Resurrection how? A response to Michael O. West and William G. Martin's article, "A future with a past: Resurrecting the study of Africa in the post-Africanist era"

Africa Today

Volumn 44, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 385-422

  Lowe, Christopher C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0031327283     PISSN: 00019887     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (54)

1. West and Martin use the terms "Pan-Africanist," "transnational," and "vindicationist" more or less interchangeably, seeing Pan-Africanism as an intellectual movement to be a particular extension and articulation of an older tradition of knowledge of Africa and black people intended to vindicate them against racist misrepresentations.They focus on the "transnational" character of vindicationism and Pan-Africanism in contradistinction to a claimed local bias in Africanist outlooks. I follow their usages with the exception of "transnational," since I see transnational vindicationism as only one form of transnational outlook in the intellectual history of the study of Africa. Likewise I follow their usage in referring to "pan-Africa" as a term for Africa and the African diaspora. I use the term "diaspora" for that part of pan-Africa outside the African continent. At times West and Martin seem to do so as well, but at other times this seems to conflict with their opposition to dividing the pan-African world, and they appear to treat the diaspora as a synonym for pan-Africa. Possibly this reading of them is mistaken. If it is correct, I disagree with equating pan-Africa and the diaspora on etymological, conceptual, and social historical grounds.
2. Mary L. Dudziak, "Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative," Stanford Law Review 41, no. 1 (November 1988): 61-120.
3. Elliott P, Skinner, "Afro-Americans in Search of Africa: The Scholars' Dilemma," in Transformation and Resiliency in Africa: As Seen by Afro-American Scholars, ed. Pearl T. Robinson and Elliott P. Skinner (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1983). See also George Shepperson, "The Afro-American Contribution to African Studies," Journal of American Studies 8, no. 3 (1974): 281-301, and the bibliographic sources he cites.
4. Elliott P, Skinner, "Afro-Americans in Search of Africa: The Scholars' Dilemma," in Transformation and Resiliency in Africa: As Seen by Afro-American Scholars, ed. Pearl T. Robinson and Elliott P. Skinner (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1983). See also George Shepperson, "The Afro-American Contribution to African Studies," Journal of American Studies 8, no. 3 (1974): 281-301, and the bibliographic sources he cites.
5. Sidney J. Lemelle, "The Politics of Cultural Existence: Pan-Africanism, Historical Materialism and Afrocentridty," in Sidney Lemelle and Robin D. G. Kelley, eds., Imagining Home: Class, Culture and Nationalism in the African Diaspora (New York: Verson, 1994), p. 336.
6. In this regard, it is instructive to compare the portrayal of Melville Herskovits in August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986). pp. 230-231, 245-246, 274-275, with that offered in Kenneth Robert Janken, Rayford W. Logan and the Dilemma of the African American Intellectual (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993). pp. 93-95; also compare Meier and Rudwick's method of evaluating the role of white scholars with the portrayal of black scholars' views of their dilemmas and of the role of white colleagues in academic resource politics given by Janken and by John H. Stanfield, Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985).
7. In this regard, it is instructive to compare the portrayal of Melville Herskovits in August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986). pp. 230-231, 245-246, 274-275, with that offered in Kenneth Robert Janken, Rayford W. Logan and the Dilemma of the African American Intellectual (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993). pp. 93-95; also compare Meier and Rudwick's method of evaluating the role of white scholars with the portrayal of black scholars' views of their dilemmas and of the role of white colleagues in academic resource politics given by Janken and by John H. Stanfield, Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985).
8. In this regard, it is instructive to compare the portrayal of Melville Herskovits in August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986). pp. 230-231, 245-246, 274-275, with that offered in Kenneth Robert Janken, Rayford W. Logan and the Dilemma of the African American Intellectual (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993). pp. 93-95; also compare Meier and Rudwick's method of evaluating the role of white scholars with the portrayal of black scholars' views of their dilemmas and of the role of white colleagues in academic resource politics given by Janken and by John H. Stanfield, Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985).
9. Herskovits played his role in arguing against funding the Encyclopedia of the Negro on the grounds of Du Bois s "Negrophilia" in the late 1930s. See Janken, Rayford W. Logan, pp. 93-95. Janken's account, quoting Herskovits's own correspondence, makes it clear that Herskovits either failed to see the racist implications in accepting a claim that the "neutral" or "scientific" point of view lay between "Negrophilia" and "Negrophobia," or that he was willing to play to the racism and "liberal" segregationism of foundation fundcrs in fighting out his academic political battles, or both.
10. Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, 1st ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941); 2d ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958).
11. Joseph Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990): for other examples, see Sylvia M. Jacobs, "Pan-African Consciousness Among Afro-Americans," and Robert A. Harris, "African Retentions in American Vocal and Choral Music," both in Talmadge Anderson, ed., Black Studies Theory, Method and Cultural Perspectives (Pullman: University of Washington Press, 1990), pp. 199-208.
