BWALU-BWA-NTU (NTU-OLOGY): A FRAMEWORK FOR ADVANCING THE ORGANIZATION OF AFRICANA-STUDIES

7/31/2019 BWALU-BWA-NTU (NTU-OLOGY): A FRAMEWORK FOR ADVANCING THE ORGANIZATION OF AFRICANA-STUDIES

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BWA LU- BWA - NTU ( N TU- OLOGY ) : A

FR AM EW OR K FOR AD VAN CI N G TH E

OR GAN I ZATI ON OF AFR I CAN A- S TUD I ES

By Asar Imhotep (July 25, 2012)

The MOCHA-Versity Institute of Philosophy and Research

luntu/lumtu/muntu

There is very little that is more important for any people to know than their history, culture,

traditions and language; for without such knowledge, one remains naked and defenseless

before the world.Marcus Tillus Cicero (106 BC 43 BC)

The African-American Cultural Development Project (AACDP) is an ongoing national venture which

seeks to consciously create a viable and robust African-American culture (see Imhotep 2009).1 I

have discussed the nature of culture and why African-Americans need to develop one in other

publications (Imhotep 2009, 2012), so I will not go in-depth here. I will, however, provide a brief

context for which the themes brought out in this essay are relevant. The aim here is to provide a

national organizing framework by which to teach Africana-Studies (and phenomena in general) in a

1Who I call the Bakala, Nkala, or Nkale.


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manner that better reflects the holistic approach to categorizing and studying life as done

historically by African people.

Dr. Amos Wilson (1998) reminds us that culture is a social machine, a power grid or system. It is a

holistic system which is composed of a number of sub-systems which are organically related to

each other. I argue that a culture is simply the ways by which a population solves its problems and

meets the challenges of its environment. It is a set of rules and procedures, together with a

supporting set of ideas and values, designed to create a certain type of society and a certain type of

human-being.

For Dr. Wade Nobles, culture can be defined as follows:

Culture is a process representing the vast structure of behaviors, ideas, attitudes,

values, habits, beliefs, customs, language, rituals ceremonies and practices peculiar

to a particular group of people and which provides them with a general design for

living and patterns for interpreting reality.2

It is the latter part of Nobles definition of culture that concerns us and sets the tone for our

discourse here today: [culture as the] patterns for interpreting reality. In my 2009 publication TheBakala of North America, The Living Suns of Vitality: In Search of a Meaningful Name for African-

Americans, I argued that there were essentially 9 Laws of Culture.3 These 9 Laws are as follows:

1. Culture is conscious of itself.2. Culture is a collective and relatively agreed upon method(s) of expression and problem solving

techniques.

3. Culture is rooted in a philosophy of purpose. This means all aspects of the culture serve a purposeand is intended to develop a certain type of human being (and society in general).

4. Culture has a cosmology/cosmogony.5. Culture has its own unique language that encapsulates how that population interprets reality.6. Culture has social and physical institutions that maintain and nurture current and future forms of

expression. Culture must forever be expanding and contracting.7. The cultural elements of expression must be ritualized. Ritual keeps the history and philosophy of the

people in the collective memory. Rituals help to strengthen bonds within the community; between its

members and their ancestors.

8. Culture has a constituency, who are somewhat conservative in nature, who are the living memory ofthe culture and who can reorient the culture when it begins to stray from its foundational principles.

These constituencies are the living libraries that pass on the history from one generation to another.

9. Lastly, culture has a formal rite of passage so members of the community have clear points in timethat mark ones development and maturity within that community. The rites of passage formally

introduces the finer points of the culture, prepares them to adequately handle and develop power

within the culture, introduces the members of the corporate community to their purpose and

2Nobles, personal communication.

3 I also added 5 primary objectives of culture. I argue thatCulture is the institutionalized organization

of the physical and social forces of life that aim to: 1) aid the human person in developing ones

powers of being, 2) provide tools that enable one to tower over lifes challenges, 3) encourages one to

celebrate lifes beauties, 4) fertilizes ones seeds of greatness and 5) encourages the person to

discover new more satisfying dimensions of being human.Dr. Wilson sees culture as havingprimarily one objective, and that is the obtaining and maintaining of power.


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relationship to the opposite sex, the community, the earth and their duties as parents; and finally, it

provides an environment from which the individual can discover knowledge of self.

The two laws that undergird this discussion are numbers 4 (cosmology) and 5 (language used to

interpret reality). As Nobles notes in his article, The Infusion of African and African American

Content: A Question of Content and Intent:

The system of culture teaches the people to recognize phenomena and to respect certain

logical relations amongst phenomena.

This discussion is about developing a centralized methodology and framework for recognizing

phenomena, demonstrating the relationship between phenomena and categorizing these

relationships in a way that can be used as a pedagogical tool in all stages of learning (from pre-k to

the university level) in African/African-American based learning institutions. Not only do we want

to make this a part of our educational milieu, but we want to be able to translate this into common

experience: into the general culture.

In other words, this is about education and educationas well as curriculum developmentare

cultural phenomena. We aim not to simply infuse culture into the curriculum, but to make ourculture THE curriculum. My hope is that the following framework will be utilized in the structure of

curriculum creation in our schools and in the communiversity at large. This is where

cosmology/cosmogony and language become important in this discussion.

THE ROLE OF COSMOLOGY AND LANGUAGE

Cosmologyis the academic discipline that seeks to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and

ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order. Cosmogony

(or cosmogeny) is any scientific theory concerning the coming into existence, or origin, of the

cosmos or universe, or about how what sentient beings perceive as "reality" came to be. I would

add that cosmology/cosmogony, from an African perspective, also includes theories for mans placeand purpose within this creation/universe. So African cosmology/cosmogony is not only concerned

with how the universe was formed (continues to form), but speculates what we as human beings

are supposed to be doing and learning inside this matrix: our overall purpose.

Cosmology is central to a cultures worldview and being. The role of cosmologys importance is

central to the framework of Africana Psychology, a sub-discipline of Africana Studies. Joseph

Baldwin reaffirms its role by stating that:

African psychology is defined as a system of knowledge (philosophy, definitions, concepts,

models, procedures and practice) concerning the nature of the social universe from the

perspective of African Cosmology. African Cosmology thus provides the conceptual-

philosophical framework for African (Black) psychology.4

Daniel McCall, in the introduction of the bookWriting African History, notes the need to understand

cosmology when writing about African people. He goes on to state:

4Joseph A. Baldwin, African (Black) Psychology: Issues and Synthesis,Journal of Black Studies 16, no. 3

(1986), 243.


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Africanizing history must begin with a holistic attempt to understand the total world view

and cosmology of African peoples, for without looking at their oral history in the total context

of their thought we cannot understand the meaning that that history has for them, and why

they have preserved it. (Philips, 2005: 16) (emphasis mine).

As Malidoma Som of Burkina Faso notes in his workThe Healing Wisdom of Africa:

Cultures define themselves in terms of the ways their people perceive the cosmosThe

cosmology I am concerned with in this chapter is so essential to Dagara wisdom that

little makes sense without it; the cosmology is the foundational model for life itself.

(Som 1999: 163) (emphasis mine).

Dr. Kimbwadende K. Bunseki Fu-Kiau of the Kongo echoes the sentiments of Malidoma Som in his

workAfrican Cosmology of the Bantu Kongo. He reminds us that:

Understanding the world view of a people is the cornerstone for understanding their culture. (Fu-

Kiau 2001: 129)

In terms of language, it is a peoples language that crystallizes the organization of the structures ofthe universe and a peoples educational structure is reflective of how they see the universe. A

peoples language is its soul and character. The ideas behind the words used in association with

certain phenomena can tell you a lot about how they see themselves in relation to said phenomena.

For example, in the United States the earth is simply known as the third rock from the sun. The

word earthsimply means dirt, soil, dry land, ground. The implication is that, although we know

there is life here, the earth itself is not alive; it is seen as an object with little significance, a thing to

be conquered. This is probably why many in the European communities do not have an earth

honoring culture and feel that they can destroy the earth as long as they can make money doing so.

