Seizing the Power to Define!" Afrocentric Inquiry and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem Miciah Z. Yehudah Doctoral Dissertation Doctoral Committee Advisory Chair: Iyelli Ichile; Ph.D. Temple University, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, United States of America This dissertation critically examines the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, a group of African American Hebrews from Chicago that migrated to Liberia in 1967 and Israel in 1969. The greater part of the scholarship engaging the group since 1967 has consistently labeled them along four lines: as a people seeking constant external acceptance; as a cultic or "new religious movement"; as an oppressed and downtrodden people seeking success in any way in which it could be achieved; or as a people with a strange affinity towards Jewish people so extreme that they intend not only to emulate and eradicate them but to serve as their replacements. In the literature reviewed it was rare that the actual philosophy of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem was interrogated. In the rare cases in which their philosophies were examined they were situated only in regards to their relationship with an already assumed universal White normativity. In studying the group, methodological concerns arise, as do questions with regards to who the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem truly are. To investigate the methodological parameters of studying the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem the Afrocentric Paradigm is employed. Afrocentric inquiry's focus on agency and the privileging of the voice of the African subjects within its own narrative differs drastically from the methodology underlying those scholars that have studied the group previously. In order to explore who the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem identify with (orientation), how they navigate the issue of epistemology as both a people of African and Israelite heritage (grounding), and how they define freedom and its parameters in conversation with the larger African world they claim to be amongst (location) this dissertation analyzes major publications of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem since the 1980s. This work challenges the argument that the Afrocentric Paradigm is ill suited to appropriately study the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem. / African American Studies

Thesis (MA (VA)(Visual Arts))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / This thesis aims to assess the extent to which the African curated exhibition, Dak’Art: Biennale de l’art africain contemporain , succeeds in subverting hegemonic Western representations of African art as necessarily ‘exotic’ and ‘Other.’ My investigation of the Dak’Art biennale in this thesis is informed and preceded by a study of evolutionist assumptions towards African art and the continuing struggle for command over the African voice. I outline the trajectory of African art from primitive artifact to artwork, highlighting the prejudices that have kept Africans from being valued as equals and unique artists in their own right. I then look at exhibiting techniques employed to move beyond perceptions of the tribal, to subvert the exoticising tendency of the West and remedy the marginalised position of the larger African artistic community.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The focus of this dissertation is the examination of the relationship between space and identity in recent narratives of migration, in contemporary African literature. Migrant narratives suggest that there is a correlation between identity formation and the types of boundaries and borders migrants engage with in their various attempts to find new homes away from their old ones. Be it voluntary or involuntary, the process of migrating from a familial place transforms the individual who has to negotiate new social formations; and tensions often accrue from the confrontation between one’s culture and the culture of the receiving society. Return migration to the supposed country of origin is an equally important trajectory dealt with in African migrant literature. The reverse narrative stipulates similar tensions between one’s diasporic culture – the culture of the diasporic space – and the culture of the homeland. Thus, intra- and inter-continental migrations and diaspora is a bifurcated inquiry that examines both outward and return migrations. These movements reveal the ways in which Africans make sense of their Africanity and their place in the world. The concepts of “border”, “boundary” and “borderland” are useful to examine notions of difference and separation both within the nation-state and in relation to transnational, intra-African as well as inter-continental exchanges. I focus more fully on these notions in the texts that examine migrations within Africa, both outward and return movements. This study is not only interested in the physical features of borders, boundaries or borderlands, but also on their consequences for the processes of identity formation and translation, and how they can help to reveal the social and historical characteristics of diasporic formations. What undergirds much of the analysis is the assumption that the negotiation of belonging and space cannot be separated from the crossing or breaching of borders and boundaries; and that these negotiations entail attempts to enter the borderland, which is a zone of exchange, crisscrossing networks, dissolution of notions of singularity and exclusive identities. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die fokus van hierdie proefskrif is ‘n ondersoek na die verhouding tussen ruimte en identiteit in onlangse migrasie-narratiewe in kontemporêre Afrika-literatuur. Migrasienarratiewe dui op ’n korrelasie tussen identiteitsvorming en die soorte skeidings en grense waarmee migrante gemoeid raak in hulle onderskeie pogings om nuwe tuistes weg van die oues te vind. Hetsy willekeurig of gedwonge, die migrasieproses weg van ’n familiale plek verander die individu wat nuwe sosiale formasies moet oorkom, en spanning neem dikwels toe weens die konfrontasie tussen die eie kultuur en dié van die ontvangersamelewing. Migrasie terug na die sogenaamde land van herkoms is net so ’n belangrike onderwerp in Afrika-migrasieliteratuur. Die terugkeernarratief stipuleer dat daar ooreenkomstige spanning heers tussen ’n persoon se diasporiese kultuur – die kultuur van die diaspora-ruimte – en die kultuur van die land van oorsprong. Die ondersoek na intra- en interkontinentale migrasies en diasporas is dus ’n tweeledige proses wat uitwaartse sowel as terugkerende migrasies beskou. Hierdie bewegings openbaar die ware maniere waarop Afrikane sin maak uit hulle Afrikaniteit en hulle plek in die wêreld. Die konsepte van “grens”, “grenslyn” en “grensgebied” is nuttig wanneer die begrippe van verskil en verwydering ondersoek word binne die nasiestaat asook in verhouding tot transnasionale, intra-Afrika en interkontinentale wisseling. Ek fokus meer volledig op hierdie begrippe in die tekste wat ondersoek instel na migrasie binne Afrika, beide uitwaartse en terugkerende bewegings. Hierdie studie gaan nie net oor die fisiese kenmerke van grense, grenslyne en grensgebiede nie, maar bestudeer ook die gevolge daarvan op die prosesse van identiteitsvorming en vertaling, en die manier waarop hulle kan help om die sosiale en historiese eienskappe van diasporiese formasies te openbaar. ’n Groot deel van die analise word ondersteun deur die aanname dat die onderhandeling tussen tuishoort en ruimte nie geskei kan word van die oorsteek of deurbreek van grense en grenslyne nie, en dat hierdie onderhandelinge lei tot pogings om die grensgebied te betree, waar die grensgebied gekenmerk word deur wisseling, kruising van netwerke en die verwording van begrippe soos sonderlingheid en eksklusiewe identiteite.

A pesquisa empírica desta dissertação foi realizada junto à comunidade do Boqueirão, em Vila Bela da Santíssima Trindade/MT, no contexto sistêmico e arqueológico, entre 2008 e 2011. Através dela, procuramos interpretar processos culturais nessa área remanescente de quilombo, relacionados a elementos da paisagem, em especial as árvores. De um lado, consideramos a importância que as plantas ocupam nos cultos afro-brasileiros, e, de outro, o potencial mnemônico e distintivo das árvores, capazes de despertar recordações nesse grupo de afrodescendentes e sua memória. Os dados coletados no contexto sistêmico foram aplicados na interpretação do sítio arqueológico, com a intenção de ampliar a variação diacrônica da análise. Paralelamente ao levantamento no Boqueirão, realizamos pesquisa de campo em cinco terreiros de cultos afro-brasileiros, quatro em na região metropolitana de São Paulo e um na zona rural de Cuiabá. Chegamos a parte do passado familiar de membros dessa comunidade, e também de um passado ancestral, pois alguns dos dados obtidos estão relacionados até mesmo a suas origens africanas. Esta dissertação também tem como objetivo contribuir para o incremento dos estudos africanos e afro-brasileiros no campo da arqueologia. Concluímos que existem árvores cujo significado simbólico tem correspondência com o modo de pensamento da comunidade, tanto dos terreiros estudados, como aponta a literatura sobre a religiosidade afro-brasileira, quanto no quilombo do Boqueirão. Concluímos também que os estudos antropológicos e sociológicos sobre o Negro no Brasil deveriam ser mais considerados pela arqueologia e, sobretudo pela arqueologia da diáspora africana, uma das ramificações dessa disciplina em que se pautaram nossos estudos. / The empirical research of this dissertation was conducted in an archeological site in the Boqueirão community, in Vila Bela da Santíssima Trindade (state of Mato Grosso, Brazil), in the systemic context between 2008 and 2011. Throughout this work, we have aimed to perceive cultural processes in this quilombo remnant area, related to certain landscape elements, especially trees. We have considered not only the important role of plants in the Afro-Brazilian religions, but their distinctive and mnemonic potential as well, able to bring up reminiscences in this afro-descendant group and its memory. Data collected in the systemic context were used for the interpretation of the archeological site, in order to broaden the diachronic variation of the analysis. Parallel to the data collection in Boqueirão, we have conducted field work in five Afro-Brazilian \"terreiros\" (places of worship), four in the Metropolitan Area of São Paulo and one in Cuiabá countryside (in the state of Mato Grosso). We were able to trace back to part of the family background of some members of this community, in addition to part of their ancient past, for some of the data obtained led to their African roots. This dissertation also aims to contribute to the general improvement of African and Afro-Brazilian studies in the field of Archaeology. We conclude that there are trees which bear a symbolic significance to the way of thinking of the community, both inside the studied \"terreiros\", in accordance with the Afro-Brazilian religion literature, and also in the Boqueirão Quilombo. We also conclude that anthropological and sociological studies about the black population in Brazil should be taken more into consideration by Archaeology, and, above all, by the Archaeology of the African Diaspora, one the branches of this field of study upon which our studies were based.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento CientÃfico e TecnolÃgico / Esta produÃÃo acadÃmica analisa a migraÃÃo, presenÃa e permanÃncia de estudantes oriundos de distintos paÃses africanos para o Brasil, especificamente, na cidade de Fortaleza-CE, nos processos que designo de âDiÃspora Africana no Cearà no sÃculo XXIâ. Esta DiÃspora à fruto da migraÃÃo estudantil internacional de alunos de Ãfrica que, se deslocam ao Brasil para desenvolver formaÃÃo universitÃria em instituiÃÃes de ensino superior (IES) pÃblicas e privadas. Interessa-me compreender os processos de ressignificaÃÃes identitÃrias nas trajetÃrias e percursos desses estudantes nesta DiÃspora, focando o seu cotidiano, a partir da trÃplice dimensÃo: ser negro, africano e imigrante âtemporÃrioâ. Este estudo traz, como aspecto inovador o fato de investigar, nÃo apenas a realidade dos alunos africanos inseridos em universidades pÃblicas, auferindo bolsas de estudos, no Ãmbito de convÃnios, como o Programa Estudantes ConvÃnio â GraduaÃÃo (PEC-G), Programa Estudante ConvÃnio â PÃs-GraduaÃÃo (PEC-PG) e outros acordos, mas adentrar, tambÃm, na realidade vivenciada pelo amplo contingente de africanos matriculados em faculdades particulares, a dependerem da ajuda econÃmica de parentes e familiares residentes em Ãfrica e ao redor do mundo. Este grupo de estudantes, hoje majoritÃrio, apresenta inserÃÃes precÃrias no contexto de Fortaleza, enfrentando dificuldades econÃmico-financeiras, para garantir o pagamento de mensalidades nas instituiÃÃes universitÃrias privadas e manter a prÃpria sobrevivÃncia nesta metrÃpole. Assim, este segmento de estudantes africanos tem que se envolver em trabalhos informais e precarizados, considerados âirregularesâ pelas autoridades brasileiras, sujeitos a violaÃÃo de direitos trabalhistas, com longas jornadas e baixos salÃrios. Neste estudo sociolÃgico exploro distintas esferas da vida desses sujeitos nos percursos diaspÃricos, quais sejam: cotidiano; inserÃÃo no contexto universitÃrio; trabalho; interaÃÃes com organismos e instituiÃÃes pÃblicas e privados no acesso a mercadorias e serviÃos; associativismo em agremiaÃÃes estudantis; utilizaÃÃo das tecnologias de informaÃÃo e comunicaÃÃo (TICâs) e das redes sociais virtuais na internet; processos de saÃde e de adoecimento; conjuntura de violÃncia urbana e, mesmo, violÃncia que culminam com a morte de estudantes africanos; formas de lazer; processos de sociabilidade entre africanos e brasileiros; festas africanas e interaÃÃes afetivossexuais. O estudo revela como os estudantes oriundos de Ãfrica sÃo alvo de preconceito e discriminaÃÃo racial, por conta da cor da pele e da prÃpria origem africana. Neste processo analÃtico, trabalho como fio condutor, a ideia de que, nas trajetÃrias e percursos diaspÃricos, os estudantes africanos constituem mÃltiplos pertencimentos identitÃrios, forjados em Ãfrica e no cotidiano no Brasil que, ora tendem à afirmaÃÃo, ora tendem à negaÃÃo de africanidade e negritude. As identidades sÃo ressignificadas, particularmente, no contato com a alteridade racial e cultural no contexto cearense, em meio a mÃltiplas formas de inclusÃo e de discriminaÃÃo racial. As identidades ressignificadas expressam-se em comportamentos, atitudes, modos de vida, formas de ser e estar. Estes processos sÃo mediados por dimensÃes objetivas como, roupas, vestimentas e trajes, calÃados, cabelos tranÃados, bem como por dimensÃes simbÃlicas, como lÃnguas faladas no cotidiano, com destaque para o crioulo, culinÃria e modos de alimentaÃÃo, expressÃes religiosas, sexualidades e discursos. Nesta anÃlise compreensiva, utilizo como aportes teÃricos, os estudos PÃs-Coloniais, a partir das ideias de William Du Bois, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, dentre outros. No plano metodolÃgico, utilizo, como recursos investigativos, a observaÃÃo sistemÃtica, entrevistas abertas, em profundidade, mescladas com conversas informais, tanto a nÃvel presencial, como no espaÃo virtual, sempre registradas no âcaderno de campoâ. / This academic production aims at evaluating the migration, presence and permanence of students in Brazil from different African countries, specifically in Fortaleza-CE, according to developments that I designate as the "African Diaspora in Cearà in the 21st Century." This Diaspora is the result of the international migration of African students who travel to Brazil to obtain a university education in public and private institutions (IES). I am engaged in understanding the processes of identity-related re-signification in the trajectories and paths of these students in this Diaspora, focusing on their daily life, from a triple dimension configuration: being black, being African and being a "temporary" immigrant. This study has as an innovative aspect the fact of investigating, not only the daily life of African students enrolled in public universities, receiving scholarships, within the scope of the agreements, such as the Programa Estudantes ConvÃnio â Under-graduation (PEC-G), and the Programa Estudante ConvÃnio âGraduation (PEC-PG) and other agreements, but also the experience of a large contingent of Africans enrolled in private colleges, depending on the financial assistance of relatives and relatives residing in Africa and other parts of the world. This group of students, the largest now, presents precarious insertions in the context of Fortaleza, facing economic and financial difficulties to guarantee the payment of tuition fees in private university institutions and to maintain their own survival in the metropolis. Thus, this segment of African students has to engage in informal and precarious jobs, considered "irregular" by Brazilian authorities, subject to violations of labor rights, with long hours and low wages. In this sociological study I explore different spheres of life of these subjects who are distinguished for their diaspora-related journeys, namely, daily life, insertion in the university context, job, Interactions with public and private bodies and institutions to access goods and services, integration with student associations, use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and virtual social networks on the Internet, health and illness processes, the conjuncture of urban violence and even gender violence that culminate in the death of African students, leisure forms, sociability between Africans and Brazilians, African celebrations, besides sexual and affective interactions. The study reveals how students from Africa are subjected to prejudice and racial discrimination because of their color and African origin. In this analytic process, I use as a guiding thread, the idea that, in diaspora-related trajectories and journeys, African students stand for multiple identity shapes, forged in Africa and in everyday life in Brazil that on the one hand, tend to affirm, but on the other hand, tend to deny Africanism and blackness. Identities are re-signified, particularly, in the contact with racial and cultural alterity in the context of CearÃ, in the midst of multiple forms of racial inclusion and discrimination. Re-signified identities are expressed in behaviors, attitudes, ways of life, and ways of being. These processes are mediated by objective dimensions such as clothing, costumes, shoes, braided hair, as well as by symbolic dimensions such as the languages spoken in everyday life, especially Creole, cooking and eating modes, religious expressions, sexuality and speech. In this evaluating analysis, I use as theoretical contributions, post colonial studies, from the ideas of William Du Bois, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, among others. At the methodological level, I use investigative resources as systematic observation, open in-depth interviews mixed with informal conversations, both face-to-face and in virtual space, always recorded in the "field notebook".

