Maghan Keita (Villanova University)
“take ‘the whole question out of the hands of the Greeks’”
George B. Glidden
“I am happy to be in the excellent company of Du Bois, Mazrui, and others….”
Martin Bernal
These epigraphs suggest two things: first, there exists a compendium of primary sources specific to the question at hand that serves as the basis for a series of interrogations—sources that have been overlooked and/or dismissed. Second, there also exists a set of critiques—often overlooked and/or dismissed that Bernal recognized as the basis for his critique. These two bodies of knowledge—often elided and dismissed—entertain a “black” Athena before Black Athena.
The sources and critiques are intertextual and interstitial. They are also challenges to the voices of modernity and the logics of racism in a world of racialized discourse. Re-engagement with the primary sources and the critiques can shed new light and can create new interpretations of the subject matter before Bernal. This new and different engagement can also aid in the reconceptualization and re-historization of the debates that emerged within the context of Black Athena.
In brief, such an approach might begin with what do Africans say for themselves and of themselves; where are the ‘voices’ of the Ethiopians (Nubians/Kushites) and the Egyptians? Where are they seen and ‘articulated’? What do their Greek, Carthaginian (also African), and Roman counterparts say of them? Characterize them? Memorialize them? Paint them? Sculpt them? What does all this say of a ‘black’ presence in world that many intellectuals of the period have stridently and often violently sought to suppress? In brief, such analysis would re-engage Herodotus, and his source, Manetho. Diodorus would be evoked; Homer and Quintus Smyrneus would be re-read; Aeneas’ journey from Ilium would be re-examined. These would be mixed with Greek foundational myths. All this with the notion that texts across the region and era were actually ‘speaking’ to one another—the space and the experiences were intertextual—they were shared, interactive, and informative of one another. The Talmud is illustrative of this as a foundational source.
The trajectory from here would ask questions of medieval readings and texts from the Renaissance (both recognized as global projects rather than simply European phenomena). It would look at the Enlightenment as the space of modern racial conceptualization and contention with Africa and its relation to the construction of what was to become known as ‘Western Civilization’ and its roots.
The voices are sometimes timorous—the scientists of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt—a key moment in the emergence of Orientalism. They also are witness to more forceful analyses that commence in the late 17th century and run through the 20th from voices marginalized and often excluded from the discourse. While they include the greats that Bernal lists, there are innumerous other intellectuals of African descent and their allies. They, along with Du Bois and Woodson, are precursors to Afrocentrism. This examination would conclude with a serious analytical nod to the Howard Triumvirate of William Leo Hansberry, Frank M. Snowden, Jr., and Mercer Cook.