Marimba Ani’s Yurugu: An Afrikan-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior, examines the influence of European culture on the formation of modern institutional frameworks, through colonialism and imperialism, from an African perspective. The book Yurugu derives its title from a Dogon legend of an incomplete and destructive being rejected by its creator.
In Yurugu, Sister Ani proposes a three pronged conceptualization of culture, based on the concepts of asili, the central seed or “germinating matrix” of a culture, utamawazo, “culturally structured thought” or worldview, “the way in which the thought of members of a culture must be patterned if the asili is to be fulfilled”, and utamaroho, a culture’s “vital force” or “energy source”, which “gives it its emotional tone and motivates the collective behavior of its members.”
During this discussion, Sister Ani talks about these concepts in detail and places them within a context that centers and directs the African worldview to support African reconstruction.
