Abstract
Recently, there has been confusion regarding the personality of people of African descent living in the West. This identity crisis is an issue rooted in African and Africana history. However, recent questions asked by newer generations of Africans in the diasporas warrant a re-thinking of this problem. In view of this, I set out in this essay with three objectives. First, I demonstrate that the personhood and identity of the descendants of African slaves have been compromised by the process of the enslavement of their ancestors. I argue that the present identity crisis in the diasporas is denotative of this problem. Two, I show that the identity crisis is ontological rather than linguistic. I argue that the yearning of the descendants to express their native selfhood is an ontological struggle to reclaim their personhood in Africa and this is a nausea carried over from their enslaved ancestors. As a corollary, I show that the enslaved ancestors are still in slavery even in death, and that they lack the recognition – ‘African ancestors’. Three, I explore the corpus of African philosophy to illustrate the various paths through which African enslaved ancestors and their descendants can gain authentic African personhood and identity. Particularly, I demonstrate that the bones of the African enslaved ancestors have to be exhumed and brought to Africa for reburial into freedom to enable them to become African ancestors thereby gaining posthumous African personhood and identity. The import of this is to enable their descendants to begin their own process of gaining African personhood and identity, which begins with proper burying of their own forebears, the enslaved ancestors. Finally, I ground this discourse on the matrix of land and man in African philosophy.