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 Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة (Re: Tanash)
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To avoid what Diop calls useless ethno-philosophy, Diop offers two rules of thumb for the Afrocentric excavator-that one's findings be situated critically and diachronically. The critical anthropologist does not investigate cultural products without examination of that culture's class stratifications. The diachronic sanction implores us to see any slice of culture in time as connected to a moving dialectic of development situated in changing material contexts. What Diop prizes most about Egyptian culture is that at one time its myths and its sciences seem to be intensively reciprocal. What saddens Diop most about Plato is that the Greek philosopher failed to understand the deep mathematical logic which undergirded the living priests of the Timaeus. Numerology may be superstitious hand-me-down, or it may be deeply instructive about principles of physics, geometry, or logic. What we have in Plato is evidence of the decline of Egypt's ability to transmit its knowledge with clarity and precision. And for this, Diop lays chief blame at the feet of the Egyptian education system, more bent upon limiting knowledge for elite purposes than sharing knowledge for popular empowerment. Thus, we see how a critical ethic of science and education is embedded within Diop's Afrocentric investigations.
What else do we learn from Diop's Afrocentricity? In addition to the universal unity that Afrocentricity promises to bring to human anthropology, there is a more specific value for those who take Africa as itself a worthy field of investigation. For just as no Western (Eurocentric) scholar would pretend to understand his domain apart from Greece, Diop says we cannot begin to understand Africa if we do not see the unifying influence that Egypt exerts to this day. Who, for instance, would be counted an expert linguist in Europe if he did not know root words from Greece? Then who, asks Diop, may be counted an expert linguist in Africa unless he has knowledge of the foundations of ancient Egyptian? Who would argue that the dead languages of Europe do not live today? Likewise, asserts Diop, in list after list, the dead language of Egypt lives in the myriad tongues of present-day Africa.
Diop's wide-ranging contributions also touch the foundations of political economy. Like the best of his age, Diop is explicitly engaged with the tradition of Marxist dialogue, but his acquaintance with Egypt allows him to raise important historical questions not foreseen by Marxism's Eurocentric perspective. Diop's conclusions are sobering for the many similarities he finds between imperialisms of Egypt and the United States, especially given the enormous stability inherent in these structures. As Diop investigates social revolutions extending into ancient realms, he suggests that the Egyptian empire is not to be dismissed to the realm of an Asian Mode of Production (AMP) unless we understand that the AMP state today has much more relevance to us than does the romantic illusion of the Greek city-state. Afrocentric analysis disabuses us of our heritage as a city on the hill, whether modeled upon Athens or Boston, and instead suggests an unruptured heritage tending toward empire. Alexander the Great crowned Greek achievement by overcoming the limits of the city-state as he conquered his aspiration to become Pharaoh of the civilized world. His city, Alexandria was not an extension of the thesis of the city state, but its antithesis.
Thus Diop gives us a lot to think about, even if we are white. I don't think it really stuck with me that I, too, have black heritage, until I read Diop. No one else hits home with as much force on the point that all humans have African heritage in the strict genetic sense. And there are few scholars as passionate about the cultural consequences of these black origins of humanity and its civilizations. Diop's macro-anthropology may be Copernican in the sense that it precedes exhaustive corroboration, but it is surely a Copernican revolution of our cultural assumptions and likely to be taken as such a provocation for some time to come.
Given the time limits of today's presentation, let me say in closing that I enjoy deploying the provocation of Afrocentricity in the classroom. Nevertheless, I have learned that if I am going to pierce the leathered armor of my many white students, it is necessary to emphasize that Diop's work awaits the kind of verification that will make it authoritative. This is a relief to students who desperately need to believe that their heritage is lily white, but who need time to examine those desperate needs and reconstruct them through patient investigations of their own. I worry only that articles such as those by Professor Lefkowitz will leave these students with the impression that Afrocentricity is a mere provocation for dismissal.
إنتهــــــــــت ورقة "جريج موزس – Greg Moses "
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| العنوان |
الكاتب |
Date |
 المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Tanash | 05-30-04, 08:15 PM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Tanash | 05-31-04, 07:45 PM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Muhib | 05-31-04, 07:54 PM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Tanash | 06-01-04, 08:56 AM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Tanash | 06-01-04, 09:10 AM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Omer54 | 06-01-04, 09:09 AM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | mustadam | 06-01-04, 09:20 AM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | mansur ali | 06-01-04, 01:44 PM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | mansur ali | 06-01-04, 01:44 PM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | abuarafa | 06-01-04, 04:50 PM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Tanash | 06-02-04, 09:16 AM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Tanash | 06-02-04, 09:22 AM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Tanash | 06-03-04, 09:32 AM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Tanash | 06-06-04, 11:04 AM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Tanash | 06-09-04, 10:30 AM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | mansur ali | 06-09-04, 02:19 PM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Bashasha | 06-09-04, 04:09 PM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Tanash | 06-15-04, 10:44 AM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Tanash | 06-15-04, 11:58 AM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Bashasha | 07-05-04, 07:11 PM |
| Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة | Abdel Aati | 07-06-04, 03:25 AM |
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Tanash
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست