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The Politics of Criticism: Not Out of Africa and "Black Athena" Revisited

The Politics of Criticism: Not Out of Africa and "Black Athena" Revisited The Politics of Criticism: Not Out of Africa and “Black Athena” Revisited maghan keita Villanova University tephen Howe’s Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes Sand Keith Windschuttles’s The Killing of History (1998) illustrate that the issues which many scholars find so contentious in Martin Ber- nal’s Black Athena are still critical elements of the intellectual land- scape. They also show—Bernal aside —that the central feature of the discourse is still Afrocentrism, and that the tone of the discourse is still racial. Having said that, Howe and Windschuttle’s works demonstrate the possibility and the need to revisit the discourse or discourses in question. So the historian’s prerogative is dredged up here in an exam- ination of Mary Lefkowitz’s Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History (1996), and Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Roger’s edited volume, “Black Athena” Revisited (1996). This, too, is a “revisitation of sorts.” Howe’s work is one prism for viewing Lefkowitz’s celebrated Not Out of Africa. Howe, an “anti-Afrocentrist” by his own definition, is not taken with Lefkowitz’s work. The distances which separate him from Lefkowitz, however, are minimized by the historiographic and epistemological issues the two embrace. Both are concerned http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of World History University of Hawai'I Press

The Politics of Criticism: Not Out of Africa and "Black Athena" Revisited

Keita, Maghan
Journal of World History , Volume 11 (2) – Oct 1, 2001
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University of Hawai'I Press
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Copyright © 2000 University of Hawai'i Press.
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1527-8050

Abstract

The Politics of Criticism: Not Out of Africa and “Black Athena” Revisited maghan keita Villanova University tephen Howe’s Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes Sand Keith Windschuttles’s The Killing of History (1998) illustrate that the issues which many scholars find so contentious in Martin Ber- nal’s Black Athena are still critical elements of the intellectual land- scape. They also show—Bernal aside —that the central feature of the discourse is still Afrocentrism, and that the tone of the discourse is still racial. Having said that, Howe and Windschuttle’s works demonstrate the possibility and the need to revisit the discourse or discourses in question. So the historian’s prerogative is dredged up here in an exam- ination of Mary Lefkowitz’s Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History (1996), and Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Roger’s edited volume, “Black Athena” Revisited (1996). This, too, is a “revisitation of sorts.” Howe’s work is one prism for viewing Lefkowitz’s celebrated Not Out of Africa. Howe, an “anti-Afrocentrist” by his own definition, is not taken with Lefkowitz’s work. The distances which separate him from Lefkowitz, however, are minimized by the historiographic and epistemological issues the two embrace. Both are concerned

Journal

Journal of World History – University of Hawai'I Press

Published: Oct 1, 2001

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