12. Joseph Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990): for other examples, see Sylvia M. Jacobs, "Pan-African Consciousness Among Afro-Americans," and Robert A. Harris, "African Retentions in American Vocal and Choral Music," both in Talmadge Anderson, ed., Black Studies Theory, Method and Cultural Perspectives (Pullman: University of Washington Press, 1990), pp. 199-208.
13. Joseph Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990): for other examples, see Sylvia M. Jacobs, "Pan-African Consciousness Among Afro-Americans," and Robert A. Harris, "African Retentions in American Vocal and Choral Music," both in Talmadge Anderson, ed., Black Studies Theory, Method and Cultural Perspectives (Pullman: University of Washington Press, 1990), pp. 199-208.
14. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939): E. Franklin Frazier, On Race Relations: Selected Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Meier and Rudwick, Black History, pp. 230-231, 245-246, 274-275.
15. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939): E. Franklin Frazier, On Race Relations: Selected Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Meier and Rudwick, Black History, pp. 230-231, 245-246, 274-275.
16. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939): E. Franklin Frazier, On Race Relations: Selected Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Meier and Rudwick, Black History, pp. 230-231, 245-246, 274-275.
17. Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of Afro-American Culture, (Boston: Beacon, 1990).
18. See Philip D. Curtin, "Ghettoizing African History," Chronicle of Higher Education (3 March 1995): A44. This article caused wide controversy. Michael West has played an important role in encouraging debate and criticism of Curtin's arguments, and in arranging both a public debate in the 1995 annual meeting of the African Studies Association, and republication of a number of documents in the debate in Issue: A Journal of Opinion.
19. Philip D. Curtin, ed., Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967).
20. Philip Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
21. This is one point on which they differ from Elliott Skinner, who considers the question of scholarly standards more serious and complex than they do. Skinner criticizes the quality of amateur investigations, while expressing sympathy for the motives and constraints involved, whereas West and Martin apparently see benign democracy at work. See Skinner, "Afro-Americans in Search of Africa," Skinner's position is much closer to that of West and Martin's doyen Carter G. Woodson, who sought to make "science" his sword against racial myths and also his shield against charges of self-interest, proven in part by a willingness to criticize amateurs. See Meier and Rudwick, Black History, pp. 1-69. One could argue that this represented a form of class-and status-bound conservatism, but that would force West and Martin to deal with those aspects of the tradition they wish to resurrect.
22. This is one point on which they differ from Elliott Skinner, who considers the question of scholarly standards more serious and complex than they do. Skinner criticizes the quality of amateur investigations, while expressing sympathy for the motives and constraints involved, whereas West and Martin apparently see benign democracy at work. See Skinner, "Afro-Americans in Search of Africa," Skinner's position is much closer to that of West and Martin's doyen Carter G. Woodson, who sought to make "science" his sword against racial myths and also his shield against charges of self-interest, proven in part by a willingness to criticize amateurs. See Meier and Rudwick, Black History, pp. 1-69. One could argue that this represented a form of class-and status-bound conservatism, but that would force West and Martin to deal with those aspects of the tradition they wish to resurrect.
23. Probably West and Martin are thinking of the predominance of the perspective expressed in Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma, but as Meier and Rudwick argue, the influence of that work derived from its status as a synthesis of several decades of work by both black and white scholars; these include black scholars writing about the United States, whom West and Martin identify with transnational vindicationism with respect to Africa, and white scholars who helped found African Studies in its postwar institutional forms. See Gunnar Myrdal (with the assistance of Richard Sterner and Arnold Rose), An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944).
24. Probably West and Martin are thinking of the predominance of the perspective expressed in Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma, but as Meier and Rudwick argue, the influence of that work derived from its status as a synthesis of several decades of work by both black and white scholars; these include black scholars writing about the United States, whom West and Martin identify with transnational vindicationism with respect to Africa, and white scholars who helped found African Studies in its postwar institutional forms. See Gunnar Myrdal (with the assistance of Richard Sterner and Arnold Rose), An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944).
25. Meier and Rudwick, Black History, p. 17.
26. Tim Couzens, "'Moralizing Leisure Time': The Transatlantic Connection and Black Johannesburg 1918-1936," in Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone, eds., Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class-Formation, Culture and Consciousness, 1870-1930 (New York: Longman, 1982), pp. 314-337, esp. pp. 314-320; Kenneth King, Pan-Africanism and Education: A Study of Race Philanthropy and Education in the Southern States of America and East Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); R. Hunt Davis, "Charles T. Loram and the American Model for Education in South Africa," in Peter Kallaway, ed., Apartheid and Education: The Education of Black South Africans (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1948), pp. 108-126. Through his U.S. foundation connections, Loram influenced educational initiatives across southern Africa. See Davis, "C.T. Loram," pp. 117-119.
