Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate
  


a website by

 


Wim van Binsbergen

cliquez ici pour la version française de cette page-toile

Important notice: List of publications Wim van Binsbergen

Over the years, the Shikanda portal (of which the present page on African religion has attracted the largest number of visitors) has grown to such size, and its internal structure has become so complex, that visitors have had increasing difficulty finding their way, even despite the internal search facility which appears on all the index pages of the various constituent websites. Since Wim van Binsbergen's main output consists of texts for publication, an updated list of publications with hyperlinks to all available fulltext digital texts seems the best remedy. Thanks to the good services of the African Studies Centre, Leiden, in the course of current retrodigitalisation of its members published work, many more digital texts have recently come available, so that now the list of publications could be greatly improved and given a more prominent place in the Shikanda portal. This list is now being provided with clickable links to these uploaded publications. Since that time-consuming process has not yet been completed, of many articles listed, fulltext or draft versions are in fact available in the Shikanda portal, even though no links yet appear in the list of publications. Therefore, please also look at the separate webpages within the Shikanda portal, and use the internal search facility (see below).

Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate: This website (established March, 2001) brings together a number of articles written by Wim van Binsbergen on the related topics of Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate. Through its Forum and its bibliographical section this website is intended to serve as a focus of exchange, not only on Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate but also on African history, global cultural history, identity, race, and intercultural philosophy.

This bilingual website is offered both in English and in French; click here for the French version of this page.

proceed to the Shikanda portal in order to access all other websites by Wim van Binsbergen: general (intercultural philosophy, African Studies); ethnicity-identity-politics; Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate; Ancient Models of Thought in Africa, the Ancient Near East, and prehistory; sangoma consultation; literary work
 

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2010: The updated collection Black Athena comes of age now in the press
BLACK ATHENA COMES OF AGE

This book reflects the intellectual encounter, over the years, between, on the one hand, a group of Dutch scholars studying the Ancient Mediterranean, Ancient Egypt and Africa, and, on the other hand, Martin Gardiner Bernal (photo: front cover) as one of the most challenging and innovative, but also controversial and criticised, scholars of recent decades. From the 1980s on, Bernal has claimed that the roots of Western civilisation were to be sought not in Ancient Greece but outside Europe, in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and ultimately in sub-Saharan Africa. Bernal has wrought havoc in Western identity, addressing hot issues such as racism, exclusion, cultural domination, White and North Atlantic hegemony. He has combined a preference for non-mainstream theories (including Afro-centrism) with a passion for ad-hominem arguments derived from his personal sociology of knowledge. In this way he has blazed a trail of polemics and conflicts throughout a considerable number of international scholarly fields, learned journals, and conferences.

Deriving from one such conference, with three original contributions by Bernal himself, and greatly expanded and updated, the present collection as a whole does not (contrary to the 2008 Warwick conference on Bernal) call for canonisation of the Black Athena thesis as a main-stream achievement of empirical research. It does however call for recognition of Martin Bernal as the courageous and visionary initiator of an inspiring and timely research programme. His Black Athena series has greatly contributed to raising the question of the global politics of knowledge, from heresy, to becoming the very boundary condition of scholarly and institutional integrity. In this sense of maturation, self-transcendence and limitation, we may say that Black Athena comes of age.

Molly Myerowitz Levine, prominent contributor to the Black Athena debate, called the present collection when published in the scholarly journal TALANTA ‘the most interesting, constructive, and substantive treatment of Black Athena to date’.

The collection Black Athena comes of age, edited by Wim van Binsbergen, is now in the press with LIT Verlag (Berlin-Münster-Wien-Zürich-London). An earlier version was published as a special issue of the archaeological journal TALANTA in 1997. For the present book edition, the original collection was augmented with

Mediterranean cameo representing the goddess Athena, dating from the early Common Era, and found in Meroe, N. Sudan
   
Martin Bernal (*1937), Cambridge (UK) trained Sinologist / historian of ideas, Professor of Politics and since the late 1980s also Associate Professor of NearEastern Studies, Cornell University, USA; and visionary initator of the Black Athena debate

Wim van Binsbergen (*1947), Amsterdam-trained anthropologist, proto-historian, and intercultural philosopher (various professorial chairs in Europe and Africa, Professor of Intercultural Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Editor of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de Philosophie). He has been passionately involved in the study of long-range global cultural history since the early 1990s, and as such has been, since 1996, a vocal but critical advocate of the work of Martin Bernal, and of its unique relevance

2009: Wim van Binsbergen's further work on the Black Athena debate

1987 the Sinologist and historian of ideas Martin Bernal published the splendid first volume of his Black Athena series, in which he seeks to identify 'the Afroasiatic roots' of classical Greek civilisation and hence of European and North Atlantic civilisation -- criticising the 'fabrication', in the 18th and 19th c. CE, of Ancient Greece as a completely original, incomparably rich culture without historical antecedents or indebtedness to other cultures especially those of the Ancient Near East including Egypt. An intense world-wide debate followed, to which Wim van Binsbergen has made several contributions since 1996 (see further down on this page), including an acclaimed collection Black Athena Ten Years After, now to be reprinted by LIT Verlag (Berlin / Boston / Munster) in much updated and augmented form as Black Athena Twenty Years After. That the Black Athena debate is still alive and kicking, is demonstrated by the major international conference on the topic in Warwick (U.K.) early November 2008, in which prominent scholars participated in a bid to assess the lasting significance of Bernal's view, if any. Meanwhile Wim van Binsbergen's constructively critical reflection on Bernal's work has continued. A recent and up-to-date product is the following article now submitted for publication:

The continued relevance of Martin Bernal’s Black Athena thesis: Yes and No

(32 pp., with one table and two figures, and extensive bibliographic references)

ABSTRACT. This paper situates Martin Bernal’s work in context and largely defends it against the sweeping criticism and allegations brought against it (notably in Lefkowitz and MacLean Rogers’ 1996 collection Black Athena revisited; and in Berlinerblau’s Heresy in the University, for whom Bernal is 'the academic Elvis' -- i.e. the appropriating White recycling Black ideas). Even so, serious criticism cannot be avoided, notably of Bernal's lack of method; his politicised view of historical and academic truth; his tendency to conflate culture, language and somatic type; his obsession with origins; his literalist approach to myth; his inability to make living socio-cultural history out of reconstructions of provenance; and his dogged insistence on an unconvincing, for non-systematic, Ancient Egyptian etymology of the Greek theonym Athena. Without downright destroying the Black Athena thesis, these various defects could be remedied by the concerted, interdisciplinary collaboration of specialists, to which the argument exhorts the international scholarly community. However, towards the end the argument cannot refrain from more fundamental criticism, chiding Bernal for myopic concentration on the Eastern Mediterranean. Here the argument goes beyond the Black Athena thesis in the light of state-of-the-art comparative and historical linguistics, and molecular genetics, which have made possible a truly long-range approach to global cultural history. In passing, we highlight the peculiar Bronze Age Mediterranean presence of Niger-Congo / Bantu linguistic elements (usually associated with sub-Saharan Africa). Relying on the recently discovered ‘Back-into-Africa’ migration from Central and West Asia from the Upper Palaeolithic times onward, and on recent reconstructions of the Upper Palaeolithic *Borean parent language, the present argument offers a powerful alternative for the Black Athena thesis: The Aegean region looks similar to Ancient Egypt, not primarily because of diffusion from Egypt in the Late Bronze Age, but because both were the recipients of a demic, linguistic and cultural movement from West (ultimately Central) Asia; and this movement also extended to sub-Saharan Africa, producing the same similarities there. Ancient Egypt displays many cultural and religious similarities with sub-Saharan Africa, not primarily because of diffusion from sub-Saharan Africa to Egypt in Neolithic times, but the other way around: because the Back-into-Africa movement, carrying a significant share of Asian genes, as well as cultural, religious and linguistic elements (including *Borean-associated elements towards Niger-Congo / Bantu) passed via Egypt on its way from Asia to sub-Saharan Africa. However, while thus the argument has rather devastating implications for Afrocentrism including the Bernallian variant, it could not have been made without Bernal's visionary and path-breaking contribution.
   

 

August 2007: This year it is twenty years since Martin Bernal initiated the seminal anti-Eurocentrist Black Athena debate, with the first volume of his multi-volume project Black Athena, of which the long-awaited third volume was finally published in 2006. To celebrate this milestone of criticial anti-Eurocentrist debate, Wim van Binsbergen's collection Black Athena Ten Years After (Talanta 1997; details see below) -- a significant defense of Bernal against the devastating criticism by Lefkowitz and McLean Rogers in their book Black Athena Revisited (1996) -- is currently being reprinted, greatly updated and augmented, and now with increased critical distance from Bernal, as Black Athena Twenty Years After (Berlin/Boston: LIT). The book is to come out in 2009.

