Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitan thoughts and practices, including multicultural integration, intercultural communications, and universal humankind, framed the Early Modern period and had as deep roots in Africa as elsewhere. Scholars of intellectual history are generally unaware of this (e.g., Leigh T. I. Penman, The Lost History of Cosmopolitanism: The Early Modern Origins of the Intellectual Ideal, 2021). Not surprisingly, sensational explanations, using such concepts as Bricolage, Encounters, Acculturation, Survivalism, Social Death, tend to be invoked when discussing the processes of African cultural formation and the ontologies of enslaved Africans in Colonial Americas. These studies are premised on the assumption that Africans became “aware of the world” in the Americas. With examples drawn from the Bight of Benin and its mainland, this talk explores the ramifications of Atlantic Africa’s cosmopolitanism for unpacking the African Diaspora experience.