27. Tim Couzens, "'Moralizing Leisure Time': The Transatlantic Connection and Black Johannesburg 1918-1936," in Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone, eds., Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class-Formation, Culture and Consciousness, 1870-1930 (New York: Longman, 1982), pp. 314-337, esp. pp. 314-320; Kenneth King, Pan-Africanism and Education: A Study of Race Philanthropy and Education in the Southern States of America and East Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); R. Hunt Davis, "Charles T. Loram and the American Model for Education in South Africa," in Peter Kallaway, ed., Apartheid and Education: The Education of Black South Africans (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1948), pp. 108-126. Through his U.S. foundation connections, Loram influenced educational initiatives across southern Africa. See Davis, "C.T. Loram," pp. 117-119.
28. Tim Couzens, "'Moralizing Leisure Time': The Transatlantic Connection and Black Johannesburg 1918-1936," in Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone, eds., Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class-Formation, Culture and Consciousness, 1870-1930 (New York: Longman, 1982), pp. 314-337, esp. pp. 314-320; Kenneth King, Pan-Africanism and Education: A Study of Race Philanthropy and Education in the Southern States of America and East Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); R. Hunt Davis, "Charles T. Loram and the American Model for Education in South Africa," in Peter Kallaway, ed., Apartheid and Education: The Education of Black South Africans (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1948), pp. 108-126. Through his U.S. foundation connections, Loram influenced educational initiatives across southern Africa. See Davis, "C.T. Loram," pp. 117-119.
29. Tim Couzens, "'Moralizing Leisure Time': The Transatlantic Connection and Black Johannesburg 1918-1936," in Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone, eds., Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class-Formation, Culture and Consciousness, 1870-1930 (New York: Longman, 1982), pp. 314-337, esp. pp. 314-320; Kenneth King, Pan-Africanism and Education: A Study of Race Philanthropy and Education in the Southern States of America and East Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); R. Hunt Davis, "Charles T. Loram and the American Model for Education in South Africa," in Peter Kallaway, ed., Apartheid and Education: The Education of Black South Africans (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1948), pp. 108-126. Through his U.S. foundation connections, Loram influenced educational initiatives across southern Africa. See Davis, "C.T. Loram," pp. 117-119.
30. Davis, "C.T. Loram"; Edwin W. Smith, The Life and Times of Daniel Lindley (1801-80): Missionary to the Zulus, Pastor to the Voortrekkers, Ubebe Omhlope (New York: Library Publishers, 1952), p. ix; Meier and Rudwick, Black History, p. 17; Richard Glotzer, "The Career of Mabel Carney: The Study of Race and Rural Development in the United States and South Africa," International Journal of African Historical Studies 29, no. 2 (1996): 309-336.
31. Davis, "C.T. Loram"; Edwin W. Smith, The Life and Times of Daniel Lindley (1801-80): Missionary to the Zulus, Pastor to the Voortrekkers, Ubebe Omhlope (New York: Library Publishers, 1952), p. ix; Meier and Rudwick, Black History, p. 17; Richard Glotzer, "The Career of Mabel Carney: The Study of Race and Rural Development in the United States and South Africa," International Journal of African Historical Studies 29, no. 2 (1996): 309-336.
32. Davis, "C.T. Loram"; Edwin W. Smith, The Life and Times of Daniel Lindley (1801-80): Missionary to the Zulus, Pastor to the Voortrekkers, Ubebe Omhlope (New York: Library Publishers, 1952), p. ix; Meier and Rudwick, Black History, p. 17; Richard Glotzer, "The Career of Mabel Carney: The Study of Race and Rural Development in the United States and South Africa," International Journal of African Historical Studies 29, no. 2 (1996): 309-336.
33. Davis, "C.T. Loram"; Edwin W. Smith, The Life and Times of Daniel Lindley (1801-80): Missionary to the Zulus, Pastor to the Voortrekkers, Ubebe Omhlope (New York: Library Publishers, 1952), p. ix; Meier and Rudwick, Black History, p. 17; Richard Glotzer, "The Career of Mabel Carney: The Study of Race and Rural Development in the United States and South Africa," International Journal of African Historical Studies 29, no. 2 (1996): 309-336.
34. Stanfield, Philanthropy and Jim Crow, pp. 40-42.
35. Meier and Rudwick, Black History, pp. 12-55.
36. Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995); Adolph Reed, Jr., "The New Victorians," The Progressive 58, no. 2 (February 1994): 20.
37. Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995); Adolph Reed, Jr., "The New Victorians," The Progressive 58, no. 2 (February 1994): 20.
