Negritude Resurrected: Afrocentric Ontological Education and the Decolonial Restoration of Black Power

This article examines how the Negritude movement can be reconceptualized as a vital force of Afrocentric recovery and resistance to 21st-century neocolonial and racial capitalism erected as architectures of necropolitics. Through a decolonial theoretical methodology, it analyzes how Negritude’s original project provides critical decolonial tools for diagnosing the “subtle, supple, and smart” (Han, 2017) technologies of neoliberalism and the extractive logic that continues to define Black geographies. The article affirms the position that the most potent site for materializing a resurgent Black power is education that undergoes a radical ontological shift, moving beyond the neoliberal model of schooling. The article, therefore, proposes an Afrocentric, ontologically grounded education rooted in Indigenous knowledge systems and the practice of counter-storytelling. This pedagogical praxis, coupled with a decolonized practice of restorative justice reconceived as relational restoration, forms the basis for reclaiming power to heal the psychic wounds of colonization. In the process, the desirous imagination necessary for Black self-determination and futurity is fostered. Therefore, the article repositions Negritude as a living praxis for liberation in an age of ongoing coloniality, rather than as a historical artifact.Keywords: Negritude, decolonial education, Afrocentric pedagogy, racial capitalism, restorative justice, Black power, ontological shift, Indigenous knowledge