Race and the Writing of History: Riddling the Sphinx

ISBN-13: 9780195112740 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 224 str.

Maghan Keita

Opis

Despite increased interest in recent years in the role of race in Western culture, scholars have neglected much of the body of work produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by black intellectuals. For example, while DuBois' thoughts about Africa may be familiar to contemporary academics, those of his important precursors and contemporaries are not widely known. Similarly, although contemporary figures such as Martin Bernal, Molefi Assante, and other "Afrocentrists" are the subject of heated debate, such debates are rarely illuminated by an awareness of the traditions that preceded them. Race and The Writing of History redresses this imbalance, using Bernal's Black Athena and its critics as an introduction to the historical inquiries of African-American intellectuals and many of their African counterparts. Keita examines the controversial legacy of writing history in America and offers a new perspective on the challenge of building new historiographies and epistemologies. As a result, this book sheds new light on how ideas about race and racism have shaped the stories we tell about ourselves.

Recenzje

This useful book, which is a significant contribution to Oxford University Press's Race and American Culture series, is a sophisticated defense of Afrocentrism...Indeed, Keita's analysis of Snowden's paradoxes and ironies is a substantial contribution to our existing knowledge...This excellent work complements but does not supercede older works by Wilson Jeremiah Moses and Stephen Howe-neither of whom, surprisingly, is cited in Keita's book. Nevertheless, Race and the Writing of History should be must reading for professional historians.