Overview

This book concerns the origins, structure, purpose, meaning, and significance of libation, developments and change within the ritual, and its distribution in the Afrikan world. Libation is a liquid offering by and on behalf of all humanity, those living and those yet-to-be-born, to ancestors, to the Creator, to other divinities, and to the environment. Through this ritual Afrikans affirm and re-establish Ma’at: cosmic harmony, balance, interconnection and interdependence within, between and among humans, the environment, the spirit world, and the Creator. The text connects the practice of libation throughout the prodigious time/space correlation occupied by the Afrikan experience of life, connects Afrikans to their social history, and so to themselves across generations in different spaces and times. The methodology is at once both multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary. The methods and techniques of history, linguistics, cultural studies, literature and other human sciences are deployed to develop a comprehensive reconstruction, description and analysis of a ritual that has been antique for millennia, but has never become antiquated.

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9780761867104

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Reviews

. . . it shows an extremely refreshing and philosophically original approach. It is Afrocentric without being overbearingly so. I find it also serious in scholarship and well-written. It reads easily with no obscurity of either language or ideas. It takes the shroud off Egyptology. I think its break from Eurocentric leanings is one of its very fine points. -- Kwesi Kwaa Prah, Professor and Director, Center for the advanced study of African Society, Cape Town, South Africa Professor Nehusi has written a powerful book on a most ancient and critical Afrikan ritual, libation. He masterfully demonstrates that libation must be understood within the Afrikan worldview and its emphasis on ontological unity and life eternal. Furthermore, his argument about the importance of cultural reclamation in the process of Afrikan renaissance is both timely and compelling. -- Ama Mazama, PhD, Department of African American Studies, Temple University This is, undoubtedly, a masterly and monumental work on libation, an African ritual of heritage, that reflects the African world view from the earliest times until the present. In an admirably scholarly manner, the author tells the lion's story that amply explains the meaning and significance of the ritual of libation and restores African identity in a conscious manner that effectively counters the hazards of the Maafa. The African world owes an immeasurable debt of gratitude to Kimani Nehusi for this brilliant piece of work. -- Kofi Asare Opoku, African University College of Communications, Accra, Ghana. Formerly Professor of Religious Studies, Lafayette College, Easton, PA. Author of West African Traditional Religion

... it shows an extremely refreshing and philosophically original approach. It is Afrocentric without being overbearingly so. I find it also serious in scholarship and well-written. It reads easily with no obscurity of either language or ideas. It takes the shroud off Egyptology. I think its break from Eurocentric leanings is one of its very fine points. -- Kwesi Kwaa Prah, Professor and Director, Center for the advanced study of African Society, Cape Town, South Africa Professor Nehusi has written a powerful book on a most ancient and critical Afrikan ritual, libation. He masterfully demonstrates that libation must be understood within the Afrikan worldview and its emphasis on ontological unity and life eternal. Furthermore, his argument about the importance of cultural reclamation in the process of Afrikan renaissance is both timely and compelling. -- Ama Mazama, PhD, Department of African American Studies, Temple University This is, undoubtedly, a masterly and monumental work on libation, an African ritual of heritage, that reflects the African world view from the earliest times until the present. In an admirably scholarly manner, the author tells the lion's story that amply explains the meaning and significance of the ritual of libation and restores African identity in a conscious manner that effectively counters the hazards of the Maafa. The African world owes an immeasurable debt of gratitude to Kimani Nehusi for this brilliant piece of work. -- Kofi Asare Opoku, African University College of Communications, Accra, Ghana. Formerly Professor of Religious Studies, Lafayette College, Easton, PA. Author of West African Traditional Religion

Author Information

Kimani S. K. Nehusi, PhD, FHEA (UK). Currently Associate Professor, Department of Africology, Temple University and Research Associate, Institute for Economic Research on Innovation, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa. His research interests include Ancient Egypt and its relationship to living Afrika, the history and culture of the Afrikan world and the Caribbean as a history and culture sphere.

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