This study investigates how Yoruba migrants make meaning of Yoruba Indigenous knowledges in the African Diaspora, specifically within the geopolitical space of dominant Canadian culture. This research is informed by the lived experiences of 16 Africans of Yoruba descent now living in Toronto, Canada, and explores how these first and second generation migrants construct the spiritual and linguistic dimensions of Yoruba Indigenous identities in their everyday lives. While Canada is often imagined as a sanctuary for progressive politics, it nonetheless is also a hegemonic space where inequities continue to shape the social engagements of everyday life. Hence, this dissertation situates the historical and contemporary realities of colonialism and imperialism, by beginning with the premise that people in diasporic Yoruba communities are continuously affected by the complicated interplay of various forms of oppression such as racism, and inequities based on language, gender and religion. This study is situated within a socio–historical and cosmological context to effectively examine colonialism’s impact on Yoruba Indigenous knowledges. Yet, inversely, this study also involves discussion of how these knowledges are utilized as decolonizing tools of navigation, subversion and resistance. The central focus of this research is the articulation of colonial oppression and how it has reconfigured Yoruba Indigenous identities even within a purportedly ‘multicultural’ space. First, the historical dis/continuities of the Yoruba language in Yorubaland are investigated. This strand of the research considers British colonization, and more specifically, the Church Missionary Society’s (CMS) efforts at translating the Bible into Yoruba as pivotal in the colonial project. What kinds of categories does missionary education create that differ from pre-colonial categories of Yoruba Indigenous identity? How are these new identities shaped along lines of race and gender? In other words, what happens when Yoruba cosmology encounters colonialism? The second strand of this research investigates how these historical colonialisms have set the framework for enduring contemporary colonialisms that continue to fracture Yoruba Indigenous knowledges. This dissertation offers insights relevant to diversity and equitable pedagogy through careful consideration of the complicated strategies used by participants in their negotiations of Yoruba identities within a context of social inequity and colonialism.

This study investigates how Yoruba migrants make meaning of Yoruba Indigenous knowledges in the African Diaspora, specifically within the geopolitical space of dominant Canadian culture. This research is informed by the lived experiences of 16 Africans of Yoruba descent now living in Toronto, Canada, and explores how these first and second generation migrants construct the spiritual and linguistic dimensions of Yoruba Indigenous identities in their everyday lives. While Canada is often imagined as a sanctuary for progressive politics, it nonetheless is also a hegemonic space where inequities continue to shape the social engagements of everyday life. Hence, this dissertation situates the historical and contemporary realities of colonialism and imperialism, by beginning with the premise that people in diasporic Yoruba communities are continuously affected by the complicated interplay of various forms of oppression such as racism, and inequities based on language, gender and religion. This study is situated within a socio–historical and cosmological context to effectively examine colonialism’s impact on Yoruba Indigenous knowledges. Yet, inversely, this study also involves discussion of how these knowledges are utilized as decolonizing tools of navigation, subversion and resistance. The central focus of this research is the articulation of colonial oppression and how it has reconfigured Yoruba Indigenous identities even within a purportedly ‘multicultural’ space. First, the historical dis/continuities of the Yoruba language in Yorubaland are investigated. This strand of the research considers British colonization, and more specifically, the Church Missionary Society’s (CMS) efforts at translating the Bible into Yoruba as pivotal in the colonial project. What kinds of categories does missionary education create that differ from pre-colonial categories of Yoruba Indigenous identity? How are these new identities shaped along lines of race and gender? In other words, what happens when Yoruba cosmology encounters colonialism? The second strand of this research investigates how these historical colonialisms have set the framework for enduring contemporary colonialisms that continue to fracture Yoruba Indigenous knowledges. This dissertation offers insights relevant to diversity and equitable pedagogy through careful consideration of the complicated strategies used by participants in their negotiations of Yoruba identities within a context of social inequity and colonialism.

This thesis compares how Lilian Ngoyi of South Africa and Fannie Lou Hamer of the United States crafted political identities and assumed powerful leadership, respectively, in struggles against racial oppression via the African National Congress and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. The study asserts that Ngoyi and Hamer used alternative sources of personal power which arose from their location in the intersecting social categories of culture, gender and class. These categories challenge traditional disciplinary boundaries and complicate any analysis of political economy, state power relations and black liberation studies which minimize the contributions of women. Also, by analyzing resistance leadership squarely within both African and North American contexts, this thesis answers the call of scholar Patrick Manning for a “homeland and diaspora” model which positions Africa itself within the historiography of transnational academic debates.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Thesis (MA (English Literature))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / Notions of home, belonging, and identity haunt the creative minds of fiction writers belonging to and imagining the African diaspora. Detailing the ways in which two diasporic authors “re-visit history” and “re-negotiate identity”, this thesis grapples with the complexity of these notions and explores the boundaries of displacement and the search for new home-spaces. Finally, it engages with the ways in which both authors produce “new tribes” beyond the bounds of national or racial imaginaries. Following the “introduction”, the second chapter titled “River Crossing” offers a reading of Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore, which features a black African man fleeing his home-country in search of asylum in England. Here, I explore Phillips’s representation of the “postcolonial passage” to the north, and of the “shock of arrival” in England. I then analyse the ways in which the novel enacts a process of “messing with national identity”. While retracing the history of post-Windrush migration to England in order to engage contemporary immigration, A Distant Shore, I argue, also re-visits the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In the final section, I discuss “the economy of asylum” as I explore the fates of the novel’s two central characters: the African asylum-seeker and the outcast white English woman. My reading aims to advance two points made by the novel. Firstly, that individuals are not contained by the nations and cultures they belong to; rather, they are owned by the circumstances that determine the conditions of their displacement. Phillips strives to tell us that individuals remain the sites at which exclusionary discourses and theories about race, belonging and identity are re-elaborated. Secondly, I argue that no matter the effort exerted in trying to forget traumatic pasts in order to re-negotiate identity elsewhere, individuals remain prisoners of the chronotopes they have inhabited at the various stages of their passages. The third chapter focuses on Buchi Emecheta’s The New Tribe. Titled “Returning Home?”, it explores the implications of Emecheta’s reversal of the trajectory of displacement from diasporic locations to Africa. The New Tribe allows for the possibility of re-imagining the Middle Passage and re-figuring the controversial notion of the return to roots. In the novel, a young black British man embarks on a journey to Africa in search of a mythic lost kingdom. While not enabling him to return to roots, this journey eventually encourages him to come to terms with his diasporic identity. Continuing to grapple with notions of “home”, now through the trope of family and by engaging the “rhetoric of return”, I explore how Emecheta re-visits the past in order to produce new identities in the present. Emecheta’s writing reveals in particular the gendered consequences of the “rhetoric of return”. Narratives of return to Africa, the novel suggests, revisit colonial fantasies and foster patriarchal gender bias. The text juxtaposes such metaphors against the lived experience of black women in order to demythologise the return to Africa and to redirect diasporic subjects to the diasporic locations that constitute genuine sites for re-negotiating identity.