Preface Acknowledgments 1. Dancing between Circles and Lines Part I: The Situation 2. Rhetorical Condition as a Conceptual Field 3. The Idea of a Metatheory 4. African Foundations of Nommo Part II: The Resistance 5. African American Orature and Context 6. Mythoforms in African-American Communication 7. Rhetoric of Resistance 8. Choosing Freedom 9. Africa as Concept Part III: The Liberation 10. The Search for an Afrocentric Method 11. Transcendence: The Curved Line Notes Index

"Asante's wide range of references, his delightful examples taken from black traditions, and his sheer pleasure at discussing black culture, all combine to make his argument both cogent and important. This will be a major book." --Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Chair, Afro-American Studies Department, Harvard University, and W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities "Commencing with a spirited criticism of traditional Western academic discourse, Asante's drama concludes with a discussion of a transformative African and African-American discourse that puts its participants in possession of the dynamic spirits of a distinctive African cultural experience." --Chronicle of Higher Education "Mr. Asante is widely regarded as a major proponent of 'Afrocentricity,' or the understanding of the black experience as an extension of African history and culture... He is credited with doing as much as anyone to build a theoretical base for an idea that has been around for sometime." --Quarterly Journal of Speech "Not the least purpose of The Afrocentric Idea is to show blacks they have an African heritage and history that have persisted through, and helped blacks to survive slavery and subsequent discrimination." --The New York Review of Books