The paradigm is totally different among the Bantu-Kongo and it is reflected in the name given to the

earth by the Kongo people. Our planet, for those who have been initiated into the ancient African

schools, is a futu dia nkisi diakanga Kalunga mu diambu dia moyo a sachet (parcel) of medicines

tied up by Kalunga (God) for life on earth (Fu-Kiau, 2003: 111). There is a stark difference between

this planet being seen as dirt versus a futu (sachet) of medicine for life. The very phrase forces

you to think differently about the earth, and more importantly, how you treat the earth as it is your

source of healing and life. The earth is alive and should be treated with care. If one destroys the

environment, one is also destroying the sources necessary for good health and well-being. We

therefore try not to bite the hand that feeds us.

All of these philosophies are imbedded in the language and it is our perception of the environment

around us, channeled through our language and culture, which shapes our behavior and attitudes

towards that environment and the life inside of it. This leads us into the meat of our discussionwhich we will continue in the next section.


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NTUOLOGY

Western philosophy is concerned with trying to answer three basic questions: What exists?', How

do I know?', and What is valuable? Each of these questions is a discipline unto themselves,

respectively known as ontology, epistemologyand axiology. Other disciplines are noted in the quest

of understanding. We have already mentioned cosmology, but there is also logic (reasoning) and

teleologywhich is the science of becoming, or the theory that everything acts for an end purpose. All

of these research interests together constitute a peoples worldview(the way people make sense of

reality and their lived experience).

It is my contention that all research and educational disciplines, no matter the name, is really

concerned with the study ofbeing or ontology. In other words, all other disciplines (or branches of

philosophy) are sub-disciplines of ontology: they all exist to better understand ontology. Put

another way, epistemology, cosmology, axiology, logic, teleology, etc., are the research tools used to

understand ontology.

The etymological root ofontologyis the Greek word ontoswhich means being. However, this root

does not have an Indo-European origin. It is my contention that this word is a borrowing from

Africa and it derives from the word ntuwhich means life, being, existence, etc.

We are familiar with this root from the word bantuwhich means people or human-beings in the

plural (the singular being muntu). But what is being according to general African consensus?

Mogobe Ramose illuminates this notion ofbeing within an African context. He notes that:

African philosophy is consistent with the philosophic position thatmotion is the principle

of be-ing. According to this understanding, the condition of be-ing with regard to every

entity means that to be is to be in the condition of-ness. Whatever is perceived as a whole is

always a whole-ness in the sense that it ex-ists and per-sists towards that which it is yet to

be. Because this is the characteristic of every existing entity be-ing is to be understood

always as a whole-ness. (Coetzee and Roux, 2003: 380) (emphasis mine)

In other words, to be is to have motion. This association is crystallized in the ancient Egyptian word

(and deity) known as xpr to exist, being, evolution, be, come into being, occur, happen, change,

exist, come to pass, etc. This term is also present in Cameroon among the Basa-Bantu in the

following forms:


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Egyptian Corresponding Basa

xpr= happen, become, (to) transform [h3lba] = become, (to) transform

Derivative terms Derivative terms

xpri = sunrisexhpr.txprw = form

[kohl], [h3gba], [HeLa] [Hehl], [Kola],[Kolba], [kobla], refer to the idea of

comparison, equivalence, meaning, to

untie; [H3L (l3l)] = transform; [kobl3]

= match, reply, [Kobol] = result;

[kobra] = hold on to ...

In the ciLuba-Bantu language this is known variously as: Vulule / fulula (ku-) "change"; vunda (ku-)

"take shape, becoming fat/high"; Vudila (ku-) "multiply"; CidiVwile "existence itself"; ciVwa, mu

diVwa "become"; KadiVwile "Existent itself; Auto-Generator"; KaVwidila "why we exist." In the Zulu

language it is called weMvweloevolution and among the Yoruba of Nigeria it is simply known as

Ifa.

According to Janheinz Jahn, in his bookMuntu: African Culture and the Western World(1961: 101),

ntu is the universal force that never occurs apart from its manifestations. It is that force in which

Being and beings coalesce. Put another way, ntu is bothproductandproducer.

For Ramose (Coetzee and Roux, 2003: 271, 272), ntu is concrete being that temporarily becomes.

We say temporarily because to be is to be constantly in motion. Being is never a static thing, but a

constant unfolding and becoming. In other words, there is no thing at absolute rest when it applies

to ntu (at least microscopically). With this said, ntu can therefore be equated with energy. Energy

(the potential to do work), as we know it from a modern science perspective, cannot be created nor

destroyed, it can only change form (Law of the Conservation of Energy); and energy is constantly in

motion, moving as a result of various forces compelling its activity.

