Index: Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate

This website (established March, 2001) brings together a number of articles written by Wim van Binsbergen on the related topics of Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate. Through its Forum and its bibliographical section this website is intended to serve as a focus of exchange, not only on Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate but also on African history, global cultural history, identity, race, and intercultural philosophy. This website complements Wim van Binsbergen's websites on African religion; on African Studies, intercultural philosophy, and poetry; on Ancient models of thought); and most recently on Ethnicity, identity, and politics in Africa. These other websites may be profitably consulted by visitors interested in the backgrounds of Afrocentricity and the Black Athena debate.

In 1998, in the authoritative journal Classical Philology, Molly Myerowitz Levine (recognised specialist on the bibliography of the Black Athena debate) proclaimed Wim van Binsbergen collection Black Athena Ten Years After to be 'the most interesting and the best informed' contribution to that debate. More recently, two prominent francophone authors (Théophile Obenga et Jean-Loup Amselle) have assessed Wim van Binsbergen's stance on Afrocentrism and the Black Athena debate. Click here to read their appraisals in full.

title	provenance
Is there a future for Afrocentricism despite Stephen Howe's dismissive 1998 study?	paper prepared for the Colloque sur l'Afrocentrisme, Centre de Recherches Africaines, Universite Paris-I (Sorbonne), 9 Rue Malher, Paris, May 2, 2000
A short defence of Afrocentrism in the light of Stephen Howe's 1998 book	English version of: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2000, ‘Le point de vue de Wim van Binsbergen’, in: Autour d’un livre. **Afrocentrism, de Stephen Howe, et Afrocentrismes: L’histoire des Africains entre Égypte et Amérique, de Jean-Pierre chrétien [ sic ] , François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar et Claude-Hélène Perrot (dir.), par Mohamed Mbodj, Jean Copans et Wim van Binsbergen, Politique africaine, no. 79, octobre 2000, pp. 175-180**
With *Black Athena* into the Third Millennium CE?	paper read at the XVth International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Amsterdam 1999; a much shorter version has been published in the proceedings of this Congress; A French version has been published as: W.M.J. van Binsbergen, 2000, ‘Dans le troisième millénaire avec Black Athena?’, in: Fauvelle-Aymar, F.-X., Chrétien, J.-P., & Perrot, C.-H., **Afrocentrismes: L’histoire des Africains entre Égypte et Amérique, Paris: Karthala, pp. 127-150**
Alternative models of intercontinental interaction towards the earliest Cretan script	van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, 'Alternative models of intercontinental interaction towards the earliest Cretan script', in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, ed., Black Athena: Ten Years After, Hoofddorp: Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, special issue, Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, vols 28-29, 1996-97, pp. 131-148
Black Athena Ten Years After: *towards a constructive re-assessment*	van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, 'Black Athena Ten Years After: **towards a constructive re-assessment', in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, ed., Black Athena: Ten Years After, Hoofddorp: Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, special issue, Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, vols 28-29, 1996-97, pp. 11-64**
Geomantic divination (Ifa, Hakata, Sikidy) and the mankala board-game: rethinking Africa’s contribution to global cultural history	van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, 'Rethinking Africa’s contribution to global cultural history: lessons from a comparative historical analysis of mankala board-games and geomantic divination', in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, ed., Black Athena: Ten Years After, Hoofddorp: Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, special issue, Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, vols 28-29, 1996-97, pp. 221-254
Une défense de l'Afrocentrisme contre Stephen Howe	van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2000, ‘Le point de vue de Wim van Binsbergen’, in: Autour d’un livre. **Afrocentrism, de Stephen Howe, et Afrocentrismes: L’histoire des Africains entre Amériqu**e et l'Egypte, de Jean-Pierre chrétien [ sic ] , François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar et Claude-Hélène Perrot (dir.), par Mohamed Mbodj, Jean Copans et Wim van Binsbergen, *Politique* africaine, no.79, octobre 2000, pp. 175-180
Dans le troisième millénaire avec Black Athena?	W.M.J. van Binsbergen, 2000, ‘Dans le troisième millénaire avec Black Athena?’, in: Fauvelle-Aymar, F.-X., Chrétien, J.-P., & Perrot, C.-H., **Afrocentrismes: L’histoire des Africains entre Égypte et Amérique, Paris: Karthala, pp. 127-150**

some of the items above have been published in: W.M.J. van Binsbergen, ed., Black Athena: Ten Years After, TALANTA volumes XXVII-XVIII (1996-1997), which has been out of print since 1998; a revised and much expanded reprint of this book is now in the press with LIT Verlag/ Transaction Press, under the title Black Athena Alive. You may write to the publishers to reserve a copy of the reprint edition.

It is impossible to appreciate, leave alone to participate in, the debates on Black Athena and Afrocentricity without at least some access to the enormous literature which serves as a background to these debates. Moreover, these debates themselves have meanwhile generated a substantial literature in their own right. Both debates touch on a wide range on previously detached fields of scholarship, ranging from African history to Greek and Egyptian mythology, Egyptology, Assyriology, classics, archaeology, historical linguistics, anthropology, etc. Even scholars who are certified specialists in any of these fields, are likely to be virtually ignorant of some, or many, of the other fields. As a result, these debates are characterised by the fact that, while eliciting considerable passion, they are inevitably conducted by partial or total lay people. The enormity of this situation calls for easily accessible and extensive bibliographical information.

All pages in this site have been indexed with our internal search facility, which is particularly useful to open up the contents of the very extensive bibliographical sections. For internal search, the search box below is to be set to 'Search This Site'. Incidentally, this search facility yields excellent quick results for the web as a whole when set to 'Search The Web'.

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the illustration used on this page is adapted from the image of a black-figure Greek vase from Athens, late 7th to early 5th century, originally representing a warrior arming himself ; the accurate and scaled representation of the continents amounts of course to an artistic liberty totally anachronistic in the original iconographic context. At the same time it evokes the centricity of Africa (with a focus on Ancient Egypt), and its relations with Ancient Greece -- some of the guiding ideas of this website. Finally, the illustration (by showing a modern map on an ancient vase) is an ironic comment on the mutual accusations, typical of the debates around Black Athena and Afrocentricity, to the effect that opponents have distorted ancient evidence so as to let it serve today's political priorities.

page last modified: 10-04-02 12:30:08