Theoretical Framework
2.3 Afrocentricism versus Eurocentrism
2.3.1 Cheikh Anta Diop (1923–1986)
2.3.2.1 Asante’s Afrocentric idea
Asante (2009b:5-9) distinguishes the Afrocentric idea, “as a cultural configuration”, by five characteristics:
“An intense interest in psychological location as determined by symbols, motifs, rituals, and signs …
A commitment to finding the subject-place of Africans in any social, political, economic, or religious phenomenon with implications for questions of sex, gender, and class.
The Afrocentrist is committed to the idea that Africans are agents in the world and therefore should not be viewed as spectators. … Afrocentrists take a strong view that racial, sexual, gender, and class discrimination and exploitation must be condemned outright and
forthrightly. All Afrocentric analysis is a critique on domination. Furthermore, all Afrocentric analysis is a critique on hierarchy and patriarchy because the analysis stems from all forms of oppression.
A defense of African cultural element as historically valid in the context of art, music, and literature …
As King Lobengula puzzled over the Scottish missionaries [sic] interest in bringing their god to the Ndebele, he said to Moffat, "we have our own god, Nkulunkulu, and you have yours.
Why do you want us to have yours?"
A celebration of ‘centeredness’ and agency and a commitment to lexical refinement that eliminates pejoratives about Africans or other people …
… Africa must be convinced to do three things: (1) return to a strong sense of cultural
identity, (2) create international networks of Africans on the continent and trans-continentally to cooperate on a global level, and (3) place emphasis on teaching children to leap-frog old technologies and finding ways to exploit the new information possibilities with vigor. In this way we will celebrate centeredness and agency and not dismiss our own ethnicities, histories, and lessons to embrace others. All Africans, wherever in the world, have made valuable contributions to their countries, whether in the West or in Africa, and must be viewed and
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must view themselves as accountable, responsible agents in the world, not to be acted upon, but to act. Thus, it means that we must build institutions everywhere in our image and in our interests. One thing that happens to a people who lose their god, is that they lose their institutions, their reasons for being, and their language, and you cannot find the proper strength to build institutions until you rediscover your cultural center. Of course, we have many infusions into the African cultural stream and those infusions must be recognized, given voice, and seen as a part of creating a new African reality.
A powerful imperative from historical sources to revise the collective text of African people.
Whether we are on this side or the other side of the Atlantic we are an African people. There is no real reason to posit some hypothetical Black Atlantic. The Atlantic is neither black nor white, it is a deep blue. It is an ocean, and an ocean is neither a barrier to human interaction nor is it necessarily a consolidator of the human experience. We remain African though we become Jamaicans, African British, Haitians, African Americans or African Costa Ricans.”
The points above stress that Africans have a strong desire to make a break from the currently dominating European culture which they feel is being imposed on them. They wish to remove a European outlook from the centre of African life. Africans prefer to identify with a strong sense of African cultural identity, which includes literature. Africans want to see themselves as central in the world rather than as “European spectators”.
Asante’s Afrocentric points above offer a framework as they tie in with the Afrocentric approach currently being adopted by UKZN and which in turn will impact on and be a guiding factor in whether African centres such as CALS are justified as being separate entities on an African continent or whether they should be an integral part of an academic library.
The latter point also ties in with the question of whether or not an African-focused collection in Africa should include diaspora studies and works on the black experience worldwide.
Asante believes in consolidating all African works.
Asante (2009b: paragraph 5) explains above that “societies are held together or disintegrated on the basis of symbols”. He emphasises the importance of Africans as agents in the world who should not be marginalised. He stresses the validity of African literature, questions the need for the imposition of foreign works and advocates a “return to a strong sense of cultural identity with international networks”. Africans need to celebrate their own ethnicities.
33 2.3.2.2 The Afrocentric method
Asante (2009a: paragraph 3-4) outlines five general characteristics of the Afrocentric method for examining phenomena which stress the importance of location:
“The Afrocentric method considers that no phenomena can be apprehended adequately without locating it [sic] first. A phenom must be studied and analyzed in relationship to psychological time and space. It must always be located. This is the only way to investigate the complex interrelationships of science and art, design and execution, creation and maintenance, generation and tradition, and other areas bypassed by theory.
The Afrocentric method considers phenomena to be diverse, dynamic, and in motion and therefore it is necessary for a person to accurately note and record the location of phenomena even in the midst of fluctuations. This means that the investigator must know where he or she is standing in the process.
The Afrocentric method is a form of cultural criticism that examines etymological uses of words and terms in order to know the source of an author’s location. This allows us to intersect ideas with actions and actions with ideas on the basis of what is pejorative and ineffective and what is creative and transformative at the political and economic levels.
The Afrocentric method seeks to uncover the masks behind the rhetoric of power, privilege, and position in order to establish how principal myths create place. The method enthrones critical reflection that reveals the perception of monolithic power as nothing but the projection of a cadre of adventurers.
The Afrocentric method locates the imaginative structure of a system of economics, bureau of politics, policy of government, expression of cultural form in the attitude, direction, and language of the phenom, be it text, institution, personality, interaction, or event.”
Several of the points above are pertinent to this study. For example,“no phenomena can be apprehended adequately without locating it first” [and] “A phenom must be studied and analyzed in relationship to psychological time and space”. Firstly, the location in this study has been identified as an African university on the African continent which gives the
“investigator” a stance from which to “stand in the process” of this study, and secondly, the idea of the separation between Afrocentric and Eurocentric approaches is seen as a product of this particular era, and the question whether the separation is still necessary relates to the psychological time aspect.
Furthermore, the point “This allows us to intersect ideas with actions and actions with ideas on the basis of what is pejorative and ineffective and what is creative and transformative at the political and economic levels”: in the last point “policy” and “institution” tie in with the
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transformative politics in South Africa since 1994 which have impacted on the transformation of UKZN’s institutional policies as it views the previous Eurocentric approach as ineffective and obsolete in the new South Africa. UKZN’s transformation policy attempts to replace previous “generations and traditions” and create a new university based on the idea of being the “Premier University of African Scholarship” in South Africa.