The Discipline of Africology at the Crossroads: Toward An Eshuean Response to Intellectual Dilemma

by Molefi Kete Asante
The Black Scholar, Vol. 35, No. 2, “Brown, Black & Beyond: African American Studies in the 21st Century” (Summer 2005), pp. 37-49

Abstract

Since the creation of the departments of African American Studies in the late 1960’s and the subsequent emergence of Afrocentricity as a theoretical and critical instrument of analysis in the 1980’s, the future of the intellectual activity surrounding the full examination of African ideas and experiences has come under increasing scrutiny (Asante, 1988; 1990; 1999). It is my intention to lay out what I believe to be some of the crucial issues confronting the academic and educaitonal enterprise variously called Black Studies, African American Studies, Africana Studies, and Africology. As an indication of the unsettled nature of the discipline, the issue of how we name ourselves remains unsettled. I have chosen to refer to the area of study as Africology, following the lead of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Others will choose other names, and the only way that this issue will be settled is by disciplinary practice.

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  • Asante is “one of America’s top 100 leading thinkers.

    —Utne Reader

  • Asante, a sixth-generation American descended from enslaved Africans, has been a guiding light in African American studies.

    —Booklist

  • Molefi Kete Asante is a seminal thinker.

    —Cornel West, Princeton University