2019/05/01 by Molefi Kete Asante · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #African cultural and philosophical studies #African studies and sociopolitical issues #Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
paper · doi:10.65724/ujds1920
openalex publication_date 2019/05/01 · openalex created_date 2026/04/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
400 Years of Witnessing is a poetic-historical memoir grounded in Afrocentric epistemology, ritualized memory, and diasporic consciousness. Dr. Asante positions poetry as informed art—a disciplined intellectual practice through which African historical memory, cosmology, resistance, and continuity are preserved and activated. The text rejects linear historiography in favor of episodic, diachronic witnessing, aligning with African oral tradition, ancestral invocation, and cultural memory systems. The work functions simultaneously as memoir, historical archive, ritual text, and philosophical intervention, situating African people as conscious historical agents across four centuries.