This is reinforced by Jahn who notes that ntu expresses, not the effect of these forces, but their

being.

But the forces act continually, and are constantly effective. Only if one could call a halt to the

whole universe, if life suddenly stood still, would ntu be revealed. (Jahn, 1961: 101)

For the Bantu people, force and matter are not separate entities or concepts. This can be applied to

African systems in general. I argue in my soon to be published workOgun, African Fire Philosophy

and the Meaning of KMTthat the basis of all African spiritual and knowledge systems, and by

extension cultural systems, are grounded in the science of perpetual evolution; in other words,

motion and its causes. This is the spirit behind ntu.

This concept is reaffirmed by Ramose when he states:

Therefore the view adopted by African epistemology is that knowledge is (the)

understanding of the nature of forces and their (cosmic) interaction. True wisdom, hence

knowledge, lies in ontological knowledge; it is the intelligence of forces, of their

hierarchy, their cohesion and their interaction. (Coetzee and Roux, 2003: 307) (emphasismine)


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What Ramose confirms, in many ways, is that ontology is the greater study by which all other

disciplines fall and seek to understand. This ontology, the knowledge of forces and motion, is at the

heart of indigenous African studies. This conceptualization is what I want to reintroduce into the

African-American psyche through a shared Africana/African-American Studies category schema

called ntuology, the study ofthe nature NTU; being and motion. Ntu-Ologyis simply Ontology, but

from the African conceptual position that all things and concepts are united under ntu.

The discipline of Ntu-Ology can also be called Longa-wa-Ntu or Bwalu-Bwa-Ntu (ciLuba longa

"study"; Bwalu "science, business, history"; wa (connective morpheme synonymous with the

preposition "of"); ntu "being"). We choose ntu over ontos because ntu has an already built in

framework rooted in African tradition and classificatory systems. It was Franz Fanon who wrote:

"to speak a language is to assume its world and carry the weight of its civilization." By using the

African variation of the term (ntu), it automatically orients us to birthplace of this concept and its

more expansive senses not present in the Greek adaptation.

Using African terminology allows us to reinforce the notion that African languages and concepts can

be used to interpret reality just as well or better than ones created by Europeans. Abdul Karim

Bangura, in his article Ubuntugogy: An African Educational Paradigm That Transcends Pedagogy,Andragogy, Ergonagy and Heutagogy, reinforces the usage of African languages as a means of

freeing the African from the dependency of Eurocentric paradigms for interpreting reality when he

states:

African languages shall, therefore, be at the center of developing our knowledge sites.Language, as Amilcar Cabrai rightly pointed out, is at the center of articulating a people'sculture. He also noted that the African Revolution would have been impossible without

African people resorting to their cultures to resist domination. Culture is, therefore, arevolutionary force in society. It is because language has remained an "unresolved issue" in

Africa's development that present day education has remained an alien system.We must,therefore, be diligent in making sure that, as Mwalimu Carter G. Woodson once urged us inThe Mis-education of the Negro, our students are no longer made to scoff at our African

languages. Indeed, Professor Kwesi K. Prah has argued consistently over many years that theabsence of African languages has been the "key missing link" in African development.

THE CATEGORIZATION OF NTUOLOGICAL STUDIES

In his description of the philosophy of the Bantu people of Rwanda, Alexis Kagame 5 informs us that

the notion of ntu can be divided into four main categories. These categories are rooted in the

structure of Bantu languages which are classificatory languages known for their elaborate

determinative noun prefixes. The categorizations are as follows:

Mu-Ntu "the intelligent being" (human being) Ki-Ntu "the non-intelligent being" (things) Ha-Ntu "the localizing being" (place-time) Ku-Ntu "the modal being" (manner of being)

Muntu, Kintu, Hantu and Kuntu are the four categories of African Philosophy. All being, all essence,

in whatever form it is conceived, can be subsumed under one of these categories. Nothing can be

5In La Philosophie Bantu-Rwandaise de lEtre. Bruxelles, 1956.


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conceived outside of them (Jahn, 1961: 100). A brief breakdown of each of the categories of being is

warranted at this point.

MUNTU: Is a force endowed with intelligence and has power over speech ( nommo, afose,odu, mdw, etc.). This category includes human beings, the spirit of the ancestors, orishas,

loas, nTrw, niombo and the Divine itself (the Great Muntu). Umuntu is the specific entity

which continues to conduct an inquiry into being, experience, knowledge, and truth. It is the

maker of politics, religion and law.

KINTU: Is a category that embraces those forces which cannot act for themselves and whichcan become active only on the command of a muntu. This category includes plants, animals,

minerals, tools, objects of customary usage, and so on: in other words, a thing. These objects

do not have will like muntu. It should be noted that in some African cultures, like the Dagara

and the Amazulu, the trees would be put into the muntu category as they are endowed with

intelligence.

HANTU: Space and time fall into this category. Hantu is the force which localizes spatiallyand temporally every event and every motion. Since all beings are forces, everything is

constantly in motion and must be within a specific spatial reality.

KUNTU: Refers to the state or quality of being modal (mode, manner or form). Kuntu, Iinterpret, is the state or quality of being of that which has been fashioned/created. 6 It is a

force seen in such things as beauty and laughter. Within this context, kuntu can be

understood as one of the primary forms ofsensation, such as vision or touch.

In terms of academic disciplines, a few examples can be grouped as follows:

Muntu Kintu Hantu Kuntu

Humanities

History

Linguistics

Literature

Philosophy

Religion

Anthropology

Archaeology

Area studies

Cultural and ethnic studies

Economics

Gender and sexuality

studies

Political science

Psychology

Sociology

Divinity

Education

Family and consumerscience

Space science

Earth sciences

Life sciences

Chemistry

Physics

Computer sciences

Archaeology

Agriculture

Architecture and Design

Business

Environmental studies and

Forestry

Health science

Human physical

Transportation

Economics

Space science

Physics

Logic

Mathematics

Statistics

Systems science

Geography

Engineering

Public administration

Journalism, media studies

and communication

Library and museum

studies

Transportation

Visual arts

Performing arts

Architecture and Design

performance and

recreation

Psychology

Fashion

Poetry

Photography

6I think kuntu is best understood by examining the word manner: c.1200, "kind, sort, variety," from

Anglo-Fr. manere, O.Fr. maniere "fashion, method, manner, way; appearance, bearing; custom" (12c.,

Mod.Fr. manire), from V.L. *manaria (cf. Sp. manera, Port. maneira, It. maniera), from fem. of L.

manuarius "belonging to the hand," from manus "hand" (see manual (adj.)). The French word was

borrowed by other Germanic languages, e.g. Du. manier, Ger. manier, Swed. maner.


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Law

Military sciences

Social work

Public administration

Journalism, media studies

and communication

There is ultimately going to be some overlap between the disciplines and their ntuological

categories. This is to be expected as the framework sees all phenomena as intricately related, as

part of a whole. This is reflective of the general African approach to reality which Jahn reaffirms

when he states that:

Philosophy, theology, politics, social theory, land law, medicine, psychology, birth and burial,

all find themselves logically concatenated in a system so tight that to subtract one item from

the whole is to paralyze the structure of the whole (Jahn, 1961: 97)

An ideal approach to the study of any phenomenon, for us, would be to understand said

phenomenon within the context of each of the ntuological categories above. For instance, if wewanted to study and better understand the life of Malcolm X, we could posit research questions in

this manner:

MUNTU: What does it mean to be human in the African-American sense and how close didMalcolm come to this idealization? In what ways did his religion and political background

shape his approach to the liberation of African people? How did his relationship with his

parents and siblings shape his attitudes towards family and friends within the Nation of

Islam? Within the community at large? What did Malcolm constitute as knowledge? What

were his methods for learning? How did he apply what he learned for the use of African

people?

KINTU: What products and/or services did Malcolm create in order to support his family?What physical institutions were set up by Malcolm and how were these able to further his

cause? What was his attitude towards material goods and their purpose in the struggle?

