The African Scholar in the Western Academy

Abstract

In this essay, I push the discursive envelope on what it means to speak of a particular space, location, and position of the “Black Scholar” in the (Western) academy and its colonial satellites globally. The Black Scholar is not about racializing the identity of Blackness (or Black subject as simply an intellectual of Black identity) nor a pursuit for “an essential Black subject.” Rather, it is about an appreciation of the interface of critical (Black) scholarship and creative intellectual thought and practice that goes back through time as a counterpoint and challenge to dominant ideologies, including “ideologies of the authentic.” It is argued that the Black Scholar is fundamentally about an intellectual praxis informed by an African sense of history, culture, identity, community knowledge, and political work to bring about change in the lives of African peoples.