Africana Critical Theory

Building on and going far beyond W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century and Du Bois's Dialectics, Reiland Rabaka's Africana Critical Theory innovatively identifies and analyzes continental and diasporan African contributions to classical and contemporary critical theory. This book represents a climatic critical theoretical clincher that cogently demonstrates how Du Bois's rarely discussed dialectical thought, interdisciplinarity, intellectual history-making radical political activism, and world-historical multiple liberation movement leadership helped to inaugurate a distinct Africana tradition of critical theory. With chapters on W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Negritude (Aime Cesaire and Leopold Senghor), Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, Africana Critical Theory endeavors to accessibly offer contemporary critical theorists an intellectual archaeology of the Africana tradition of critical theory and a much-needed dialectical deconstruction and reconstruction of black radical politics. These six seminal figures' collective thought and texts clearly cuts across several disciplines and, therefore, closes the chasm between Africana Studies and critical theory, constantly demanding that intellectuals not simply think deep thoughts, develop new theories, and theoretically support radical politics, but be and constantly become political activists, social organizers and cultural workers - that is, folk the Italian critical theorist Antonio Gramsci referred to as 'organic intellectuals.' In this sense, then, the series of studies gathered in Africana Critical Theory contribute not only to African Studies, African American Studies, Caribbean Studies, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and Postcolonial Studies, but also to contemporary critical theoretical discourse across an amazingly wide-range of 'traditional' disciplines, and radical political activism outside of (and, in many instances, absolutely against) Europe's ivory towers and the absurdities of the American academy.

Building on and going far beyond W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century and Du Bois's Dialectics, Reiland Rabaka's Africana Critical Theory innovatively identifies and analyzes continental and diasporan African contributions to classical and contemporary critical theory. This book represents a climatic critical theoretical clincher that cogently demonstrates how Du Bois's rarely discussed dialectical thought, interdisciplinarity, intellectual history-making radical political activism, and world-historical multiple liberation movement leadership helped to inaugurate a distinct Africana tradition of critical theory. With chapters on W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Negritude (Aime Cesaire and Leopold Senghor), Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, Africana Critical Theory endeavors to accessibly offer contemporary critical theorists an intellectual archaeology of the Africana tradition of critical theory and a much-needed dialectical deconstruction and reconstruction of black radical politics. These six seminal figures' collective thought and texts clearly cuts across several disciplines and, therefore, closes the chasm between Africana Studies and critical theory, constantly demanding that intellectuals not simply think deep thoughts, develop new theories, and theoretically support radical politics, but be and constantly become political activists, social organizers and cultural workers - that is, folk the Italian critical theorist Antonio Gramsci referred to as 'organic intellectuals.' In this sense, then, the series of studies gathered in Africana Critical Theory contribute not only to African Studies, African American Studies, Caribbean Studies, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and Postcolonial Studies, but also to contemporary critical theoretical discourse across an amazingly wide-range of 'traditional' disciplines, and radical political activism outside of (and, in many instances, absolutely against) Europe's ivory towers and the absurdities of the American academy.

When Frantz Fanon's critiques of racism, sexism, colonialism, capitalism, and humanism are brought into the ever-widening orbit of Africana critical theory something unprecedented in the annals of Africana intellectual history happens: five distinct forms of Fanonism emerge. Forms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanon's Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Decolonization is discursively distinguished from other engagements of Fanon's thought and texts insofar as it is the first study to consciously examine his contributions to Africana Studies and critical theory or, rather, the Africana tradition of critical theory. Forms of Fanonism identifies and intensely analyzes Fanon's contributions to the deconstruction and reconstruction of Africana Studies, radical politics, and critical social theory. In highlighting his unique 'solutions' to the 'problems' of racism, sexism, colonialism, capitalism, and humanism, five distinct forms of Fanonism materialize. These five forms of Fanonism allow contemporary critical theorists to innovatively explore the ways in which his thought and texts can be dialectically put to use in relieving the wretched experience of this generation's wretched of the earth. Critics can also apply these forms to deconstruct and reconstruct Africana Studies, radical politics, and critical social theory using their anti-imperialist interests. Throughout Forms of Fanonism, Reiland Rabaka critically dialogues with Fanon, incessantly asking his corpus critical questions and seeking from it crucial answers. This book, in short, solemnly keeps with Fanon's own predilection for connecting critical theory to revolutionary praxis by utilizing his thought and texts as paradigms and points of departure to deepen and develop the Africana tradition of critical theory.

By examining Amilcar Cabral’s theories and praxes, as well as several of the antecedents and major influences on the evolution of his radical politics and critical social theory, Concepts of Cabralism:Amilcar Cabral and Africana Critical Theory simultaneously reintroduces, chronicles, and analyzes several of the core characteristics of the Africana tradition of critical theory. Reiland Rabaka’s primary preoccupation is with Cabral’s theoretical and political legacies—that is to say, with the ways in which he constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed theory and the aims, objectives, and concrete outcomes of his theoretical applications and discursive practices. The book begins with the Negritude Movement, and specifically the work of Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Next, it shifts the focus to Frantz Fanon’s discourse on radical disalienation and revolutionary decolonization. Finally, it offers an extended engagement of Cabral’s critical theory and contributions to the Africana tradition of critical theory. Ultimately, Concepts of Cabralism chronicles and critiques, revisits and revises the black radical tradition with an eye toward the ways in which classical black radicalism informs, or should inform, not only contemporary black radicalism, African nationalism, and Pan-Africanism, but also contemporary efforts to create a new anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, and anti-imperialist critical theory of contemporary society—what has come to be called “Africana critical theory.”

Examining the situations of African Americans in the U.S.A., Lucius Outlaw's essays illustrate over twenty years of work dedicated to articulating a 'critical theory of society' that would account for issues and limiting-factors affecting African-descended peoples in the U.S. Attempting to put politics aside, Outlaw writes from a non-partisan standpoint, in the hopes that the issues he raises in his essays will inspire improvement for the well-bring of African Americans and will also strengthen America's democracy. Outlaw envisions a democratic order that is not built upon racist projections of the past. Instead, he seeks in these essays a transformative social theory that would help create a truly democratic social order.

Fifty-one essays by writers such as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as critics and academics such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. examine the central texts and arguments in African American literary theory from the 1920s through the present. Contributions are organized chronologically beginning with the rise of a black aesthetic criticism, through the Black Arts Movement, feminism, structuralism and poststructuralism, queer theory, and cultural studies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Facing South to Africa is a bold synthesis of the ideas that have made Afrocentric theorists the leading voices of the African renaissance. Written from the vantage point of the philosophical and political discourse that emerged over the past twenty-five years, this is a highly readable and accessible introduction to African social and cultural criticism. Molefi Kete Asante engages in the practice of critical thinking by raising fundamental questions about how Africans view themselves and the world. Tackling the themes of culture, education, social sciences, the university, politics, African unity, and the prospects for peace in Africa, Facing South to Africa is a fresh, daring, and popularizing synthesis of the best critical thought on the issues of modern knowledge. Asante’s plan is to reorient our thinking on Africa by asking questions of Africa and Africans rather than imposing preconceived, external ideas on African issues.

W. E. B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century utilizes Du Bois's thought and texts to develop an informed critical theory of contemporary society. This book broadens the base of critical theory, making it more multicultural, transethnic, transgender, and non-Western European philosophy focused by placing it in dialogue with theory and phenomena that had been heretofore woefully neglected. Taking the preeminent black intellectual of the twentieth century as his primary point of departure, Reiland Rabaka identifies and analyzes several key contributions that Du Bois and the black racial tradition offer to those interested in redeveloping and racially revising contemporary critical social theory. With chapters on critical race theory, postcolonial theory, feminism, and Marxism, this volume builds bridges from Africana Studies to disparate discursive communities, accessibly demonstrating Du Bois's, and the black radical tradition's, contributions to, and the potential impact on, a wide-range of new social scientific research and radical political struggles.

dialogue with what Farr calls recent liberation philosophies such as feminism and African-American philosophy. All of these forms ofphilosophy are driven by a democratic impulse whereby we realize that there are many social groups that have been excluded from the democratic decision-making process." --Book Jacket.

This book deals with substantive issues that have the potential to enhance our understanding regarding how Marxist theory can be quite useful in interpreting Black specificities and the race paradigm. So far, Marxist theory has been excluded because it is supposedly class and economy reductionist, but the essence of this theory-dialectic-not only proves that it is a meaningful way of seeing racism for what it truly is, but also a way of filtering through the plethora of interpretations of what constitutes race. The timeliness of the approach should help revive discussion on ethnophilosophy as an ideology. So much academic consideration has led scholars to seriously underestimate ideology's extraordinary efficiency in blending into lived experience to the point where much of its most telling effects have become undetectable. This work suggests that critical theory must reorient itself and offers an important discussion on the dominant discourse of poststructuralism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, Marxism, African socialism, NZgritude, and Afrocentricity. The book's approach sheds a radical light on the claim for Black specificities and racism. It shows that racial and ethnological discourses are ideological and political mystifications, masking exploitation. Under such circumstances, racial and racist ideologies become cards to be played by the perpetrators or the victims, as the case studies of Haiti and South Africa illustrate. As can be seen, then, the intelligibility of racism and its various forms can only stem from an analysis of the social structures upon which they rest. Just to show how inextricably linked ideology, race, racism, political expansion, and economic domination are, the book looks at Africa and its Diaspora, revealing how Africans remain the scapegoat for racial 'othering' in the global economy's ideological praxis. In so doing, the book is also able to include African intellectuals' perspectives that have often been omitted from the dialogue on critical theory, race, racism, and Black specificities.