 

Additions 2006

Recently, Wim van Binsbergen's ongoing research has offered several occasions to make further observations on Afrocentricity. These papers are not included in the present webpage on Afrocentrism and the Black Athena debate, but clickable links are provided in the box now following:

title full bibliographical details
Hermeneutics of race, etc. as context for African philophy van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., 2005, ‘Editorial: The Roman Catholic church, and the hermeneutics of race, as two contexts for African philosophy’, QUEST: An African Journal of Philosophy/ Revue Africaine de Philosophie, XIX, No. 1-2, 2005: 3-20
Mythological archaeology -- with a postscript on Afrocentricity van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., in press, ‘Mythological archaeology: Situating sub-Saharan African cosmogonic myths within a long-range intercontinental comparative perspective', in: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) , Proceedings of the Pre-Symposium / 7th ESCA Harvard-Kyoto Roundtable on ‘Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia’, organised by RIHN, NIHU / Harvard University, the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Kyoto, Japan, 6-8 June, 2005, Kyoto: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature; also, with a new postscript on Afrocentrist ideology, February 2006, at: http://www.shikanda.net/ancient_models/mythical_archaeology/kyoto_paper_final_2-2006.pdf
Global bee flight: first installment Wim M.J. van Binsbergen, 1998-2006, ‘Skulls and tears: Identifying and analysing an African fantasy space extending over 5000 kilometres and across 5000 years’: Paper read at the conference ‘Fantasy spaces: The power of images in a globalizing world’ (convenors Bonno Thoden van Velzen & Birgit Meyer), part of the WOTRO [Netherlands Foundation for Tropical Research] research programme ‘Globalization and the construction of communal identities’, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 26-29 August 1998, PDF, 46 pp. -- greatly expanded and revised version, 2006
Defending Afrocentricity as potentially scientific, in the face of Mudimbe's universalism van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., 2005, ' ''An incomprehensible miracle'' -- Central African clerical intellectualism versus African historic religion: A close reading of Valentin Mudimbe's Tales of Faith', in: Kai Kresse, ed., Reading Mudimbe, special issue of the Journal of African Cultural Studies, 17, 1, June 2005: 11-65 -- reiterates and extends the defence of Afrocentricity originally presented in French in Politique Africaine, 2000 (see below)

 

Papers included in the present website:

(all papers © Wim van Binsbergen)

title provenance
Is there a future for Afrocentricism despite Stephen Howe's dismissive 1998 study? paper prepared for the Colloque sur l'Afrocentrisme, Centre de Recherches Africaines, Universite Paris-I (Sorbonne), 9 Rue Malher, Paris, May 2, 2000
A short defence of Afrocentrism in the light of Stephen Howe's 1998 book English version of: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2000, ‘Le point de vue de Wim van Binsbergen’, in: Autour d’un livre. Afrocentrism, de Stephen Howe, et Afrocentrismes: L’histoire des Africains entre Égypte et Amérique, de Jean-Pierre chrétien [ sic ] , François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar et Claude-Hélène Perrot (dir.), par Mohamed Mbodj, Jean Copans et Wim van Binsbergen, Politique africaine, no. 79, octobre 2000, pp. 175-180
With Black Athena into the Third Millennium CE?

click here for the French version

click here for the Italian version

 paper read at the XVth International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Amsterdam 1999; a much shorter version has been published in the proceedings of this Congress; A French version has been published as: W.M.J. van Binsbergen, 2000, ‘Dans le troisième millénaire avec Black Athena?’, in: Fauvelle-Aymar, F.-X., Chrétien, J.-P., & Perrot, C.-H., Afrocentrismes: L’histoire des Africains entre Égypte et Amérique, Paris: Karthala, pp. 127-150
 NEW an Italian version was published as:

van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2004, 'Atena Nera: La tesi di Bernal ha provocato reazioni in diverse discipline, dalla storiografia all'antropologia e pone ancora problemi di epistemologia multiculturale', Prometeo: Rivista trimestrale di scienze e storia, 22, 85 (March 2004): 102-111
Alternative models of intercontinental interaction towards the earliest Cretan script
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, 'Alternative models of intercontinental interaction towards the earliest Cretan script', in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, ed., Black Athena: Ten Years After, Hoofddorp: Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, special issue, Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, vols 28-29, 1996-97, pp. 131-148
Black Athena Ten Years After: towards a constructive re-assessment
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, 'Black Athena Ten Years After: towards a constructive re-assessment', in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, ed., Black Athena: Ten Years After, Hoofddorp: Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, special issue, Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, vols 28-29, 1996-97, pp. 11-64
Geomantic divination (Ifa, Hakata, Sikidy) and the mankala board-game: rethinking Africa’s contribution to global cultural history
van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, 'Rethinking Africa’s contribution to global cultural history: lessons from a comparative historical analysis of mankala board-games and geomantic divination', in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, ed., Black Athena: Ten Years After, Hoofddorp: Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, special issue, Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, vols 28-29, 1996-97, pp. 221-254
Une défense de l'Afrocentrisme contre Stephen Howe van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2000, ‘Le point de vue de Wim van Binsbergen’, in: Autour d’un livre. Afrocentrism, de Stephen Howe, et Afrocentrismes: L’histoire des Africains entre Amérique et l'Egypte, de Jean-Pierre chrétien [ sic ] , François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar et Claude-Hélène Perrot (dir.), par Mohamed Mbodj, Jean Copans et Wim van Binsbergen, Politique africaine, no.79, octobre 2000, pp. 175-180
Dans le troisième millénaire avec Black Athena? W.M.J. van Binsbergen, 2000, ‘Dans le troisième millénaire avec Black Athena?’, in: Fauvelle-Aymar, F.-X., Chrétien, J.-P., & Perrot, C.-H., Afrocentrismes: L’histoire des Africains entre Égypte et Amérique, Paris: Karthala, pp. 127-150
Introducing the Black Athena debate to Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy, 1996 (full-text PDF) Van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1996d, ‘Black Athena and Africa’s contribution to global cultural history’, Quest — Philosophical Discussions: An International African Journal of Philosophy, 1996, 9, 2/10, 1: 100-137

some of the items above have been published in: W.M.J. van Binsbergen, ed., Black Athena: Ten Years After, TALANTA volumes XXVII-XVIII (1996-1997), which has been out of print since 1998; a revised and much expanded reprint of this book is now in the press with LIT Verlag/ Transaction Press, under the title Black Athena Alive. You may write to the publishers to reserve a copy of the reprint edition.

Recent assessments of this work

In 1998, in the authoritative journal Classical Philology, Molly Myerowitz Levine (recognised specialist on the bibliography of the Black Athena debate) proclaimed Wim van Binsbergen's contributions to that debate to be 'the most interesting and the best informed'. More recently, two prominent francophone authors (Théophile Obenga et Jean-Loup Amselle) have assessed Wim van Binsbergen's stance on Afrocentrism and the Black Athena debate. Click here to read their appraisals in full

Bibliographical section

It is impossible to appreciate, leave alone to participate in, the debates on Black Athena and Afrocentricity without at least some access to the enormous literature which serves as a background to these debates. Moreover, these debates themselves have meanwhile generated a substantial literature in their own right. Both debates touch on a wide range on previously detached fields of scholarship, ranging from African history to Greek and Egyptian mythology, Egyptology, Assyriology, classics, archaeology, historical linguistics, anthropology, etc. Even scholars who are certified specialists in any of these fields, are likely to be virtually ignorant of some, or many, of the other fields. As a result, these debates are characterised by the fact that, while eliciting considerable passion, they are inevitably conducted by partial or total lay people. The enormity of this situation calls for easily accessible and extensive bibliographical information.

click here to enter the very extensive bibliographical section

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Vignette and background illustration

the illustration used on this page is adapted from the image of a black-figure Greek vase from Athens, late 7th to early 5th century, originally representing a warrior arming himself ; the accurate and scaled representation of the continents amounts of course to an artistic liberty totally anachronistic in the original iconographic context. At the same time it evokes the centricity of Africa (with a focus on Ancient Egypt), and its relations with Ancient Greece -- some of the guiding ideas of this website. Finally, the illustration (by showing a modern map on an ancient vase) is an ironic comment on the mutual accusations, typical of the debates around Black Athena and Afrocentricity, to the effect that opponents have distorted ancient evidence so as to let it serve today's political priorities.

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proceed to the Shikanda portal in order to access all other websites by Wim van Binsbergen: general (intercultural philosophy, African Studies); ethnicity-identity-politics; Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate; Ancient Models of Thought in Africa, the Ancient Near East, and prehistory; sangoma consultation; literary work
also a highly sensitive in-site search facility is now available at the overall Shikanda.net portal homepage, covering all Wim van Binsbergen's sites in a single search action

 

page last modified: 27-07-10 11:42:24 Bravenet.com