ABSTRACT

This book is an extension of an earlier work first published in 1992, Cultural Hegemony and African American Development. That volume argued that the phenomenon of cultural hegemony, the systemic negation of one culture by another, arose historically as a metaproblem shaping the parameters of the field of Black studies. This concept of cultural hegemony, however, was not related to any preexisting definitions (despite similarities to other formulations of the concept of hegemony), but derived from distinctive social and cultural phenomena related to the issue of cultural manipulation for the purpose of group control endemic to an historic and ongoing Black experience. Widespread examination of a Black intellectual tradition, I argue, points to and reveals the various elements of this metaproblem. Until now Cultural Hegemony and African American Development was the only text that elaborated cultural hegemony as a metaproblem shaping the field of Black studies. Subsequently, many have utilized this text in their courses and as a theoretical foundation for empirical research.