Contemporary Critical Thought in Africology and Africana Studies

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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.

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

Author Bio

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.