Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Scholars of Black Nationalism have long theorized the “Diaspora” and “Pan-Africanism” as theoretical frameworks for study and analysis of the relationship of Africa, and her expanding and increasingly complex African diaspora world. Even as diaspora Africans in their distant and disparate locations encounter and are transformed by experiences and challenges that fundamentally complicate the traditional “Pan-African” and “Diaspora” paradigms, some scholars insist on prioritizing homogenizing and conflating ethos while ignoring or downplaying the complexities and divergences. For much of the twentieth century, the appeal of the “Pan-African” and “Diaspora” paradigms remained strong, even as the “Black Internationalist” world grew complex and complicated; and blacks in different locations encountered experiences that fundamentally transformed them culturally while also complicating their identities. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, however, there emerged dissenting voices and concerns about the relevance of homogenizing racial/cultural essentialist constructs. Many scholars are calling for re-conceptualizing, perhaps even jettisoning, such conflating paradigms as “diaspora” and “Pan-Africanism”. Have these concepts become truly obsolete and anachronistic, as some scholars suggest? What are the alternative paradigms or approaches to studying this phenomenon that would embody shared heritage and experiences as well as differences and divergences? This paper is an attempt to answer these questions by foregrounding the complementary and yet conflicting viewpoints of two twentieth century individuals whose ideas and struggles helped shape the “Diaspora” and “Pan-Africanism” as identitarian and counter-hegemonic paradigms (Stokely Carmichael and Walter Rodney).