![]() ![]() After attending Umolu’s lecture, I knew I would have to approach this question differently. I felt there must be something more to it than slavery. Centuries of African families captured and dispersed, combined with a lack of official documentation, lead only to faint connections to African ancestry for many in the diaspora. I spun endlessly at the thought of being brought into existence by the same process that sought to destroy me. The identity of being an African American was so precariously predicated on our enslavement here. Being part of the African diaspora, my lack of direct ancestral ties to Africa had left a curious vacuum. But things haven’t always fit together so neatly for me. In lieu of genealogical ties to Africa, I posit, the very practice of studying our history, which is indeed multiplicitous, is the practice of ancestral piety.Īs a Black woman that does research in Black history, the African concept of Continuity and ancestral piety have become central to my academic practice. Despite the fracture of direct genealogical ties, the diasporic experience remains a continuation of the African experience. In this philosophy, the imagined dislocation of the diasporic experience from the African experience is impossible because all Black 1 historical events are part of the same African consciousness. Thus, the veneration of ancestors was imperative, because they were considered as living entities who, through direct interaction with the present community, impacted the future. In African philosophy, all events in time are inextricably bound together so that the present equally impacts the future and the past. Through their memory, intercession, reincarnation, they remain in concert with their descendants. They are all iterations or imprints of the same entity…central to the idea of time and action as continuities is the role of ancestors in African consciousness. Continuity holds that the past, present and future are mutually part of each other’s consciousnesses. In her lecture Introduction to African Religion at the African History Project, Apeike Umolu discusses the importance of ancestral piety in African philosophy:Ĭentral to the African Conception of time is the idea of continuity as opposed to progress, and adaptation as opposed to change. However, the African philosophy of Continuity offers a perspective on ancestry that restores our connections with one another. Because ancestral piety is central to African philosophy, the destruction of genealogical ties caused by the Atlantic slave trade was indeed a tragedy. From an education standpoint, the Atlantic slave trade is often taught as the starting point of our ancestry, as if nothing had come before, and it was there that ancestral piety turned to sorrow. The African diasporic experience is an exceptional one. ![]() Slideshows of hanging bodies and field trips to life-sized wax figures of Black flesh ripped open. 10-year-olds escorted into an old church in Brooklyn to watch Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Middle Passage.’ Textbook pages of Emmitt Till’s disfigured face and his mother desperately clinging to his coffin. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |