From Black Aesthetics to Afrocentrism (Or, A Small History of An African and African American Discursive Practice

Abstract

Chinua Achebe, the distinguished novelist, published the famous article, "The Novelist as Teacher," from which I culled the epigraph above, in 1965. He offers in it what still remains a discerning entry into an inquiry on the nature and functions of such social phenomena as Black Aesthetics and Afrocentrism, which he could very well have added to his list of "props" were it not for the circumstances of history which placed the latter two at a later moment. Even so, Achebe included "negritude," a significant lodestar in the genealogy of both black aesthetics and Afrocentrism.