3 - Inventing Africa: Esotericism and the Creation of an Afrocentric Tradition in America

Summary

Paul Gilroy's study of African Diaspora culture, The Black Atlantic, begins with three quotes. One of them, from Friedrich Nietzsche, reads:

We have left the land and have embarked. We have burned our bridges behind us – indeed we have gone further and destroyed the land behind us. … Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it had offered more freedom – and there is no longer any land.

The Nietzsche quote can be seen as a reflection on modernity and the futility of attempts to turn back and return to a stage that can only exist as a memory and an idealized past. In the African diaspora, not even the memory or the language remains to form an ideal of a lost homeland. Following Nietzsche's description of the state of modern man, we can claim that the African diaspora offers the most intense form of homelessness. For a long time European historical discourse construed Africa as a place without anything to offer in the way of culture or history. For those of African descent there was thus no history to claim, no cultural achievement to speak about. The culture, language and history that were available were those of Europe, representing a culture that in many ways had looked upon African people as being, at best, second-class citizens.