Lexical Refinement
While the western humanities and social sciences have over the years
largely done away with pejorative terms such as savage ,negro , and colored in their description of African people
and phenomena, there still remains much work to be done in terms of
refining the general lexicon regarding African phenomena. Asante gives
the example of an African house being called a “hut” as a
misrepresentation of African reality (Asante, 2007, p. 43). He
articulates that there are clear differences between the eurocentric
conception of “house” and what an African may consider a home (p.
43-44). Erroneous, ethnocentric descriptions of African phenomena remain
pervasive. Africologists are concerned with refining such language for,
as aforementioned, we are primarily concerned with keeping our own
lexicon centered in African cosmological reality.
Thus, terms such as enslaved African and Maafa replaces
terms such as “slave” and “slave trade” respectively. The tropes and
subjectivities presented within lynched and decapitatedtexts adds a further, and possibly more problematic, obstacle to the
challenge of lexical refinement. The fact that these texts are written
by writers of African descent lends credence to eurocentric lexicons,
while also simultaneously allowing the inherent eurocentric nature of
such terms to masquerade as universal ideas. Both in the West and on the
African continent, eurocentric masquerades are extant throughout lynched
and decapitated texts.
To be clear, there also exists within the historical cultural milieu of
the AIP Asiatic ethnocentric interpretations of African history and
culture. They all present Africological concerns that must be addressed.
However, it is clear that the use of eurocentric theoretical frameworks
in order to intellectually engage with African phenomena has been the
primary contemporary crux of the issue at hand. The job of the
Africologist is to identify and correct such distortions of African
realities. Perhaps the most useful resources that we have for developing
a proper lexicon are oral traditions and oral histories laden with terms
only understood within an African cosmological context. Africologists
have positioned terms such as nommo , maat , andmaafa to better enhance our burgeoning lexicon. Investigating
oral tradition and oral history will further assist Africologists in
basing their writings on the historical realities of their African
subjects; and doing so will ensure the development of a clear and proper
lexicon based on African cosmological principles.