Marimba Ani
Encyclopedia
Marimba Ani is an anthropologist and African Studies
scholar best known for her work Yurugu, a comprehensive critique of European thought and culture, and her coining of the term Maafa
for the African holocaust
.
at the University of Chicago
, and holds MA
and Ph.D.
degrees in anthropology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School University. In 1964, during Freedom Summer
, she served as an SNCC field secretary, and married civil-rights activist Robert Parris Moses
; they divorced in 1966. She has taught as a Professor of African Studies in the Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College
in New York City, and is credited with introducing the term Maafa
to describe the African holocaust.
and imperialism
, from an African perspective. Described by the author as an "intentionally aggressive polemic", the book derives its title from a Dogon
legend of an incomplete and destructive being rejected by its creator.
Examining the causes of global white supremacy
, Ani argued that European thought implicitly believes in its own superiority, stating: "European culture is unique in the assertion of political interest".
In Yurugu, Ani proposed a tripartite conceptualisation of culture, based on the concepts of
The terms Ani uses in this framework are based on Swahili
. Asili is a common Swahili word meaning "origin" or "essence"; utamawazo and utamaroho are neologisms created by Ani, based on the Swahili words utamaduni ("civilisation"), wazo ("thought") and roho ("spirit life"). The utamawazo and utamaroho are not viewed as separate from the asili, but as its manifestations, which are "born out of the asili and, in turn, affirm it."
Ani characterised the asili of European culture as dominated by the concepts of separation and universalism, with separation establishing dichotomies like "man" and "nature", "the European" and "the other" – separations that in effect end up negating the existence of "the other", who or which becomes subservient to the needs of (European) man. Universalism takes this separation further, by applying the same logic to all people regardless of context and assuming that "as people become more 'rational', they become more 'universal, i.e., more willing to be assimilated into Western European culture, the culture that has shaped the world's most powerful structures and institutions.
According to Ani's model, the utamawazo of European culture "is structured by ideology and bio-cultural experience", and its utamaroho or vital force is domination, reflected in all European-based structures and the imposition of Western values and civilisation on peoples around the world, destroying cultures and languages in the name of progress.
The book also addressed the use of the term Maafa, based on a Swahili word meaning "great disaster", to describe slavery
, and Afrocentrist thinkers subsequently popularized and expanded on Ani's conceptualization. Citing both the centuries-long history of slavery and more recent examples like the Tuskegee study, Ani argued that Europeans and white Americans have an "enormous capacity for the perpetration of physical violence against other cultures" that had resulted in "antihuman, genocidal" treatment of blacks.
described Yurugu as an "elegant work". Stephen Howe accused the book of "intellectual apartheid" for having two bibliographies and indexes, one for "Africans", mostly listing African American authors, and one for others; noting a lack of Asian and Australasian authors in these, he argued that Ani seemed as uninterested in the views of 70 percent of the global population as she accused Eurocentrists of being.
African studies
African studies is the study of Africa, especially the cultures and societies of Africa .The field includes the study of:Culture of Africa, History of Africa , Anthropology of Africa , Politics of Africa, Economy of Africa African studies is the study of Africa, especially the cultures and...
scholar best known for her work Yurugu, a comprehensive critique of European thought and culture, and her coining of the term Maafa
Maafa
The Maafa refers to the 500 years of suffering of Africans and the African diaspora, through slavery, imperialism, colonialism, invasion, oppression, dehumanization and exploitation...
for the African holocaust
African Holocaust
African Holocaust is a reggae album released by Steel Pulse in July 2004. It is Steel Pulse's most recent studio album and their eleventh overall. At the time of this album, the band was down to only two founding members, lead guitarist and vocalist David Hinds and keyboardist and backup vocalist...
.
Life and Work
Marimba Ani completed a BA degreeBachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, and holds MA
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
and Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
degrees in anthropology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School University. In 1964, during Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi which had historically excluded most blacks from voting...
, she served as an SNCC field secretary, and married civil-rights activist Robert Parris Moses
Robert Parris Moses
Robert Parris Moses is an American, Harvard-trained educator who was a leader in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and later founded the nationwide U.S. Algebra project.-Biography:...
; they divorced in 1966. She has taught as a Professor of African Studies in the Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
in New York City, and is credited with introducing the term Maafa
Maafa
The Maafa refers to the 500 years of suffering of Africans and the African diaspora, through slavery, imperialism, colonialism, invasion, oppression, dehumanization and exploitation...
to describe the African holocaust.
Yurugu
Ani's ground-breaking 1994 work, Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior, examined the influence of European culture on the formation of modern institutional frameworks, through colonialismColonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
and imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, from an African perspective. Described by the author as an "intentionally aggressive polemic", the book derives its title from a Dogon
Dogon people
The Dogon are an ethnic group living in the central plateau region of Mali, south of the Niger bend near the city of Bandiagara in the Mopti region. The population numbers between 400,000 and 800,000 The Dogon are best known for their religious traditions, their mask dances, wooden sculpture and...
legend of an incomplete and destructive being rejected by its creator.
Examining the causes of global white supremacy
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
, Ani argued that European thought implicitly believes in its own superiority, stating: "European culture is unique in the assertion of political interest".
