Book Review: Yurugu: An Afrikan-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior by Dr. Marimba Ani
Completed! This book sat on a shelf for two decades. Feels like completing Marx’s “Capital”, it’s that conceptually unrelenting, that much of a paradigm shifter/attacker. Though, i would like to talk to Dr. Ani about how the core contention that the very seed of European culture i.e. “the asili” is the embodiment of a despirtualized violence, seems undermined by a depiction of Homer as expressing a worldview prior to Plato that could have proffered another kind of Western culture, “Yurugu”, turning anthropology on its head and using it to look closely at all things Western from capitalism to imperialism to the environment and creating an African centered schematic to explain Europe, is that book. With chapters on aesthetics, religion, the image of self (Europeans) the image of others, you can look at sections of it, you can read the intro and sections.
Because Ani says you can’t critique Europe with a European method (“Masters tools”) she creates an African centered analysis of Greek/European culture that is rooted in a Kiswahili languaged concept of “the asili” the seed which births a conceptual framework called “the utamawazo” and an energetic disposition to power this framework “the utamaroho” all of this then can be embodied in the Dogon term “Yurugu”, a mythic male being that left the womb without his female twin and roams the world incomplete. With this framework “racism” “sexism” “ecological pathology” would all be culturally grounded as “Yuruguism”. Key to Yurugu is the complete annihilating of the Western idea of “universalism” & how this is simply a strategy for European culture to center itself as neutral, normal and take power in a thousand ways from Christianity to “classical art”.
The seed or asili seems to me not a small issue to work through because it’s basically the “why” of the rest of the critique and how Afrocentrism seems to me to sometimes fall into Western bio determinism, and i am curious for a look that calls out the Euro ruling class specifically, but still i am on board for the rest and am grateful for her even taking this on. Modupeooooo (a big thanks in Lucumi). #marimbaani #afrocentric #bookreview #blackstudies#panafrican