38. Janken, Rayford W. Logan, pp. 89-97; Jacqueline Goggin, Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), pp. 129-139; Meier and Rudwick, Black History, pp. 1-69, 114. Wilson J. Moses argues that the uplift dimensions of what he calls "classical Black Nationalism" between 1850 and 1925 (which corresponds to early phases of West and Martin's vindicationism) were closely tied to leanings toward personally authoritarian styles among many black political and intellectual leaders. See Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1978).
39. Janken, Rayford W. Logan, pp. 89-97; Jacqueline Goggin, Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), pp. 129-139; Meier and Rudwick, Black History, pp. 1-69, 114. Wilson J. Moses argues that the uplift dimensions of what he calls "classical Black Nationalism" between 1850 and 1925 (which corresponds to early phases of West and Martin's vindicationism) were closely tied to leanings toward personally authoritarian styles among many black political and intellectual leaders. See Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1978).
40. Janken, Rayford W. Logan, pp. 89-97; Jacqueline Goggin, Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), pp. 129-139; Meier and Rudwick, Black History, pp. 1-69, 114. Wilson J. Moses argues that the uplift dimensions of what he calls "classical Black Nationalism" between 1850 and 1925 (which corresponds to early phases of West and Martin's vindicationism) were closely tied to leanings toward personally authoritarian styles among many black political and intellectual leaders. See Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1978).
41. Janken, Rayford W. Logan, pp. 89-97; Jacqueline Goggin, Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), pp. 129-139; Meier and Rudwick, Black History, pp. 1-69, 114. Wilson J. Moses argues that the uplift dimensions of what he calls "classical Black Nationalism" between 1850 and 1925 (which corresponds to early phases of West and Martin's vindicationism) were closely tied to leanings toward personally authoritarian styles among many black political and intellectual leaders. See Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1978).
42. Although certain partisans of classic liberal ethnic pluralism, such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, seem intellectually incapable for some reason of extending their ideas beyond ethnic identities formed out of European ancestries to include identities formed in relation to African, Asian, and Latin American ancestries, the Clinton foreign policy apparatus has a clearer view. In 1994, at a conference of the American Studies Association of Southern Africa, which was largely funded by the United States Information Service (USIS), the keynote speaker was Ronald Takaki, and most of the books promoted by USIS to convey understanding of the United States to southern Africans had multiculturalist themes.
43. Skinner, "Afro-Americans in Search of Africa"; Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism.
44. W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Talented Tenth," in W. E. B. Du Bois: Writings, ed. Nathan Huggins (New York: Library of America, 1986), pp. 842-861.
45. This essay was originally published in Du Bois, The Negro Problem (1903). It begins: The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Du Bois later moved away from such frankly elitist and social hygienist views.
46. Carter G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1922). Comparison to the 1966 eleventh edition (prepared long after Woodson's death by one of his main students, Charles H. Wesley) shows that while new material was added over the years, little existing material was changed, so that the portrayal of Africa and its scholarly base became increasingly dated and incomplete, and the inconsistencies became even more marked.
47. Skinner, "Afro-Americans in Search of Africa," is an exception to this generalization.
48. Kathy J. Ogren, "'What Is Africa to Me?': African Strategies in the Harlem Renaissance," in Lemelle and Kelley, Imagining Home, p. 25.
49. Cf. Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 180: Resistance to a self-isolating black nationalism within England or France or the United States is . . . theoretically consistent with Pan-Africanism as an international project. Because the value of identities is thus relative, we must argue for and against them case by case. . . . If there is, as I have suggested, hope, too, for the Pan-Africanism of an African diaspora once it, too, is released from bondage to racial ideologies . . . it is crucial that we recognize the independence, once "Negro" nationalism is gone, of the Pan-Africanism of the diaspora and the Pan-Africanism of the continent. It is, I believe, in the exploration of these issues, these possibilities, that the future of an intellectually reinvigorated Pan-Africanism lies.
50. Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1982).
51. See, e.g., Ibrahim K. Sundiata, "Africanity, Identity and Culture," Issue: A Journal of Opinion 24, no. 2 (1996): 13-17. This volume of Issue focuses thematically on "African [Diaspora] Studies," and the pieces in it illustrate both the complexity and nuance of present-day debates. The fact that it is published in an official publication of the African Studies Association is an example of evidence of changing institutional practice in African Studies.
52. Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Unintended Consequences of Cold War Area Studies," in The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years, by Noam Chomsky, Ira Katznelson, R. C. Lewontin, David Montgomery, Laura Nader, Richard Ohmann, Ray Siever, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Howard Zinn (New York: New Press, 1997), pp. 195-231, esp. pp. 219-220, 226-227.
53. Michael West and William G. Martin, "A Future with a Past: Resurrecting the Study of Africa in the Post-Africanist Era," Africa Today 44, no. 3 (Jul.-Sept. 1997): 313.
54. See Jacob Heilbrunn, "The News from Everywhere," Lingua Franca 6, no. 6 (1996): 48-56.