In Yurugu, Ani proposed a tripartite conceptualisation of culture, based on the concepts of
- Asili, the central seed or "germinating matrix" of a culture,
- Utamawazo, "culturally structured thought" or worldview, "the way in which the thought of members of a culture must be patterned if the asili is to be fulfilled", and
- Utamaroho, a culture's "vital force" or "energy source", which "gives it its emotional tone and motivates the collective behavior of its members".
The terms Ani uses in this framework are based on Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
. Asili is a common Swahili word meaning "origin" or "essence"; utamawazo and utamaroho are neologisms created by Ani, based on the Swahili words utamaduni ("civilisation"), wazo ("thought") and roho ("spirit life"). The utamawazo and utamaroho are not viewed as separate from the asili, but as its manifestations, which are "born out of the asili and, in turn, affirm it."
Ani characterised the asili of European culture as dominated by the concepts of separation and universalism, with separation establishing dichotomies like "man" and "nature", "the European" and "the other" – separations that in effect end up negating the existence of "the other", who or which becomes subservient to the needs of (European) man. Universalism takes this separation further, by applying the same logic to all people regardless of context and assuming that "as people become more 'rational', they become more 'universal, i.e., more willing to be assimilated into Western European culture, the culture that has shaped the world's most powerful structures and institutions.
According to Ani's model, the utamawazo of European culture "is structured by ideology and bio-cultural experience", and its utamaroho or vital force is domination, reflected in all European-based structures and the imposition of Western values and civilisation on peoples around the world, destroying cultures and languages in the name of progress.
The book also addressed the use of the term Maafa, based on a Swahili word meaning "great disaster", to describe slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, and Afrocentrist thinkers subsequently popularized and expanded on Ani's conceptualization. Citing both the centuries-long history of slavery and more recent examples like the Tuskegee study, Ani argued that Europeans and white Americans have an "enormous capacity for the perpetration of physical violence against other cultures" that had resulted in "antihuman, genocidal" treatment of blacks.
Reception
Philip Higgs, in African voices in education, described Yurugu as an "excellent delineation of the ethics of harmonious coexistence between human beings", but cited the book's "overlooking of structures of social inequality and conflict that one finds in all societies, including indigenous ones," as a weakness. Manning MarableManning Marable
William Manning Marable was an American professor of public affairs, history and African-American Studies at Columbia University. Marable founded and directed the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. Marable authored several texts and was active in progressive political causes...
described Yurugu as an "elegant work". Stephen Howe accused the book of "intellectual apartheid" for having two bibliographies and indexes, one for "Africans", mostly listing African American authors, and one for others; noting a lack of Asian and Australasian authors in these, he argued that Ani seemed as uninterested in the views of 70 percent of the global population as she accused Eurocentrists of being.
Publications
- "The Ideology of European Dominance," The Western Journal of Black Studies. Vol. 3, No. 4, Winter, 1979, and Presence Africaine, No. 111, 3rd Quarterly, 1979.
- "European Mythology: The Ideology of Progress," Contemporary Black Thought, eds. M. Asante and A. Vandi, Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980, (59-79).
- Let The Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora. New York: Nkonimfo Publications, 1988 (orig. 1980).
- "The Nyama of the Blacksmith: The Metaphysical Significance of Metallurgy in Africa," Journal of Black Studies. Vol. 12, No. 2, December, 1981.
- "The African 'Aesthetic' and National Consciousness," The African Aesthetic, ed. Kariamu Welsh-Asante. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1993. (63-82)
- Yurugu: An Afrikan-centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1994.
- "The African Asili," Selected Papers from the Proceedings of the Conference on Ethics, Higher Education and Social Responsibility, Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1996.
- "To Heal a People", ed. Erriel Kofi Addae, Columbia, MD.: Kujichagulia Press, 1996 (91-125).
- "Writing as a means of enabling Afrikan Self-determination," Defining Ourselves; Black Writers in the 90's, ed. Elizabeth Nuñez and Brenda M. Greene. New York: Peter Lang, 1999 (209–211).
See also
- AfrocentrismAfrocentrismAfrocentrism is cultural ideology mostly limited to the United States, dedicated to the history of Black people a response to global racist attitudes about African people and their historical contributions by revisiting this history with an African cultural and ideological center...
- Cheikh Anta DiopCheikh Anta DiopCheikh Anta Diop was a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. He is regarded as an important figure in the development of the Afrocentric viewpoint, in particular for his theory that the ancient Egyptians were...
- John Henrik ClarkeJohn Henrik ClarkeJohn Henrik Clarke , born John Henry Clark, was a Pan-Africanist American writer, historian, professor, and a pioneer in the creation of Africana studies and professional institutions in academia starting in the late 1960s.He was Professor of African World History and in 1969 founding chairman of...
- Leonard JeffriesLeonard JeffriesLeonard Jeffries Jr. is an American professor of black studies at the City College of New York, part of the City University of New York. He achieved national prominence in the early 1990s for his controversial statements about Jews and other white people...
- Molefi Kete AsanteMolefi Kete AsanteMolefi Kete Asante is an African-American scholar, historian, and philosopher. He is a leading figure in the fields of African American studies, African Studies and Communication Studies...
External links
- A Look At Professor Marimba Ani, Women of the African Diaspora
- Marimba Ani