Book Review

Methods/Theory

Yaacov Shavit's concern is with the Afrocentric reconstruction of ancient history seen as a reflection of the predicament of African-Americans in the last third of the twentieth century. He rightly connects the rise of historical Afrocentrism to the decline of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and black disappointment with the lack of achievement in integration. Shavit briefly describes "separatist Afrocentrists," those who see Africans and their civilizations as essentially and permanently different from, and better than, all others. His stated concern, however, is with nonseparatist Afrocentrism, "which tries to prove that black culture was the source of influence to which Western civilization is indebted" (p. 10).This, indeed, is his overall theme. He cannot, however, resist opportunities to tease Afrocentrists for the inconsistency between the separatist and nonseparatist approaches. Within nonseparatism Shavit weaves together two themes: Africa as a continental homeland to which the world is indebted, and ancient Egypt as the epitome of Africa and source of African and world cultures.

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This book has had a long gestation, as indicated by its numerous footnotes and 44 pages of bibliography. Shavit's thoroughness and erudition led him to be pipped at the post by two smaller but still substantial books: Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History, by W. J. Moses (1998), and Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes, by Stephen Howe (1998). The author admits that these books are similar to his own both in their topic and their skeptical attitude toward it.Nevertheless, he distinguishes his work, which convincingly portrays Afrocentrism and even Egyptocentrism as significant phenomena among African Americans, from Afrotopia, in which they are seen as marginal to a larger African-American folk historiography with which Moses is sympathetic.

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