Topicality
Our interpretation is that the resolution should define the division of
affirmative and negative ground.
The affirmative violates this interpretation because they do not
advocate that the United States federal government substantially
increase its ocean exploration and/or development.
Although this statement is in the PLAN TEXT – it is a speculative
METAPHOR. They do not endorse actual action by the USFG.
OECD 87 — Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Council, 1987
(“United States,” The Control and Management of Government Expenditure, p. 179)
1. Political and organisational structure of government
The United States of America is a federal republic consisting of 50 states. States have their own
constitutions and within each State there are at least two additional levels of government,
generally designated as counties and cities, towns or villages. The relationships between different
levels of government are complex and varied (see Section B for more information).
The Federal Government is composed of three branches : the legislative branch, the executive
branch, and the judicial branch. Budgetary decisionmaking is shared primarily by the legislative
and executive branches. The general structure of these two branches relative to budget
formulation and execution is as follows.
Second, “its” implies ownership. Exploration or development of the
ocean isn’t topical unless it is “owned by” the USFG.
Gaertner-Johnston 6 — Lynn Gaertner-Johnston, founder of Syntax Training—a company
that provides business writing training and consulting, holds a Master’s Degree in
Communication from the University of Notre Dame, 2006 (“Its? It's? Or Its'?,” Business
Writing—a blog, May 30th, Available Online at
http://www.businesswritingblog.com/business_writing/2006/05/its_its_or_its_.html, Accessed
07-04-2014)
A friend of mine asked me to write about how to choose the correct form of its, and I am happy
to comply. Those three little letters cause a lot of confusion, but once you master a couple of
basic rules, the choice becomes simple. Here goes:
Its' is never correct. Your grammar and spellchecker should flag it for you. Always change it to
one of the forms below.
It's is the contraction (abbreviated form) of "it is" and "it has." It's has no other meanings--only
"it is" and "it has."
Its is the form to use in all other instances when you want a form of i-t-s but you are not sure
which one. Its is a possessive form; that is, it shows ownership the same way Javier's or Santosh's
does.
Example: The radio station has lost its license.
The tricky part of the its question is this: If we write "Javier's license" with an apostrophe, why
do we write "its license" without an apostrophe?
Here is the explanation: Its is like hers, his, ours, theirs, and yours. These are all pronouns.
Possessive pronouns do not have apostrophes. That is because their spelling already indicates a
possessive . For example, the possessive form of she is hers. The possessive form of we is ours.
Because we change the spelling, there is no need to add an apostrophe to show possession. Its
follows that pattern.
Third, this requires that exploration or development be carried out
by a federal agency. Statutory language is clear.
CFR 6 — Code of Federal Regulations, last updated in 2006 (“Coastal Zone Management Act
Federal Consistency Regulations,” Title 15 › Subtitle B › Chapter IX › Subchapter B › Part 930 ›
Subpart C › Section 930.31, Available Online at http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/15/930.31,
Accessed 07-04-2014)
§ 930.31 Federal agency activity.
(a) The term “Federal agency activity” means any functions performed by or on behalf of a
Federal agency in the exercise of its statutory responsibilities. The term “Federal agency activity”
includes a range of activities where a Federal agency makes a proposal for action initiating an
activity or series of activities when coastal effects are reasonably foreseeable, e.g., a Federal
agency's proposal to physically alter coastal resources, a plan that is used to direct future agency
actions, a proposed rulemaking that alters uses of the coastal zone. “Federal agency activity” does
not include the issuance of a federal license or permit to an applicant or person (see subparts D
and E of this part) or the granting of federal assistance to an applicant agency (see subpart F of
this part).
(b) The term federal “development project” means a Federal agency activity involving the
planning, construction, modification, or removal of public works, facilities, or other structures, and
includes the acquisition, use, or disposal of any coastal use or resource.
(c) The Federal agency activity category is a residual category for federal actions that are not
covered under subparts D, E, or F of this part.
(d) A general permit proposed by a Federal agency is subject to this subpart if the general permit
does not involve case-by-case or individual issuance of a license or permit by a Federal agency.
When proposing a general permit, a Federal agency shall provide a consistency determination to
the relevant management programs and request that the State agency(ies) provide the Federal
agency with review, and if necessary, conditions, based on specific enforceable policies, that
would permit the State agency to concur with the Federal agency's consistency determination.
State agency concurrence shall remove the need for the State agency to review individual uses of
the general permit for consistency with the enforceable policies of management programs.
Federal agencies shall, pursuant to the consistent to the maximum extent practicable standard in
§ 930.32, incorporate State conditions into the general permit. If the State agency's conditions are
not incorporated into the general permit or a State agency objects to the general permit, then the
Federal agency shall notify potential users of the general permit that the general permit is not
available for use in that State unless an applicant under subpart D of this part or a person under
subpart E of this part, who wants to use the general permit in that State provides the State agency
with a consistency certification under subpart D of this part and the State agency concurs. When
subpart D or E of this part applies, all provisions of the relevant subpart apply.
