New Directions in Africana Studies/Africalogy: Bridging the Gap Between Liberal Arts and Utilitarianism

Year 2009, Issue: 29, 5 - 14, 01.04.2009

Clyde C. Robertson Ahati N.n. Toure

Abstract

Africana Studies/Africalogy thrust itself in the late 1960s and early 1970s upon European university campuses in the United States as a direct challenge to European intellectual and cultural hegemony. Its central goal was to transform the intellectual landscape in the European academy by forcing the construction of knowledge in terms that, according to Karenga, were shaped in the human, cultural, and intellectual image and interests of African people. Africans advanced this agenda in light of the fact they were for the first time being admitted to these institutions in substantial numbers “Vital Signs” 73-79 . A key demand made by African students entering into European universities during this time was for an education relevant to their strategic need to discover their place in the world and to fashion a project of study and practice that could be devised to help them address and solve the challenge of ending their subordination in European society and related multidimensional problems they faced as a colonized people Karenga, Introduction 3-31; Karenga, “Black Studies”; Asante, “Afrocentricity”; Asante, “Discourse”; Van Horne; Okafor; Mazama; Baker; Nelson .

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