HANTU: How did growing up in Oklahoma, Michigan and New York shape the personalityand experiences of Malcolm? How did growing up in the 30s and 40s shape and inform

Malcolms mission? In what ways did prison shape his attitudes given the age he was during

his incarceration? Speculate as to how Malcolms life would have been different had he grew

up in Los Angeles or in Texas during the same time period? Would Malcolm still have been

as effective if he discovered Islam as a teenager vs. an adult? Speculate on how different

Malcolm would be if he was Christian or practicing a more indigenous African religion

during his life-time? If Malcolm was a woman, in this era, with the same education, history

and personality, how different would history be?

KUNTU: What was the demeanor of Malcolm? His countenance? What was the response tohis style of delivery during his speeches? How would you categorize his style? How did the

people feel around Malcolm? How did he feel around the people? How did his mannerisms

affect his ability to recruit members into the NOI? Did Malcolm engage in any artistic

endeavors?

By posing the questions within our framework ofntu, we are forced to think more holistically about

Malcolm. It forces us to place Malcolm in a context that addresses his humanity, education, gender,


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level of service, age, geography, economics and personality. All of these things come together to

create Muntu-Malcolm.

This method of questioning can apply to the hard sciences as well. For instance, when examining

evolutionary theory (in the study ofbiology), one could ask:

MUNTU: How, when and in what ways have homo-sapiens-sapiens evolved over the years?In what ways are we evolving currently and can we anticipate the evolution of another

hominid species? What separates human intelligence from all of the other sentient beings

on the planet earth?

KINTU: What environmental agents must be in place for certain biological changes to occur?What chemical processes must take place within the DNA molecule for certain changes to

occur within the sequence of the nucleotide bases? How has the evolution of human

technology effected the physical environment?

HANTU: What evolutionary processes are occurring now, that could not have happened, say100 million years ago on earth and why?

KUNTU: How did human culture evolve? How did thought evolve? Do animals and insectshave a sense of style like humans do? From where did laughter and sadness evolve? Whatare their physiological and psychic functions?

The ntuological framework fosters a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to examining world

phenomena. And if this approach is to be common-place among African-Americans, then we need to

be able to incorporate this philosophy into the everyday activities of African-Americans. That will

be an ongoing project that I hope this article will help to facilitate.

NTUOLOGYS ROLE IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN CULTURE AND AFRICANA STUDIES

As it stands currently, African-Americans do not have their own way of categorizing reality. Our

sense of reality is fundamentally that of the dominant colonial paradigm which is not holistic ororiented towards relationships. This is because we do not have our own cosmological framework

and terminology to articulate its relationships.

While there have been theories articulating a general African world-view, little, if any, attempts

have been made to set in motion and establish an African-American world-view accessible to the

common African-American person and applicable to their experience. We seek to change this by

first penetrating the academic discipline of Africana-Studies, which we envision sometime in the

near future would have a common curriculum to be taught in our homes, academic departments

and independent educational institutions.

Africana Studies organizes itself as an interdisciplinary discipline concerned with the development

of an accurate description of the Africana condition, while also providing prescriptive solutions fortransforming Africana reality (Carroll, 2010: 110). In other words, not only is Africana Studies an

agent for the accumulation of data on the lives of African people, it is also a conduit by which one

translates inspiration into experience.

The aim of this ntuological project, as Dr. Nobles would articulate it, is to create a Culturally

Consistent Educational Practice. A culturally consistent educational practice is a systematic process

of developing and stimulating the knowledge, skill, ability, attitude and character necessary for

students to undertake socially-defined, goal-oriented and culturally-meaningful activities.


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We believe that this can be realized and beneficial effects are produced when, as Dr. Hassimi O.

Maiga articulates,7the language of education is the language of culture. That is when the content and

pedagogy permit students to see themselves and to experience their cultural heritage in the

curriculum. We do not wantntu to be something that students study when they go to school, but to

live when they are at the home, at the super market, watching a film at the theatre, etc. It has to be

part of the fabric of their being.

Dr. Nobles adds to this concept by stating that:

A curricula infused with African and African-American content must systematically guide the

transmission of information and knowledge while simultaneously reinforcing in African-

American students the desire to learn and encouraging the adoption of behaviors and

attitudes consistent with the historical excellence of African people.