(e) The terms “Federal agency activity” and “Federal development project” also include
modifications of any such activity or development project which affect any coastal use or resource,
provided that, in the case of modifications of an activity or development project which the State
agency has previously reviewed, the effect on any coastal use or resource is substantially
different than those previously reviewed by the State agency.
There are several reasons to prefer our interpretation.
First — Deliberation Skills. Topicality facilitates a process of
successive debates that develops important skills and fosters
appreciation for multiple perspectives. Abandoning the topic
forecloses the educational and democratic benefits of debate.
Lundberg 10 — Christian O. Lundberg, Associate Professor of Rhetoric in the Department of
Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, holds a Ph.D. in
Communication Studies from Northwestern University, 2010 (“The Allred Initiative and Debate
Across the Curriculum: Reinventing the Tradition of Debate at North Carolina,” Navigating
Opportunity: Policy Debate in the 21st Century, Edited by Allan D. Louden, Published by the
International Debate Education Association, ISBN 9781617700293, p. 299)
In response to the first critique, which ultimately reduces to the claims that debate
overdetermines democratic deliberation and that it inculcates an unhealthy antagonism, a number
of scholars have extended the old maxim that dissent is critical to democracy in arguing that
debate is a critical tool for civic deliberation (Brookfield and Preskill 1999; Levinson 2003). Gill
Nichols (2000, 132) argues that a commitment to debate and dissent as a core component of
democracy is especially critical in the face of the complexity of modern governance, rapid
technological change, and an increasing need to deal with the nexus of science and public policy.
The benefits of in-class debate espoused by Stephen Brookfield, Meira Levinson, and Nichols
stem from the idea that debate inculcates skills for creative and open-minded discussion of
disputes in the context of democratic deliberation: on their collective accounting, debate does not
close down discussion by reducing issues to a simple pro/con binary, nor does it promote
antagonism at the expense of cooperative discussion. Rather, properly cultivated, debate is a tool
for managing democratic conflicts that foregrounds significant points of dispute, and then invites
interlocutors to think about them together creatively in the context of successive strategic
iterations , [end page 304] moments of evaluation , and reiterations of arguments in the context
of a structured public discussion .
Goodwin’s study of in-class debate practice confirms these intuitions. Goodwin’s study revealed
that debate produces an intense personal connection to class materials while simultaneously
making students more open to differing viewpoints. Goodwin’s conclusion is worth quoting at
length here:
Traditional teaching techniques like textbooks, lectures, and tests with right answers
insulate students from the open questions and competing answers that so often drive our
own interest in our subjects. Debates do not , and in fact invite students to consider a
range of alternative views on a subject, encountering the course content broadly, deeply
and personally. Students’ comments about the value of disagreement also offer an
interesting perspective on the nature of the thinking skills we want to foster. The previous
research . . . largely focused on the way debate can help students better master the
principles of correct reasoning. Although some students did echo this finding, many more
emphasized the importance of debate in helping them to recognize and deal with a
diversity of viewpoints. (Goodwin 2003, 158)
The results of this research create significant questions about the conclusion that debate
engenders reductive thinking and an antagonism that is unhealthy to democracy. In terms of the
criticism that debate is reductive, the implication of Goodwin’s study is that debate creates a
broader appreciation for multiple perspectives on an issue than the predominant forms of
classroom instruction. This conclusion is especially powerful when one considers debate as more
than a discrete singular performance, but as a whole process of inventing , discussing ,
employing , and reformulating arguments in the context of an audience of comparatively objective
evaluators. In the process of researching , strategizing , debating , reframing stances , and
switching sides on a question , students are provided with both a framework for thinking about a
problem and creative solutions to it from a number of angles . Thus, while from a very narrow
perspective one might claim debate practices reduce all questions to a “pro” and a “con,” the
cumulative effects of the pedagogical process of preparing for , performing , and evaluating a
debate provide the widest possible exposure to the varied positions that a student might take on an
issue. Perhaps more significantly, in-class debate provides a competitive incentive for finding as
many innovative and unique approaches to a problem as possible, and for translating them into
publically useful positions .
Second — Ocean Literacy. Debates about the assigned topic foster
scientific literacy and citizen engagement. Refusing to participate in
debates about ocean policy leaves us unprepared to confront the
daunting challenges facing the global climate and ecosystems. It is
important for ocean policy to be included in the curriculum.
Steffen 10 — Peg Steffen, Education Coordinator in the Communications and Education
Division of the National Ocean Service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, holds a bachelor’s degree in zoology and a master’s in curriculum and
instruction, 2010 (“Education Around Earth – Ocean Literacy for a Blue Planet,” earthZine—a
publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, March 22nd, Available Online
at http://www.earthzine.org/2010/03/22/education-around-earth-ocean-literacy-for-a-blueplanet/, Accessed 07-02-2014)
“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.” — Arthur C. Clarke
All life is dependent on the ocean. It covers more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, is the
source of most life on Earth, regulates our weather and climate, provides most of our oxygen, and
feeds much of the human population. In spite of its importance, ocean and aquatic sciences remain
among the most underrepresented disciplines in K–12 educational curricula. Rarely taught at
any level, concepts about the ocean, the coasts or the Great Lakes infrequently appear in K–12
curriculum materials, textbooks, assessments or standards. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is working to help educators bring ocean sciences into the
classroom .
Ocean literacy and science education are important to NOAA not only because the agency needs
experienced and talented scientists to fulfill its mission, but because every individual across the
nation, whether living in a coastal or inland state, affects and is affected by, the oceans and
atmosphere — everyday . NOAA’s mission is to serve the nation’s need for oceanic and
atmospheric information, but doing so also means helping to ensure that the general public
understands how ocean, coastal and climate science impacts their daily lives and future prosperity.
Society needs citizens who know how to apply science knowledge in their careers and in their
engagement as active members of their communities . Future changes will bring economic and
environmental challenges as well as opportunities, and citizens who are ocean and climate literate
will be better prepared to respond . To protect fragile ecosystems and to build sustainable
communities that are resilient to climate change—including extreme weather and climate
events—a science literate citizenry is essential .
Children in particular need to be engaged in ocean, coastal and climate science and NOAA has
produced a wide array of resources and programs for students and professional development
training for educators. The online resources and field experiences described below are just a few
of the opportunities offered by NOAA’s education programs.
Third — Constructive Constraints. Absolute affirmative flexibility
leaves the negative without meaningful ground to advance welldeveloped counter-arguments. Establishing boundaries is important
because they spur imagination and innovation, improving the
quality of debates.
Thomas and Brown 11 — Douglas Thomas, Associate Professor in the Annenberg School for
Communication at the University of Southern California, founding member of the Critical and
Cultural Studies division of the National Communication Association, holds a Ph. D. in
Communication from the University of Minnesota, and John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar and
Adviser to the Provost at the University of Southern California, independent cochairman of the
Deloitte Center for the Edge, former Chief Scientist and Director of the Palo Alto Research
Center at Xerox, holds a Ph.D. in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of
Michigan, 2011 (“A Tale of Two Cultures,” A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the
Imagination for a World of Constant Change, Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Platform, ISBN 1456458884, p. 35)
Learning Environments
We believe, however, that learning should be viewed in terms of an environment—combined with
the rich resources provided by the digital information network—where the context in which
learning happens, the boundaries that define it , and the students, teachers, and information within
it all coexist and shape each other in a mutually reinforcing way . Here, boundaries serve not only
as constraints but also, oftentimes, as catalysts for innovation . Encountering boundaries spurs
the imagination to become more active in figuring out novel situations within the constraints of the
situation or context.
Environments with well-defined and carefully constructed boundaries are not usually thought of as
standardized, nor are they tested and measured. Rather, they can be described as a set of pressures
that nudge and guide change . They are substrates for evolution , and they move at varying rates
of speed.
Fourth — Policy Engagement:
Policy debates over racial issues are productive and important.
Meaningful dialogue about what actions the government should take
overcomes the conversational impasse and paves the way for
material change. Disavowing the policy consequences of one’s
ideological positions makes things worse, not better.
Bracey 6 — Christopher A. Bracey, Associate Professor of Law and Associate Professor of
African & African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, holds a B.S. from
the University of North Carolina and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, 2006 (“The Cul De Sac
of Race Preference Discourse,” Southern California Law Review (79 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1231),
September, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)
IV. A Foundation for Renewed Racial Dialogue
A deepened appreciation and open acknowledgment of this pedigree is crucial to restoring public
conversation on race preferences. Opponents of race preferences must come to understand that
this pedigree, if left unaddressed, tends to overwhelm the underlying merit of arguments against
race preferences in the eyes of proponents. At the same time, proponents should understand that
the deployment of these pedigreed rhetorical themes does not necessarily signal agreement with
the nineteenth-century racial norms from which they are sourced. For both proponents and
opponents, the avoidance of a rapid retreat into ideological trench warfare not only preserves
space for reasoned, substantive debate regarding race preferences, but also allows for the
possibility of overcoming our collective fixation on race preferences as the issue in American
race relations and advancing the conversation to reach the larger issue of producing a more
racially inclusive society.
Our failing public conversation on race matters not only presents a particularly tragic moment in
American race relations, but also evinces a greater failure of democracy. Sustained, meaningful
dialogue is a critical, if not indispensable feature of our liberal democracy. n260 It is through
[*1312] meaningful public conversation about what actions government should take (or refrain
from taking) that public policy determinations ultimately gain legitimacy. Conversation is
particularly important in our democracy, given the profoundly diverse and often contradictory
cultural and political traditions that are the sine qua non of American life. Under these particular
circumstances, "persons ought to strive to engage in a mutual process of critical interaction ,
because if they do not, no uncoerced common understanding can possibly be attained." n261
Sincere deliberation, in its broadest idealized form, ensures that a broad array of input is heard
and considered, legitimizing the resulting decision. Under this view, "if the preferences that
determine the results of democratic procedures are unreflective or ignorant, then they lose their
claim to political authority over us." n262 In the absence of self-conscious, reflective dialogue,
"democracy loses its capacity to generate legitimate political power." n263
In addition to legitimizing the exercise of state authority in a liberal democracy, dialogue works to
promote individual freedom. The power to hash over our alternatives is an important exercise of
human agency . n264 If democracy is taken to mean rule by the people themselves, then
conversation and deliberation are the principal means through which we declare and assert the
power to shape our own belief systems. The roots of this idea of dialogue as freedom-promoting
are traceable to the Kantian view that individual motivation that is either uncriticized or
uncontested can be understood on a deeper level as a mode of subjugation. As Frank Michelman
explains, "in Kantian terms we are free only insofar as we are self-governing, directing our
actions in accordance with law-like reasons [*1313] that we adopt for ourselves, as proper to
ourselves, upon conscious, critical reflection on our identities (or natures) and social situations."
n265 Because "self-cognition and ensuing self-legislation must, to a like extent, be socially
situated," Michelman continues, "norms must be formed through public dialogue and expressed
as public law." n266 In this way, dialogue as democratic modus operandi can be understood both
as a material expression of freedom and as a mechanism to promote individual freedom .
Robust dialogue on public policy matters also promotes the individual growth of the dialogue
participants. Conversation helps people become more knowledgeable and hold better developed
opinions because "opinions can be tested and enlarged only where there is a genuine encounter
with differing opinions ." n267 Moreover, meaningful conversation serves to broaden people's
moral perspectives to include matters of public good, because appeals to the public good are
often the most persuasive arguments available in public deliberation. n268 Indeed, even if people
are thinking self-interested thoughts while making public good arguments, cognitive dissonance
will create an incentive for such individuals to reconcile their self interest with the public good.
n269 At the same time, because political dialogue is a material manifestation of democracy in
action, it promotes a feeling of democratic community and instills in the people a will for political
action to advance reasoned public policy in the spirit of promoting the public good. n270
For these reasons, the collective aspiration of those interested in pursing serious , sustained , and
policy-legitimating dialogue on race matters must be to cultivate a reasoned discourse that is
relatively free of retrograde ideological baggage that feeds skepticism , engenders distrust , and
effectively forecloses constructive conversation on the most corrosive and divisive issue in
American history and contemporary life. As the forgoing sections suggest, the continued reliance
upon pedigreed rhetorical themes has and continues to poison racial legal discourse. Given the
various normative and ideological commitments that might be ascribed to [*1314] opponents of
race preferences, the question thus becomes, how are we to approach the task of breaking
through the conversational impasse and creating intellectual space for meaningful discourse on
this issue?
One can imagine at least three responses to this question. As an initial matter, one might
subscribe to the view that pedigree is not destiny, and thus conclude that the family resemblance
tells us little, if anything, definitive about the normative commitments of today's opponents of
race preferences. Consider the argument that the benefits of white privilege do not extend
equally among all whites, and that policies that treat all whites as equally guilty of racial
subordination advance a theory of undesirable rough justice. n271 Although this argument is a
staple of modern opponents of race preferences, it would be a mistake to conclude that it can
only be deployed by those persons who normatively oppose race preferences. Indeed, one might
very well support race preferences, but believe quite strongly that such programs should be
particularly sensitive to individual candidate qualifications.
Similarly, although one might believe that diversity does not comport with merit based
decisionmaking in education and employment, it would be incorrect to interpret this belief as
necessarily indicative of a greater commitment to preserving status quo racial inequality. One
might reject the diversity rational as insufficient to justify a system of race preferences that one
strongly believes must be justified. In short, one may be inclined to simply engage the argument
and ignore the possibility of retrograde normative underpinnings.
