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African Civilizations between the Winds of East and West

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Extract

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Among the intellectuals who have significantly contributed to the discussion of Africa's place in the concert and/or shock of civilizations, Kwane Nkrumah, Cheikh Anta Diop, Samir Amin, Ali Mazrui, Amilcar Cabral could be found in a pertinent sampling. These different personalities indicate the linguistic and geographic diversity of a multidisciplinary and critical production.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

Notes

1. Babacar Diop, "L'identité culturelle dans l'oeuvre de Ch. Anta Diop," in Éthiopiques, vol. IV, no. 1-2, 1987.

2. In general, it seems that Africans who have examined the fate of civilizations have been obsessed with the West and the East, Cheikh Anta Diop as well as Mazrui, and have neglected, that is, not to say forgotten, for example, pre-Columbian America, China, and Burma. (Author's note)

3. Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology, trans. from the French by Yao-Lengi Meema Ngemi, ed. by Harold J. Salemson and Marjolijn de Jager (Brooklyn, NY, 1991), pp. 3-4. Original text: Civilisation ou barbarie, Anthropologie sans complaisance (Paris, 1982), p. 12.

4. Martin Bernal, Black Athena. The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985, vol. 1 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1987); Black Athena. The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. The Archeological and Docu mentary Evidence, vol. 2 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1991).

5. Mary L. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers (eds.), Black Athena Revisited (Chapel Hill, 1996).

6. Mary L. Lefkowitz, Not out of Africa: How Afrocentrism became an excuse to teach myth as history (New York, 1996).

7. Valentin Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (Indianapolis, 1994), see chapter 3.

8. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York, 1997).

9. However, Cheikh Anta Diop's optimism may possibly need to be reconsid ered. The situations in Rwanda and Serbia, for example, remind us of the tragic reality. (Author's note)