Contemporary Critical Thought in Africology and Africana Studies

Edited by Molefi Kete Asante and Clyde Ledbetter Jr. - Contributions by Nilgun Anadolu-Okur; Molefi Kete Asante; Daryl B. Harris; Clyde Ledbetter Jr. and Michael Tillotson

Although traditional academic circles rarely celebrate the work of African or African American thinkers because performers and political figures were more acceptable to narrating histories, this work projects the ideas of several writers with the confidence that Africology, the Afrocentric study of African phenomena, represents an oasis of innovation in progressive venues. The book brings together some of the most discussed theorists and intellectuals in the field of Africology (Africana Studies) for the purpose of sparking further debate, critical interpretations and extensions, and to reform and reformulate the way we approach our critical thought. The contributors' Afrocentric approach offers new interpretations and analysis, and challenges the predominant frameworks in diverse areas such as philosophy, social justice, literature, and history.

Lexington Books

Pages: 230 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4985-3070-5 • Hardback • December 2015 • $109.00 • (£84.00)

978-1-4985-3072-9 • Paperback • March 2017 • $51.99 • (£40.00)

978-1-4985-3071-2 • eBook • December 2015 • $49.00 • (£38.00)

Series: Critical Africana Studies

Subjects: Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, Social Science / Black Studies (Global), Social Science / Social Theory

Contemporary Critical Thought in Africology and Africana Studies

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Although traditional academic circles rarely celebrate the work of African or African American thinkers because performers and political figures were more acceptable to narrating histories, this work projects the ideas of several writers with the confidence that Africology, the Afrocentric study of African phenomena, represents an oasis of innovation in progressive venues. The book brings together some of the most discussed theorists and intellectuals in the field of Africology (Africana Studies) for the purpose of sparking further debate, critical interpretations and extensions, and to reform and reformulate the way we approach our critical thought. The contributors' Afrocentric approach offers new interpretations and analysis, and challenges the predominant frameworks in diverse areas such as philosophy, social justice, literature, and history.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 230 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4985-3070-5 • Hardback • December 2015 • $109.00 • (£84.00)

978-1-4985-3072-9 • Paperback • March 2017 • $51.99 • (£40.00)

978-1-4985-3071-2 • eBook • December 2015 • $49.00 • (£38.00)

Series: Critical Africana Studies

Subjects: Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, Social Science / Black Studies (Global), Social Science / Social Theory

Author

Molefi Kete Asante is current chair and creator of the first doctoral program in African American studies at Temple University and co-editor of the Journal of Black Studies.

Clyde Ledbetter Jr. is instructor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Science at Cheyney University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Contemporary Critical Contours: Africology and Africana Studies, Molefi Kete Asante and Clyde E. Ledbetter, Jr.
Chapter 1: Decolonizing the Universities in Africa: An Approach to Transformation, Molefi Kete Asante
Chapter 2: Postmodernist Diversions In African American Thought, Daryl B. Harris
Chapter 3: Afrocentricity: A Critical Bibliography, Molefi Kete Asante
Chapter 4: Boundless James Baldwin: Assessing the Creative Freedom of a Cultural Critic, Aaron X. Smith
Chapter 5: The Role of an Afrocentric Ideology in Reducing Obstacles to Integration, Molefi Kete Asante
Chapter 6: Writing History and Reading Texts: An Afrocentric Narrative of Culture, Nilgun Anadolu Okur
Chapter 7: Retrospective Analysis: The Movement Against African Centered Thought, Michael T. Tillotson
Chapter 8: Lewis Gordon’s Existential Cartography, Molefi Kete Asante
Chapter 9: Human Rights Studies as a Sub-Field of Africology, Clyde E. Ledbetter, Jr.
Chapter 10: Engaging Kwame Nkrumah’s Consciencism: An Afrocentric Close Reading, Molefi Kete Asante
Chapter 11: African and African Diaspora Culture in the World, Molefi Kete Asante
Chapter 12: Interrogating the Legacy of African Contributions, Molefi Kete Asante
Chapter 13: The Universal Periodic Review and Malcolm X’s Human Rights Strategy, Clyde E. Ledbetter, Jr.

Reviews

This anthology of Africological texts is both an outcry against senseless attempts to ignore and dismiss the intellectual production of Afrocentric critical thinkers and an important academic contribution to strengthening the identity of the discipline. Anchored to the best praxis of Temple School critical thinking, a stronghold of Africology, the contributors to this volume present their critical studies on history, culture, language, and politics from an Afrocentric perspective. In fact, they are working towards the creation of a liberating discourse that operates simultaneously in the spheres of the personal, the community, nature, and the world. This work is a fundamental piece of Africological scholarship for graduate and undergraduate students and researchers seeking to pursue their intellectual quest within the discipline.
— Ana Monteiro-Ferreira, Eastern Michigan University

Molefi K. Asante and Clyde Ledbetter have composed an edited volume that utilizes contemporary critical thought to examine how Africology, as a theory, transforms the study of Blacks in Africa and the Diaspora. A must read, this volume provides different critical perspectives that offer new critiques of colonialism, decolonization, post modernist Blackness, existential cartography, human rights, and other conditions still impacting Africa. Connecting Africology with Afrocentricity, while rewriting criticism, history, language, culture, and politics, this body of scholars establish new methods and theories useful in the liberation struggle of Afro-descended peoples.
— Valerie Grim, Indiana University