In other words, we want the curricula to help shape the behavior and attitudes of African-

Americans. A culturally consistent educational practice has three primary goals and it is designed to:

1. achieve mastery of all aspects of human functions,2. to reproduce themselves in the objective world; and,3. to make explicit their character/personality.

Our aim is to develop a type of human-being (muntu) that has the intellectual capacity and

visionary insight to see the underlying webs that connect us all and to be able to use that

knowledge to create products, services and policies that foster a more life honoring, expansive and

more meaningful existence.

In this regard we have recovered a term and concept (ntu, ntuology) from the hearts and minds of

our ancestral pool of wisdom and resituated it in a way that it can serve the African-American more

holistically and not in an isolated way, as separate fields of inquiry like in the Eurocentric tradition.

This is in keeping with the concept of, what Nobles calls, being Culturally Congruent. This refers to

the need for services and programming to be in agreement and consistent with the cultural realityof the community being served.

In order for ntuologyto be part of the cultural reality of African-American people, it must be the

core curriculum of our educational institutions. The core curriculum is a program of studies in which

a number of courses are unified by and subordinated to a central theme. This central theme, for

us, would be ntu or bwalu-bwa-ntu (ntuology).

As I have stated previously, culture is the agreed upon means by which a population solves its

problems. One problem that we as African-Americans have is in viewing the world as disconnected

and fragmented. This fragmentation, in many ways, is responsible for the lack of economic support

and fragile human relations in many African-American population centers.

Based on scientific inquiry into the nature of the universe, we understand that the universe is a

unity and all things are connected and affected by each other. Therefore, we want to instill a sense

7Hassimi O. Maiga, When the Language of Education is Not the Language of Culture: The Epistemology

of Systems of Knowledge and Pedagogy. Mali Symposium on Applied Sciences (MSAS). 2004. pp.349-

374.


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of unity and interdependence into the minds of African-American people and one way to do that is

to structure our activities and curriculum with this theme in mind.

We do this not only on the basis of empirical evidence, but on grounds of tradition and continuity.

African people have always seen reality in a unified and in relational ways. There was no area of life

not seen to have influence or inform another area of life. As Jahn notes, in regards to the African

world-view:

Philosophy, theology, politics, social theory, land law, medicine, psychology, birth

and burial, all find themselves logically concatenated in a system so tight that to

subtract one item from the whole is to paralyze the structure of the whole. (Jahn,

1961: 97)

This paradigm, I feel, in many ways, has been lost to the African-American due to our sojourn in

America. Ntuologyattempts to rescue and resituate this paradigm in the lives of African-Americans

in meaningful and more expansive ways.

CONCLUSION

Ntuology is the study of the nature of being. All human inquiries are concerned with ntu or how

phenomena be, began, has been and is becoming. The nature of being is divided into four

interrelated categories: muntu (human/intelligent-being), kintu (things), hantu (space-time), and

kuntu (modal-being). We use these categories to force the association in our minds that all things

are related and when searching for solutions to human problems, one should keep these

relationships in mind.

There are two primary challenges we aim to tackle ntuologically: 1) Creating and refining an overall

African-American cultural paradigm, and 2) infusing it into the minds and integrating it into the

common practices of the general African-American population. It needs to be to the point where the

people would recognize it as their cultural world-view (first law of culture: culture is conscious of

itself).

This is just a preliminary essay on the concept and I look forward to your critiques and suggestions

for improving the paradigm.

Asar Imhotep is a computer programmer and Africana researcher from Houston, TX whose

research focus is the cultural, linguistic and philosophical links between the Ancient

Egyptian civilizations and modern BaNtu cultures of central and South Africa. He is the

founder of the MOCHA-Versity Institute of Philosophy and Research and the Madu-Ndela

Institute for the Advancement of Science and Culture. He is also the author of The Bakala ofNorth America, the Living Suns of Vitality: In Search for a Meaningful Name for African-

Americans, Passion of the Christ or Passion of Osiris: The Kongo Origins of the Jesus Myth and

Ogun, African Fire Philosophy and the Meaning of KMT. Asar is a noted speaker and

philosopher and is currently organizing efforts in a nation-wide venture titled The African-

American Cultural Development Projecta national project aimed at creating a framework

for an African-American culture which will help vitally stimulate the economic, political,

scientific and cultural spheres of African-American life in the United States.


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