a return to the source, to one's history and culture for grounding and models in one's unique cultural way of being human in the world; and (c) a critical retrieval and reclaiming the past, especially the hidden, denied, and undiscovered truths of the African initiative and experience in the world. By “critical retrieval,” I mean an analytical approach to things encountered, a below-the-surface grasping for deeper and larger meanings that routine competence cannot provide. And I use critical reclaiming in its meaning of extracting the valuable from the midst of the waste which surrounds it—that is, the racist falsification and intellectually deficient interpretations of African history and culture. This refers to a critical process that self-consciously distinguishes itself from the deconstructionist janitorial model of history. In such a model, writers or researchers become little more than janitors of history, constantly searching for stench, stain, and peeling paint in the lives of great or notable men and women and revealing it as the central meaning of these persons' lives and work. Such diligent but misguided searches for dirt and debris fit well within the racist reading of Black history, which from its inception has had as its central goal the spurious revelation and specious proof of how weak and unworthy Africans are. Thus, any African contribution to such a project only adds to the racist deformation and denial of African history and culture. It does not, as some scholars claim, aid us in our understanding of persons in all their complexity. It is little more than deconstructionist bias to argue that the meaning of a great person's life is understood by concentration on his or Page 14 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. her weaknesses rather than the strength displayed in models of human excellence and human achievement that he or she offers. After all, we know and learn lessons of human possibility, not from the weaknesses of the great and notable, but from their triumph over them. Here we must avoid the conceptual imprisonment of categories and frameworks developed in other disciplines and develop a language and logic rooted in and reflective of the ancient, rich, and varied character of our own culture and the dignity-affirming and life-enhancing thought and practice within it. Bolo-So, Comparative Knowledge The comparative mode of knowing is central to Africana Studies and is a fundamental feature of Afrocentric methodology. As I have argued, “Afrocentricity can be defined as a methodology, orientation and quality of thought and practice rooted in the cultural image and human interest of African people” (Karenga, 1995a, p. 45). To be rooted in the cultural image of African people is to be grounded in the views and values of Africans and in the practices that both evolve from and inform those views and values. And to be rooted in the human interests of African people is to be anchored in the highest of African views and values and just claims on life and society that we share with other peoples and that represent the best of what it means to be African and human in the fullest sense. These values will, of necessity, include a profound commitment to truth, justice, freedom, dignity, community, mutual respect, shared good, and other fundamental principles that give foundation and framework for building, sustaining, and enhancing the world in both its social and natural dimensions. At this point, it becomes clear that Afrocentricity as a culturally rooted approach to understanding and engaging the world contains both a particular and universal dimension. It begins as a centering of oneself in one's own culture, dialoguing with it, and bringing forth a particular and useful insight and discourse to the multicultural project. This initiative is, of necessity, grounded in the considered assumption that the rich, varied, ancient, and complex character of African culture is a critical resource in understanding and engaging the world. And it is in the process of such a culturally rooted exchange with the other peoples of the world that the African person and scholar discover common ground with other peoples and cultures that can be cultivated and developed for mutual benefit and deeper insight into the human condition and human prospect (Asante, 1990, p. 12). Also in this context, the comparative method finds fertile ground both on a national and global level. It is im- Page 15 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. portant to note here that a comparative method does not hide or minimize variation or difference. It simply focuses on similarities as more fundamental in understanding factors that shape ethnic, national, and global communities. Thus, the Africana Studies scholar will want to know not only how the fundamental factors of race, class, and gender intersect as modes of domination and resistance but also to understand differential responses and modes of engagement of various peoples and persons with these national and global systems of oppression. He or she will recognize that although these factors of race, class, and gender can be understood critically on an ethnic or national level, they are at one level better treated as transethnic and transnational, or global, processes. Within this understanding of different levels of comparison, from the ethnic to the national and eventually to the global, Malcolm X (1992), Mary McLeod Bethune (1974), and Marcus Garvey (1977), among others, insisted that we see ourselves as a people, not in isolation and marginal, but in a national and global context, indeed as a world historical people. In such a national and global conception of ourselves as a key people in a key country and world community, we develop a more critical understanding of the particular historical trajectory of African people and their role in the forward flow of human history. We are able to locate ourselves within the major movements for human liberation and understand in new and meaningful ways how the African American Liberation Movement—in both its Civil Rights and Black Power dimensions—influenced not only this country but also peoples in struggle all over the world. For it not only expanded the realm of freedom in this country but also inspired and informed the movements of other oppressed and marginalized