On the Question of African “Protest Identity”

The article presents an analytical review of approaches to the emergence of African protest identity. It examines the causes and forms of protest identity in Africa, both historically and in the present. The African protest identity is associated with colonial cultural pressure and constitutes a reaction to the discrediting of African culture and the personality of an African. Two opposing approaches to colonization are highlighted in the research. The Eurocentric approach considers colonization to be a beneficial, civilizing project, whereas Africans themselves see it as a tragedy that led to an identity crisis and the construction of new forms of identity (E. Blyden, “The Negritude” by L.S. Senghor). The African protest identity was formed in opposition to the white man’s culture and the white race as a whole. The mechanism of its formation includes the creation of new binary oppositions, the change of evaluation poles, and placing an emphasis on the uniqueness and superiority of African culture and the African man. Historical analysis and the method of comparative analysis are used in the research to identify differences and taboo areas in intercultural interaction. It is concluded that African protest identity, in most of its manifestations, is anti-colonial, anti-globalist, racial, and civilizational in nature. The processes of formation of “anti-neocolonial” African protest identity can intensify and take the form of aspirations for sovereignty, subjectivity, for the search for one’s own way. This requires a separate study, which the author has already begun. This article can be considered a continuation of the author’s previously published material, “Value-semantic blocks in the images of African poetry (in the context of historical and social changes).”