Théophile Obenga

Théophile Obenga in a 2009 photograph

Théophile Obenga (born 1936) is an Egyptologist originally from Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa, who is professor emeritus in the Africana Studies Center at San Francisco State University. He is a politically active proponent of Pan-Africanism. In 2009 he publicly promoted Denis Sassou Nguesso as presidential candidate for the Republic of the Congo.

Background

Obenga was born in 1936 in Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa (today in the Republic of the Congo).

He holds a PhD in Humanities from the University of Paris Sorbonne, France. His academic background include studies in Philosophy (in Bordeaux), Comparative historical linguistics, Prehistoric archeology (at College de France, Paris), Education sciences and Egyptology (in Geneva). His former lecturers include prominent scholars such as Émile Benveniste in Linguistics, Jean Leclant and Charles Maystre in Egyptology, Rodolphe Kasser in Coptic Language, Lionel Balout in Human Paleontology. He contributed as part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) program, to the writing of the General History of Africa and the Scientific and Cultural History of Humanity. He was, until the end of 1991, Director General of the Centre International des Civilisations Bantu (CICIBA) in Libreville, Gabon. He is the Director and Chief Editor of the journal Ankh.

From 28 January to 3 February 1974, at Cairo, Egypt, Obenga accompanied Cheikh Anta Diop as Africa's representatives to the UNESCO symposium on "The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script".[1]

Linguistic theories

Obenga has advocated a number of ideas such as a "Negro-Egyptian" language family (négro-égyptien), which includes all languages of Africa, an approach that he shares with Cheikh Anta Diop. Obenga takes issue with the term Afro-Asiatic and states that the term is only a scientific invention and that the Egyptian language was never reconstructed following the methods of comparative historical linguistics, the very aim of which is to link genetically the languages concerned.[2]

This idea has been criticised by some scholars as politically motivated pseudolinguistics.[3][4] Other works by Obenga have been criticized as based on a confusion of race, cultural identity and political agenda.[5]

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Theophile Obenga, Ph.D.". Department of Africana Studies, San Francisco State University. Retrieved 21 November 2011.
  2. ↑ David C. Jones, The Origin of Civilization: The Case of Egypt and Mesopotamia from Several Disciplines, 2007, p. 239.
  3. ↑ L'argument linguistique chez Cheikh Anta Diop et ses disciples, pp. 79-102, Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2000. Henry Tourneux, Les langues africaines et l'égyptien
  4. ↑ "A theory elaborated by Rev. Trilles (1912, 1931) in the early 20th century claims an Egyptian origin for the Fang population, its language and its culture on the basis of its oral tradition, and several linguistic, cultural and physical traits. This theory has become very popular, especially among Black African scholars, and often takes a strong ideological dimension as it accuses (white) Egyptologists of falsifying ancient History. Cheikh Anta Diop and Théophile Obenga are major advocates of this school of thought. Similar claims have been made by other Bantu-speaking populations (cf. Basaá, A43a). (…) Guthrie (1948), Hombert & al. (1989) and Medjo Mvé (1997) have given evidence that Fang presents all the traits of a regular Bantu language: "There is absolutely no evidence of a non-Bantu substratum." Patrick Mouguiama-Daouda, Jean-Marie Hombert, Lolke Van der Veen, "Aspects of linguistic diversity in western Central Africa", Laboratoire "Dynamique du Langage", UMR 5596, Lyon Languages-and-Genes/poster/VanderVeenAbstract.pdf -
  5. ↑ "Il devient cependant manifeste que, avec la parution en 1974 de l’étude «Les 20 ans de Nations Nègres et culture», Théophile Obenga tombe dans le piège de l’équation race – culture – identité considérant qu’un substrat culturel homogène est nécessairement lié à un substrat ethnique homogène; se sentir africain signifie se sentir Noir et partager le système de valeurs de la race." Simona Corlan Ioan, « L'Imaginaire Dans les Constructions identitaires. Le Cas de l'Afrique Noire», N.E.C. Yearbook 2000-2001, p. 205. Bogumil Jewsiewicki in Cahiers d'études africaines, 1991, n°121, p. 202, charges Théophile Obenga with "profiting from the concept of cultural identity built on a genetic heritage expressed in the use of language in order to construct a regional political unity" («mettre à profit le concept d'identité culturelle émanant d'un patrimoine génétique qui se manifeste par l'usage d'une langue, pour bâtir une unité politique régionale»).

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/4/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.