groups—other peoples of color, women, seniors, the disabled, and others—and posed a paradigm of possibility and struggle for peoples all over the world. Indeed, these groups and peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East (Western Asia) have borrowed from and built on our moral vision and moral vocabulary, sung our songs of freedom, and posed our struggle as a central and instructive model of the struggle for human liberation. In addition, there is a pressing need for an increase in comparative studies of the ethnic cultures of the United States as cultures of resistance, comparative gender studies, including comparative studies of womanist and feminist approaches to understanding and engaging the world, and comparative holocaust studies, with special attention to the Holocaust of African enslavement and the Native American Holocaust as paradigms for subsequent morally monstrous acts of genocide in both the physical and cultural sense. And certainly, there is a wide range of promising lines of intellectual pursuit in comparative studies in the ancient classical civilizations of Africa, Native America, Asia, and the Pacific Island cultures with their rich, varied, and complex understandings of the divine, natural and the social. The comparative method, then, allows for and encourages studies of movements, institutions, peoples, culPage 16 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. tures, and other social formations in a cross-cultural, transnational and historical framework, examining the interplay, interconnections, and interrelationships between societies, cultures, and peoples as well as the intersection of factors that shape them and inform relations of power and social change, especially factors of race, class, and gender (Takaki, 1993). In such a thrust, the Africana Studies scholar offers not only a critique of existing established order conceptions of the world but also a multicultural and African-centered paradigm that provides a significant contribution to alternative ways of viewing and engaging the world, thus enriching and expanding and discipline (Schiele, 2000). Within this framework, our claim to being an interdisciplinary discipline is both tested and demonstrated. For what we seek here is not simply use of more than one discipline to engage an issue or problem but also the integration of the knowledge and methodologies of the various disciplines to create a new body of knowledge, with a new language and logic that informs and undergirds the pursuit of knowledge. To be interdisciplinary as distinct from multidisciplinary, Africana Studies must create both a distinctive interrogative and integrative process. The interrogative project searches for and analyzes erasures, omissions, distortions, closures, and masking in discipline-specific projects. And the integrative project must pull together its research and conclusions into a coherent intellectual entity that not only unmasks the inefficiencies in discipline-bound projects but also offers correctives and alternatives on the intellectual as well as social policy and social action levels. So-Dayi: Active Knowledge If, as we have argued, knowledge in an African-centered understanding and context is never simply knowledge for knowledge sake but always knowledge for human sake, indeed for the sake or good of the world, then, Africana Studies finds its ultimate fulfillment in its contribution to improving the condition of the world and enhancing its prospect in the social and natural realms. This Afrocentric understanding of the role and ultimate value of knowledge is reaffirmed in the reading of both the ancient Egyptian sacred text, The Husia (Karenga, 1984) and the Yoruba sacred text, the Odu Ifa (Karenga, 1999). In The Husia, knowledge acquisition, or in the Kemetic phraseology, the constant searching after truth, justice and rightness in the world (phr m-s3 M3't) in the interest of continuously improving the world (srwd t3), making it more beautiful and beneficial than it was when we inherited it is an ethical obligation. In fact, the ancient Africans of Kemet called humans rxyt, possessors of knowledge, a designation that defines not only an essential element in understanding our humanity but also that which is equally essential in realizing our humanity in its fullest and most flourishing Page 17 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. forms. In the Odu Ifa (Karenga, 1999), we are told that humans are divinely chosen to bring good into the world and that the first criteria for a good world is full knowledge of things (àmòtán ohun gbogbo) and that the first criteria for achieving the good world is wisdom—moral, intellectual, and practical—adequate to govern the world (ogbòn tí ó pó tó eyítí a lè fise àkbso ayé). If we are to continuously dialogue with our culture and constantly bring forth the best of what it means to be African and human, this is undoubtedly an excellent point of departure. For in both Kemetic and Yoruba culture, the ultimate value of knowledge lies in its role in bringing and increasing good into the world, making it more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited so that the legacy we leave to future generations is worthy of us as an African people. The implication of this African-centered understanding for Africana Studies, of necessity, translates as social engagement. In fact, it is a challenge to reaffirm our commitment to this activist conception of the role and responsibility of the African intellectual, which requires the production and use of knowledge to improve the world and enhance its future. The task, then, is to craft a vision, initiate a discourse, and engage in social practices that not only improve and expand our lives as a community but also pose a new public philosophy and policy for this country, with implications for a global initiative. The public philosophy we develop, then, must be self-consciously ethical as distinct from the essentially procedural. For it is not simply laws we seek to be used to declare the end of racism or statistics that show economic growth in spite of obvious human poverty but rather access, opportunity, and results that emerge from reflection, discussion. and action rooted in a profound concern with achieving the good life and an ethical understanding of the conditions