The Philosophy of Afrocentricity

Abstract

Afrocentricity refers to the intellectual work of a group of African philosophers, historians, and sociologists during the late twentieth century with varying degrees of attachment to the central idea that the key crisis in the African world is the profoundly disturbing decentering of African people from a subject position within their own narrative. In Afrocentricity, the opening consciousness is assumed to be an awareness of the off-centeredness of Africans as a result of Arab and European and military, cultural, and social intrusions that have dislocated African people. In this chapter, Asante argues that this consciousness is characterized by an appreciation of “the Afrocentric posture,” or a sense of “Afrocentric narratology” in the face of loss-ness and lost-ness leading to disorientation. Some Afrocentrists have regarded Western philosophies as contrary and often antagonistic to the proper understanding of African narratives; they are mainly distant and simply concerned with non-African realities.