Given the thousand-or-so language zones known to exist in Africa, the very notion of unanimism seems rather preposterous. Perhaps a more trenchant basis for the forging of any African/Diasporean identity, I'd dare argue, is the mere (and I know this was probably considered before and jettisoned in favor of more rudimentary claims to solidarity) commonality of experience—the fact that, for centuries, as Achebe once put it, Africa has been to Europe like the picture is to Dorian Gray. Any such identity would, by its very nature, be reactionary-coined in response to the many falsehoods it endured through history-but certainly not defunct.

If the African consciousness needs a rallying call and the homogeneity of our experience gives a face to our oneness, then what risk do we run in using it? The answer to that is, indeed, obvious as it has been to scholars like Appiah for years now—isolation in an increasingly cosmopolitan world. It was Diogenes, the fourth-century Greek philosopher and Cynic, who first called himself a "citizen of the cosmos." For his time, the concept had been daringly original. They'd all been brought up to believe an Aristotelian conception of the world and man's place in it. If man was, by nature, a political animal—like Aristotle had argued—if his "state of nature" (as Hobbes would later put it) lay in the artificial confines of the polis, then how could he possibly thrive in a political milieu of infinitely larger proportions (namely the cosmos, or world)? By calling himself a cosmopolitan, Diogenes had taken an Aristotelian idea and breathed fresh life into it. Perhaps, he thought, man's place in the world was better seen in the light of the natural than in that of the artificial. If Aristotle's polis existed to Diogenes, it had to be much larger than a city-state; it had to be the world.

Never before in world history, has Diogenes' idea seemed more true. In his day, he had seen Greece rise to world dominance, establishing a cultural hegemony on what had, before then, been a largely multicultural world. As today's world edges on in similar fashion, any attempt at consolidating a purist African identity must, of necessity, consider the changing face of cultural identity in our time.

Any identity that emerges from such pursuits should be robust enough to address long-standing issues of African cultural existentialism while respecting the right of the African individual to choose what hybrid of identities best suits him/her in a modern world.

Taken in this vein, perhaps the question of an African identity is not so much a question as it is an answer.

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Michael Nkansah is a senior in Calhoun College.