|
|
 Re: المـــــركـــــزيـة الأفــــريــقــــــيـة (Re: Tanash)
|
Without further adieu, let us recover the work of Diop and
present a fair summary of his systematic scholarship. And rather than treat it as provocation, let's seek what might be learned, even by white folks who seek to know themselves.
For the late African scholar, Cheikh Anta Diop, the case for an Afrocentric view of the humanities begins 120,000 years ago with the appearance of Omo I, the oldest known homo sapiens, whose fossilized remains have been found in the great lakes region of East Africa. For the subsequent 100,000 years, argues Diop, all humans were black Africans, the white race itself emerging from black stock after long years of relative isolation in the Basque region of Spain. Predating the historical emergence of white people we find already developed explorations of the heavens and earth, evidenced by 30,000-year-old mines and equally ancient paths of navigation and migration. Thus, taking the long view, five-sixths of human history is African history, and afrocentricity is the objective basis upon which any anthropology must build.
Furthermore, as Diop points out, we have it from Plato's testimony that Egypt is the mother civilization, already 10,000 years old at the writing of the Laws, and the world's best model of how a culture might integrate the fine arts into its seasonal rituals. "You Greeks are but children," is what the Egyptians are reported to have said to Solon as they instructed him in ancient Greek history and the legend of Atlantis. If the Greeks reshaped the style of the columned temple, they did not invent architecture, mathematics, myth, or civilization, and it is still a notable fact that the self-evident cradle of Western culture rubs geographical noses with the Nile Delta, across a diminutive Mediterranean basin, begging us to wonder how Egypt could not be considered in intimate historical connection with its prized students from the North.
Diop does not argue that Greek culture is simply a derivative of Egypt. In fact, the emergence of Greek civilization highlights features of what Diop calls northern cradle culture, distinguishable in broad outline from the Egyptian's southern cradle. For Diop, the material conditions of northern life were sufficiently different from southern life, and the isolation of northern people was also sufficient to produce not only a new race, but a new form of culture. Hence, Diop's macro-cultural distinction between northern and southern cradles makes of the Greeks an interesting case of contrasts. As the Greeks championed many of their own northern traits, they nevertheless found in Egypt a superior system of knowledge and education which they appropriated to their own purposes.
Following Diop's macro-anthropology, we note that southern culture is a relatively stable agricultural system in which fertility and womanhood have values which translate into matrilineal clanic traditions. As for northern culture, we observe a relatively nomadic tradition where mobility and fatherhood translate into patrilineal relations of inheritance. The static life and relative fertility of the southern village make possible an inclusive ethic of community, whereas the rigors of nomadic production encourage exclusion and infanticide. In the southern cradle, the dead are buried nearby as eternal companions. In the northern cradle, the dead are burned and left behind. Abraham, the nomad, meets a new god in the South, adopts circumcision, and rejects the sacrifice of Isaac. This last example is not Diop's, although he does suggest that the name Abraham can be fruitfully studied using Egyptian linguistic tools.
Although Diop implores students not to fall into the trap of monumental history, it is not difficult to detect in Diop a romantic chauvinism characteristic of the afrocentric movement. How, for instance, can Egypt hold claim to an enviable tolerance and cosmopolitan nature, when white red-######### are killed on sight, or when there is a detectable black elitism in the Egyptian's self image? In defense of Diop, I can only point out that Diop did not create the culture wars of the world and that his linings of chauvinism are quite mild by comparison to the thrust of entrenched Eurocentrisms these past few centuries. It would be a shame, therefore, if these few passages were used to discredit an admirable body of scientific investigation.
يتبــــــــــع ...
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
Tanash
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست