The Afrocentric Project: The Quest for Particularity and the Negation of Objectivity

This art icle is a phi losophical c r i t ique of a ve ry controversial paradigm within Africana Studies. The methodology employed in this paper is a phi losophical cr it ique of the epistemological and ontological underp inn ings of Afrocentric ity. The quest fo r a distinctive (metaphysical ) African ist perspective has cast Afrocentricity as a subjectivist approach to aff i rming the in tegrity of an Africana existential condit ion. Whi le in the course of African American intel lectual h istory a number of scholars and th inkers have supported the notion of an un ique Black metaphysics, Afrocentricity b rings to the table a particu lar ap proach to the tradit ion of aff i rming an African metaphysical exc lusivism. What I mean by the quest for particu larity is the notion that there is a un ique Africana presence in the wor ld , such that i t stands antithetical to the Eu ropeanlWestern ex perience. I explore what I cal l "weak Afrocentric ity," i . e . , a cu l tu ral determinism demarcat ing the African and European ex perience. Afrocentricity, in posit ing a cul tural relativ ism, ren ders that not only is E u rocentr ism a false un iversal ity. but that universal ity per se is false. This denial of universal ity (at the ontological leve l ) has as a corresponding category the nega tion of objectivity (at the epistemological plane) . I examine the works of two leading Afrocentr ic proponents, Molefi Asante and Marimba An i , arguably two of the most signif icant con tributors to the phi losophical foundations of Afrocentric ity.