for maximum human freedom and human flourishing in society and the world. In the context of the best of African ethical tradition, this means our initiation of a national, indeed, global discourse and practice that are self-consciously rooted in and reflect a profound and ongoing commitment to (a) the dignity and rights of the human person, (b) the well-being and flourishing of family and community, (c) the integrity and value of the environment, and (4) the reciprocal solidarity and cooperation for mutual benefit of humanity. In this regard, our central thrust should be to create a public philosophy and practice rooted in an ethics of sharing:(a) shared status, (b) shared knowledge, (c) shared space, (d) shared wealth, (e) shared power, (f) shared interests, and (g) shared responsibility. Shared status is the fundamental principle of human and social relations and speaks to the mutual commitment to the equal standing and worthiness of each person and people as human beings and citizens who Page 18 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. are equal in dignity, rights, opportunity, and respect in both principle and practice. Shared knowledge is the principle that speaks to the human and social need for knowledge for development and human flourishing, and understanding access to knowledge or quality education in the broadest sense as a fundamental human right. The principle of shared space requires a meaningful recognition that sharing the country means sharing space with other citizens and immigrants in an equitable and ethical way, an immigration policy without race, class, religious, or any other irrational and immoral biases; urban, neighborhood, and housing policies that preserve and expand public space, and an environmental policy that respects the integrity and value of the environment. Shared wealth is the principle of equitable distribution of wealth, based on the understanding that the right to a life in dignity includes the right to a decent life, a life in which people have the basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter, health care, physical and economic security, and education. This principle also speaks to the need to care for the vulnerable and to aid the poor in their struggle to reduce and end poverty; it also upholds the right of workers to just wages, adequate benefits, safe working conditions, just treatment on the job, and in separation, unionization, and meaningful participation in decisions that affect them, the country, and the world. The principle of shared power addresses the central concern of the right of self-determination, self-governance, the need for meaningful and effective representation and meaningful participation in decisions that affect and determine our destiny and daily lives in the context of cooperative efforts toward the common good. Shared interests, as a principle, stresses the need for common ground in the midst of our diversity. It assumes that whatever our differences, a moral minimum number of common interests must undergird and inform our common efforts. It begins with our mutual commitment to the four pillars of African ethics cited above and extends to and includes the explicit commitment to the struggles for freedom, justice, equality, peace, and other good in the world. Finally, the principle of shared responsibility speaks to the need for an active commitment to collective responsibility for building the communities, society, and world we want and deserve to live in. It stresses active engagement in reconceiving and reconstructing our communities, society, and the world in a more human image and interest. And it requires constant moral assessment of policies and practices in terms of how they affect human life and human development, respect the environment, and leave a worthy legacy for future generations. As I stated in The Million Man March/Day of Absence: Mission Statement, the official policy statement for this historic event, we must always act in ways that “honor our ancestors, enrich our lives and give promise to our descendents” (Karenga, 1995b, p. 22). And this means we must, in all our work, academic and social, see and conduct ourselves as cultural representatives of the world African community who are Page 19 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. constantly concerned with bringing forth the best of what it means to be both African and human in the fullest sense. This in turn requires, as the Mission Statement concludes, that we strive to always know and introduce ourselves to history and humanity as a people who are spiritually and ethically grounded; who speak truth, do justice, respect our ancestors and elders, cherish, support and challenge our children, care for the vulnerable, relate rightfully to the environment, struggle for what is right and resist what is wrong, honor our past, willingly engage our present and self-consciously plan for and welcome our future. (p. 22) References Aldridge, D. (1997). Womanist issues in Black Studies: Toward integrating womanism in Africana Studies. In J. Conyers, Jr. (Ed.), Africana Studies (pp. 143–54). Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Asante, M. (1990). Kemet, Afrocentricity and knowledgeTrenton, NJ: African World Press. Asante, M. (1998). The Afrocentric idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bernal, M. (1987). Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic roots of classical civilization (Vol. 1). London: Free Association Press. Bethune, M. M. (1974). The legacy of Mary McLeod Bethune. Washington, DC: National Education Association. Bowser, B., es, T, & Young, G. A. (Eds.). (1995). Toward the multicultural university. Westport, CT: Praeger. Clark Hine, D., King, W., & Reed, L. (Eds.). (1996). “We specialize in the wholly impossible”: A reader in Black Women's history. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson. Conyers, J., Jr. (1997). Africana studies: A disciplinary quest for both theory and method. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Cooper, A. J. (1988). A voice from the South. New York: Oxford University Press. Diop, C. A. (1974). The African origins of civilization: Myth or reality. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill. Page 20 of 23 Handbook of Black Studies Sage Sage Reference © 2006 by Sage Publications, Inc. Di