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15. Toward the Theoretical Practice of Conceptual Liberation: Using an Africana Studies Approach to Reading African American Literary Texts
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fifteen toward the theoretiCaL praCtiCe of ConCeptuaL Liberation: using an afriCana studies approaCh to reading afriCan ameriCan Literary texts Gr eg Carr and Dana A. Williams africana studies is an academic extension of what cedric robinson has called “The Black radical tradition.” This tradition is notable for emerging out of a pre-existing constellation of african intellectual work, shaped by millennia of subsequent migration, adaptation, and improvisation. Through the central acts of translation and recovery,1 africana studies seeks to theorize out of long-view genealogies of african intellectual work. This process has been captured with striking impact by the writer and translator ayi kwei armah, both in his fictional texts Two Thousand Seasons (1972), KMT: In the House of Life (2002), Osiris Rising (1995), and in his memoir/historiography The Eloquence of the Scribes (2006). armah and other key theoreticians have set themselves the task of intentionally linking that series of migrations, adaptations, and improvisations from the origins of humanity to the present, integrating wave afer wave of challenges and solutions to the problems of african human existence as a series of interlinked episodes, of which the period of enslavement and colonialism is a very recent and very temporary set of moments. The key factor in assuming both this task and the intellectual posture that grounds it is the deliberate embrace of “long-view” memory: the same type of broad envisioning of the human experience that has long informed the intellectual posture of other societies (including the West) as an ideational construct. in fact, the truncation of the time/space 302 Theor etica l Pr actice of Conceptua l Liber ation · 303 coordinates of memory—the amputation of memory as a consequence of the failure of educational institutions designed in part to reinscribe those memories as a critical element of equipping africans to negotiate their futures on their terms—presents a theoretical crisis that the academic field and discipline of africana studies has set out purposely to engage and correct. The term “africana,” then, should be used in the academic context of “africana studies” as a term that describes the creation of methods that fully integrate the study of people (africans and africandescended communities), geography (africa as well as any physical place populated by africans), and culture (concepts, practices, and materials that africans have created to live and to interact with themselves, others, and their environments).2 any study of african people that does not begin with the recognition of and systematic reconnections to both the concept of african cultural identities and the specific, lived demonstration of them will only continue to erase africans as full human beings and actors in world history . indeed, among the most important questions to consider in any study of the human experience are the following: • Who are the people being studied? Where did they come from, and how did they come to the experience being studied? • How do people view themselves, their origins, and their world in any given time and place? • How do people organize and govern themselves around common goals? how do they make decisions, resolve disputes, recognize authority, interact with others, and establish common tastes and styles, etc.? • How do people use the materials and tools available to them to shape their physical environment? • How do people remember what they have done, and how do they pass those memories to future generations? • What have people created to express their thoughts and emotions to themselves and others? arguably, these questions are, or should be, present regardless of the people being studied. scholars of the african experience in the united states and elsewhere must ask these questions as a continuing process of tracing and re-tracing the african experience from its origins in africa to [3.239.15.34] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:01 GMT) 304 · Gr eg Ca r r a nd Da na W illia ms thepresent. italsoallowsustosee africanamericancontributionstothe formation of “american identity” and other geographically local identity formations without reducing the person, people, texts, practices, and/or narratives to only the sum of those contributions. approaching the african experience in the creation, evolution, and continuing reconfiguration of the united states requires seeing african american life as both an extension of african experiences and as contributions to the multinational society and culture that is the united states. such an approach exposes the reader to the rich connections, differences, and shades of distinction among africans across time and space. The time between the beginning of documented settled human societies...