Radical Insurgencies

Description

Radical Insurgencies brings together a powerful body of lecture-based scholarship by Molefi Kete Asante, the most published African American scholar, with more than one hundred authored and edited titles. This volume assembles keynote lectures, conference papers, and public intellectual interventions delivered across North America, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, and refines them into a cohesive academic work.

Spanning historical materials from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century, the book traces African insurgency as a sustained tradition of ethical resistance rather than episodic protest. Drawing on archival records, political history, Africological theory, and contemporary global analysis, Asante positions insurgency as an expression of African agency—rooted in culture, consciousness, and historical location.

The chapters engage foundational figures such as Harriet Tubman, David Walker, Marcus Garvey, and modern Pan-African theorists while advancing a rigorous critique of ideological dependency and Eurocentric frameworks. The work challenges prevailing interpretations of radicalism by asserting Systematic Nationalism and Afrocentricity as authentic African-centered intellectual traditions.

Notably, several chapters are based on speeches and international conference presentations, including those at scholarly forums in Vancouver, Harare, and Guangzhou. This lecture-based foundation gives the text its distinctive clarity, urgency, and pedagogical strength, making it particularly effective for graduate instruction and advanced theoretical study.

Radical Insurgencies stands as both an archive of live scholarship and a definitive statement of Africological thought, affirming African centrality as essential to ethical inquiry, political analysis, and global intellectual development.