Is it Pan-Africanism if it’s not Revolutionary?

• In Event: Revolutionary Pan-Africanism and Black Internationalism in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Description for Program

Names are historical and political, particularly for the peoples of Africa on the continent and its diaspora. There have been numerous collective attempts to name ourselves as dispersed African peoples in the Americas, from Negro to Colored to Black to African American and Afro-Descendant. Our political ideologies and objectives are not immune to this struggle to name ourselves. This paper explores various depictions of Pan-Africanism in our political imaginaries by asking what the essence of Pan-African politics and praxis is, whether the modifier is necessary, or, put slightly differently, should we even call it Pan-Africanism if it is not “revolutionary?”

Author

• Layla Brown, Northeastern University