莫勒菲·凯泰·阿桑特

作品

• 1980非洲中心论：社会变革理论

  为这一取向命名的纲领性著作：非洲裔人民应当从非洲的历史和价值出发确定方向，而不是从被当作普遍的欧洲视角出发；集体意识应当引导社会变革。

• 1987非洲中心观念

  关于传播与文化研究中非洲中心方法的理论著作：每一种解释都有其位置；欧洲中心的学术把自己特殊的位置说成是普遍的，而非洲中心的分析则把非洲人民作为行动者置于中心。

立场

Asante is on the map as the founder of Afrocentricity, one of the main – and most contested – paradigms of Africana studies. In Afrocentricity (1980) and The Afrocentric Idea (1987) he argued that interpretation always has a location: Eurocentric scholarship presents the particular experience and standpoint of Europe as universal and places Africans at the margins of history, as objects; an Afrocentric analysis instead places people of African descent at the centre, as subjects and agents of their own history, and asks how phenomena look from that location. Following Cheikh Anta Diop, he treats ancient Egypt (Kemet) as the classical civilisation of Africa, as Greece serves Europe, and sees a cultural unity among African peoples. He has also written on rhetoric, intercultural communication and the history of Africa and of African America. The approach inspired curricula and Africana departments but drew strong criticism: Kwame Anthony Appiah (1993) objected that it inverts rather than overcomes Eurocentrism and rests on a racial idea of Africa, and Paul Gilroy (1993) criticised it as a form of ethnic absolutism; Mary Lefkowitz (1996) disputed claims about the African origins of Greek philosophy made by some Afrocentric authors. Asante replied to his critics in several essays and has maintained that Afrocentricity is a method of location, not a claim of superiority over others.

生平与背景

Molefi Kete Asante was born Arthur Lee Smith Jr. on 14 August 1942 in Valdosta, Georgia. He studied at Southwestern Christian College, Oklahoma Christian College and Pepperdine University and took his doctorate in communication at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1968, where he then directed the Center for Afro-American Studies. In 1969 he co-founded the Journal of Black Studies. He taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo and in the 1970s took the name Molefi Kete Asante. From 1984 he chaired the Department of African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, which in 1988 began the first doctoral programme in African American studies in the United States. He has written and edited a large number of books on Africana studies, communication and the history of Africa.

其他主要作品

• The Rhetoric of Black Revolution (as A. L. Smith, 1969)
• Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change (1980)
• The Afrocentric Idea (1987)
• Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (1990)
• The History of Africa: The Quest for Eternal Harmony (2007)
• Cheikh Anta Diop: An Intellectual Portrait (2007)