African Pyramids of Knowledge: Kemet, Afrocentricity and Africology
Description
African Pyramids of Knowledge: Kemet, Afrocentricity and Africology is a landmark scholarly work that redefines the foundations of human knowledge by centering African civilizations as the originators of intellectual, scientific, and cultural systems. Written by Molefi Kete Asante, founder of Afrocentricity and one of the most prolific African American scholars, this volume establishes Africology as a legitimate human science grounded in African historical experience, epistemology, and worldview.
Through a disciplined critique of Eurocentric historiography and social science methodology, Asante demonstrates how dominant knowledge systems have obscured African intellectual contributions while universalizing European perspectives. In response, the book articulates a comprehensive Afrocentric framework that integrates cosmological, epistemological, axiological, and aesthetic dimensions of inquiry. The pyramids of Africa are presented not merely as architectural achievements but as monumental texts—encoded expressions of scientific knowledge, ethical systems, social organization, and philosophical thought.
Structured across four major sections, the book guides readers from foundational critiques of intellectual landscapes to the assertion of new cultural realities grounded in African agency. It provides methodological tools for scholars, educators, and researchers seeking to conduct African-centered analysis across history, culture, politics, psychology, and communication.
Designed for advanced undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral study, African Pyramids of Knowledge is an essential text for courses in Africology, African and African American Studies, philosophy of knowledge, and cultural theory. It stands as a discipline-shaping work that continues to influence global scholarship and reorient conversations about civilization, knowledge production, and intellectual authority.
Readers will learn how to:
- Apply the Afrocentric method to transform human reality
- Usher in a human openness to cultural pluralism unlocking of our minds for acceptance of an expansion of consciousness
- Overthrow parochialism, provincialism, and narrow Wotanic visions
- Demonstrate the usefulness of an Afrocentric approach, beginning with ancient Kemet, to questions of knowledge
African Pyramids of Knowledge delves into four areas: (1) The Intellectual Landscape, which details what constitutes the discipline of Africology, (2) A Mobilization of Ideas, which discusses the hallmarks of creative and philosophical origin as they aid in the critical process of African recovery (3) Confronting the Historical Situation, which proposes new ways to deal with the historical situation and (4) Asserting the New Cultural Reality, envisioning what innovative examination of agency could accomplish.