Interestingly, a small cadre of scholars has adopted this approach. Derrick Bok and William
Bowen, in The Shape of the River, investigated whether racial minorities feel stigmatized or
otherwise adversely affected as a result of being denoted beneficiaries of affirmative action
policy in college admissions. n272 Thomas Ross has critically examined claims of collective
white innocence. n273 More recently, Goodwin Lui has researched the scope of the burden that
affirmative action in college admissions imposes upon aspiring white students. n274 In each
instance, these scholars chose to place to one side their skepticism about the normative
commitments of those advancing the viewpoint, and launch directly into substantive critiques of
that viewpoint.
[*1315] This approach, however, may prove unsatisfactory for those more strongly committed
to racial justice - those for whom it is not enough to simply challenge ideas in the abstract. As the
late Robert Cover famously wrote, "legal interpretation takes place within a field of pain and
death." n275 By this, he meant that the stakes of legal discourse are elevated when bodies are on
the line. A vigorous critique of the substantive position alone leaves the normative underpinnings
- the motivational force behind the proposal - dangerously intact. It may stymie the particular
vehicle that attempts to reinforce racial subordination, but it leaves unaddressed the fundamental
motive driving policy positions that seek to undermine racial minorities in the first place.
At the other end of the responsive spectrum is wholesale rejection. One might view the pedigree
as providing good reason to dismiss opponents of race entirely. Proponents of this view may
choose to indulge fully this liberal skepticism and simply reject the message along with the
messenger. n276 The tradition of legal discourse on American race relations [*1316] has been
one steeped in racial animus and characterized by circumlocution, evasiveness, reluctance and
denial. When opponents avail themselves of rhetorical strategies used by nineteenth-century
legal elites, they necessarily invoke the specter of this tragic racial past. Moreover, their
continued reliance upon pedigreed rhetoric to justify a system that only modestly responds to
persistent racial disparities in the material lives of racial minorities suggests a deep, unarticulated
normative commitment to preserving the racial status quo in which whites remain comfortably
above blacks. The steadfast reliance upon pedigreed rhetoric, coupled with the apparent
disconnect between claims of racial egalitarianism and material conditions of racial
subordination as a result of persistent racial disparities, spoils the credibility of modern
opponents of race preferences and creates an incentive for proponents to dismiss them without
serious interrogation, consideration, and weighing of the arguments they advance.
The principal deficit of this approach is that it would serve only to concretize the existing
conversational impasse and subvert the larger aspiration of seeking constructive solutions to
pressing racial issues . It creates an incentive to view race matters in purely ideological terms and
further subverts the possibility of reasoned policy debate . Speaking of race matters in purely
ideological terms poses a serious impediment to racial conversation because, in advancing one's
position, one essentially argues that a particular set of circumstances demands a particular
outcome. In this [*1317] way, purely ideological race rhetoric functions much like philosopher
Immanuel Kant described in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. n277 According to
Kant, a moral imperative is categorical insofar as it is presented as objectively necessary, without
reference to some purpose or outcome. The imperative is the end in and of itself. As Kant
explained, the moral imperative "has to do not with the matter of the action and what is to result
from it, but with the form and the principle from which the action itself follows; and the
essentially [sic] good in the action consists in the disposition, let the result be what it may." n278
Because the moral imperative embodies that which is morally good, it necessarily makes a claim
about justice. In short, an act is deemed morally just to the extent that it retains fidelity to the
moral imperative.
By contrast, a policy argument reflects a set of choices or priorities and asserts a claim about the
impact of a particular set of decisions upon the world. n279 A policy argument does not embody
a claim to justice. Indeed, the correctness of a policy choice is often tested against the backdrop
of some agreed upon conception of justice. As the late Jerome Culp, Jr. explained:
Neither side of a moral debate is likely to be persuaded by proof that the policy claims
support or discredit their moral positions. Policy arguments can be disproved by
empirical evidence and challenged by showing in some situations the policy does not
work or has contrary results. To refute a moral claim, however, first requires some
agreement on the moral framework. Only then can one discuss whether the moral policy
advocated conforms to the agreed-upon framework. n280
Speaking about race matters in purely ideological or moral terms creates the impression that a
particular racial policy is rooted in some theory of what is morally just. In this way, opposition to
race preferences is made to appear "above the fray" of politics and less susceptible to public
choice debate. In addition, it enables opponents to claim that race [*1318] preferences merely
reflect the political whims of its proponents, unanchored by principle or a coherent theory of
social justice.
Second, reducing conversation on race matters to an ideological contest allows opponents to elide
inquiry into whether the results of a particular preference policy are desirable. Policy positions
masquerading as principled ideological stances create the impression that a racial policy is not
simply a choice among available alternatives, but the embodiment of some higher moral principle.
Thus, the "principle" becomes an end in itself , without reference to outcomes . Consider the
prevailing view of colorblindness in constitutional discourse. Colorblindness has come to be
understood as the embodiment of what is morally just, independent of its actual effect upon the
lives of racial minorities. This explains Justice Thomas's belief in the "moral and constitutional
equivalence" between Jim Crow laws and race preferences, and his tragic assertion that
"Government cannot make us equal [but] can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal
before the law." n281 For Thomas, there is no meaningful difference between laws designed to
entrench racial subordination and those designed to alleviate conditions of oppression. Critics
may point out that colorblindness in practice has the effect of entrenching existing racial
disparities in health, wealth, and society. But in framing the debate in purely ideological terms ,
opponents are able to avoid the contentious issue of outcomes and make viability determinations
based exclusively on whether racially progressive measures exude fidelity to the ideological
principle of colorblindness. Meaningful policy debate is replaced by ideological exchange, which
further exacerbates hostilities and deepens the cycle of resentment . n282
Ocean Studies K
Using the ocean as a metaphor for social relations covers up its
nature as a space BEYOND the HUMAN and the SOCIAL. Only
an OCEAN-CENTERED ontology allows us to relate to the ocean
and spillover to destabilize anthropocentrism
Steinberg 13
Philip E. Steinberg Professor in the Department of Geography @ Durham Of other seas:
metaphors and materialities in maritime regions”, Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, 10:2, 156169, DOI:10.1080/14788810.2013.785192
Conclusion
In her review of recent ocean-related scholarship in social and cultural geography, Kimberley Peters asks, ‘‘ Oceans and seas are threedimensional, fluid and liquid, yet they are also undulating surfaces; how does the texture, the currents and the substance of the water impact
contemporary social and cultural uses of that space? ’’ 46 Others have raised similar points. For instance, Elizabeth DeLoughrey asserts, ‘‘ Unlike
terrestrial space, the perpetual circulation of ocean currents means that as a space, [the sea] necessarily dissolves local phenomenology and
defracts the accumulation of narrative. ’’ 47 In a similar vein, Lambert, Martins, and Ogborn write, ‘‘ Clearly, climatic, geophysical, and
ecological processes belong in work on the sea ... .Overemphasis
on human agency , especially in accounts of the Atlantic,
makes for a curiously static and empty conception of the sea, in which it serves merely as a
framework for historical investigations , rather than being something with a lively and energetic
materiality of its own. ’’ 48 Yet even those who advocate a ‘‘ more-than-human ’’ approach have difficulty incorporating the ocean ’ s
geophysicality, not just as a force that impacts humans but as part of a marine assemblage in which humans are just one component. Thus,
Lambert, Martins, and Ogborn discuss narratives
of the White Atlantic
(postcolonial connections), and
(the Atlantic as a space of labor) but curiously
Red Atlantic
geophysical space of dynamic liquidity), and their
(European migration),
Black Atlantic
leave out a Blue Atlantic
(a
example of the North Atlantic circular system supporting the ‘‘ triangular
trade ’’ culminates in a distinctly human set of patterns and interrelations in which, as with all maritime trade, the
underlying water is idealized as absent. 49 Despite their best intentions, the ocean environment,
although recognized as being more complex than a mere surface, is still treated as ‘‘ a framework for historical
investigations . ’’ A more systematic attempt to integrate geophysicality into our understanding of human activities in the sea can be seen
in recently published works by Kimberley Peters and by Jon Anderson. Peters focuses on pirate radio broadcasters who are continually thwarted
in their attempts to idealize the ocean as an abstract, extra-legal, extra-national space. Reflecting on the affective interaction between the maritime
broadcaster and the sea, she conceptualizes a ‘‘ hydro-materiality ’’ that incorporates 164 P.E. Steinberg Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at
15:01 08 May 2014 mobile biota (both human and non-human) as well as technologies and objects. 50 The geophysical properties of the ocean
take on an even more profound role in Anderson ’ s research on surfing. He uses the relationship between the surfer and the wave to explore how
the assemblage perspective can be expanded (or modified) to interpret fleeting moments of socio-biological-geophysical convergence. This
ontology of convergence may well characterize all moments in time, but its applicability is particularly profound in the ocean because of the
ocean ’ s underlying dynamism. 51 Peters and Anderson propose just two of the many ways in which we can take the ocean seriously as a
complex space of circulations. These
circulations are comprised not just of the people, ideas, commodities,
and ships that move across its surface or the fish who swim in its water. Rather, in a more fundamental way,
the ocean is a space of circulation because it is constituted through its very geophysical mobility. As
in Lagrangian fluid dynamics, movement is not something that happens between places, connecting discrete
points on a ‘‘ rim. ’’ Rather, movement emerges as the very essence of the ocean region, including the aqueous mass
at its center. From this perspective, the ocean becomes the object of our focus not because it is a space that
facilitates movement the space across which things move but because it is a space that is constituted by and
constitutive of movement. This perspective not only enables us to understand the ocean in its entirety; it disassembles accepted
understandings of relations between space and time, between stasis and mobility, and between human and non-human
actants like ships, navigational aids, and water molecules. This perspective suggests an ambitious agenda, and one that
goes well beyond more established goals in the ocean-region studies community, such as highlighting exchange over
production or emphasizing the hybrid nature of cultural identities. And yet, it is only through
engaging with the ocean in all its material complexity that we can develop the fluid perspective
that allows us to use the sea to look beyond the sea.
Accounts of the middle passage and transatlantic that CENTER
history in ocean studies DISPLACE its materiality. Clearly their
historical account is important, but should not be understood as
OCEAN exploration because it’s exploring SOCIALITY
Steinberg 13
Philip E. Steinberg Professor in the Department of Geography @ Durham Of other seas:
metaphors and materialities in maritime regions”, Atlantic Studies: Global Currents, 10:2, 156169, DOI:10.1080/14788810.2013.785192
In this light, it is interesting to compare Dirlik ’ s Pacific Rim with Paul Gilroy ’ s The Black Atlantic . 16 At first glance, Gilroy seems to cover
the material (and the space) ignored by Dirlik. Whereas the distance and materiality of the ocean inside Dirlik ’ s Pacific Rim are seamlessly
transcended by the circuits of multinational capital, the space in the middle (the Atlantic) and the frictions encountered in its crossing are central
for Gilroy. The
Black Atlantic is primarily a book about the connections that persist among members of the
African diaspora and the ungrounded, unbounded, and multifaceted identities that result, and the trope of the Middle
Passage is deployed throughout the book to reference the travel of African-inspired ideas and cultural products, as well as bodies,
that continues to this day. Nonetheless, even as Gilroy appears to reference the ocean, the ultimate target of
these references is far removed from the liquid space across which ships carrying Africans
historically traveled. In fact, the geographic space of the ocean is twice removed from the phenomenon that captures Gilroy ’ s attention:
it is used to reference the Middle Passage which in turn is used to reference contemporary flows, and by
the time one connects this chain of references the materiality of the Atlantic is long forgotten. Venturing into
Gilroy ’ s Black Atlantic, one never gets wet. 158 P.E. Steinberg Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 15:01 08 May 2014
The problem, then, is not that studies that reference an oceanic center lack empirical depth. Rather, the problem is that the
experiences referenced through these studies typically are partial, mediated, and distinct from the
various non-human elements that combine in maritime space to make the ocean what it is. This then leads us back to
Blum ’ s call for a turn to actual experiences of the sea, as have been chronicled by anthropologists, labor historians, and historical geographers,
as well as in maritime or coastal-based fiction. Unfortunately, a scholar of (Western) literature or history who pursues this agenda soon runs into
methodological limits. As John Mack notes, Western accounts of ‘‘ life at sea, ’’ whether fictional or historical, are typically about ‘‘ life on ship, ’’ as they fail to
the physical
geography of the ocean does matter. How we interact with, utilize the resources of, and regulate the oceans that bind our
ocean regions is intimately connected with how we understand those oceans as physical entities : as wet, mobile,
attend to the surface on which the ship floats, let alone what transpires beneath that surface. 17 And yet, contrary to Dirlik ’ s dismissal,
dynamic, deep, dark spaces that are characterized by complex movements and interdependencies of water molecules, minerals, and non-human biota as well as
humans and their ships. The
oceans that unify our ocean regions are much more than surfaces for the
movement of ships (or for the movement of ideas, commodities, money, or people) and they are much more than spaces in
which we hunt for resources. Although these are the perspectives typically deployed in humancentered sea stories (i.e. the ones advocated by Blum), such perspectives
Rather, the oceans that anchor ocean regions need
to be understood as ‘‘ more-than-human ’’ assemblages, 18 reproduced by scientists, 19 sailors, 20 fishers, 21 surfers, 22 divers,
only begin to address the reality of the sea that makes these encounters possible.
23 passengers, 24 and even pirate broadcasters 25 as they interact with and are co-constituted by the universe of mobile non-human elements that also inhabit its
depths, including ships, fish, and water molecules. 26 Although the
actions and interests of humans around the ocean ’ s
edges and on its surface certainly matter, a story that begins and ends with human ‘‘ crossings ’’ or
‘‘ uses ’’ of the sea will always be incomplete . The physical boundaries of a maritime region are indeed human-defined as Dirlik asserts,
but the underlying, and specifically liquid nature of the ocean at its center needs to be understood as
emergent with, and not merely as an underlying context for, human activities.
Using the Middle Passage as an emblem not only reduces the
OCEAN – it reduces the important particulars of transatlantic slave
trade
Dayan 96
Paul
Gilroy's
Slaves,
Ships,
and
Routes:
The
Middle
Passage
as
Metaphor
Joan
Dayan
(http://ezproxy.latech.edu:2071/stable/pdfplus/10.2307/3819981.pdf?acceptTC=true) CM
Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness-a cartographyo f celebratoryjo urneys-reads like an expurgated epic
history. The Black Atlantic refers to, and stresses again and again, the rites of
World, as
the Middle Passage , the journey from Africa to the New
a kind of origin myth for later chosen tales of ocean crossings
by Wright, Du Bois, Douglass, and others
who make a modern journey from the Americas to Europe. Yet, there is something oddly dissembling about those sites of what
Gilroy calls "contamination." For the idea of slavery, so central to his argument (and so necessary to our understandingo f what he calls the
enlightened" complicityo f reasona nd terror") becomes nothing more than a metaphor . How this happens demands some
discussion.A lthoughG ilroya rguesa gainst" Africentrisma"n di ts cult of Africathe nostalgia for Pharaoh's treasures instead of the liberation of
the slave ship, the Middle Passage, and finally slavery itself become frozen , things that
can be referred to and looked back upon, but always wrenched out of an historically specific
continuum. What is missing is the continuity of the Middle Passage in today's world of less
the Exodus story-in Gilroy's story,
obvious, but no less pernicious enslavement. Although I can appreciate the terms used, and laud
Gilroy's call for retrieval of a past either ignored or misrepresented, something is not quite right aboutt his
heroics of choice and collaborationA. s terms like "hybridity,"" contamination," "mixture,"a nd "culturafl usion"w ere repeated,I wondereda boutt
heirg rounding in history.W hat history?W hose history?T he answeri s apparentlys imple: black history-a "transnationadl,i asporic"h istoryo f
attempt to anchor "black
modernism" in "a continued proximity to the unspeakable terrors of the slave experience," the
black slaves with the "slave ship" as vessel of transit and means to knowledge. In Gilroy's
slave experience becomes an icon for modernity; and in a strangely magical way, the Middle Passage
becomes a metaphor, anchored somewhere in a vanishing history. In Gilroy's transit there is no historical past
except as an empty fact turned into a fashionable call that dulls any response that could carry the Middle Passage, slavery, ships, and routes into
the present transnational drive of global capital and political terror. Gilroy stops short of questioning the choice of exile and passage by a minority
of educated elites whose names we remember: Delaney, Douglass, Du Bois, and Wright, to name a few of Gilroy's chosen, along with the
conveyors of "hip-hop," soul music, and rap in Gilroy's new, "keep on moving," world. Gilroy's Middle Passage and his celebration of
"crossculturacl irculation"a nd "nomadism"le nd a false idea of choice to forced Migration Let me turn briefly to what I take to be the incisive
plot of Gilroy's reflections, a plot that undergirdst he images and charactersc alled up on his broadc anvas of modernity .
The plot takes
up three or four moments in the historiography and representation of a new racialized culture of
modernity or those of us who do literary history, the recovery of the institution of slavery and the
presence of African Americans in the texts of the so-called "American Renaissance" have been
essential to a rereading of gothic fiction in the Americas. Even the supernatural in many gothic tales, as I argued in
"Amorous Bondage," had its real basis in the languageo f slaverya nd colonization,p ut fortha s the most naturalt hing in the world. One has only
to read the 1685 Code noir of Louis XIV, that collection of edicts concerning "the Discipline and Commerce of Negro Slaves in the French
Islands of America," to understandh ow what first seemed phantasmagoricis locked into a nature mangled and relived as a spectacle of servitude.
In fixing his critique in his "deep sense of the complicity of racial terror with reason," Gilroy explores, "the ways in which closeness to the
ineffable terrors of slavery was kept alive-carefully cultivated-in ritualized, social forms" (73). Here is a key to the excitement to be found in
Gilroy's "doubleness":f or these social forms might reside in a practice like Haitian vodou, utterly cooptive, and absorptive-a ritualr eenactmento f
the colonial past, as well as an alternativep hilosophy. Gilroy's ruminationss eem to encourages uch movementst o and fro, for "transnationald,
iasporicc ulturali nnovation"a lways cuts both ways. Slavery is the hub-the rite of memory,a stayingc lose to "terror"in ordert o recognizea gain
dedicated" (213). Claiming quite rightly
that slavery is not the "special property" of blacks-some easily discarded residue-but rather" a
part of the ethical and intellectual heritage of the West as a whole" (49), Gilroy announces that
it's time to reconstruct "the primal history of modernity" from the "slaves' point of view" (55).
But what do we define as "the West as a whole"? And where, oh where do we find the slaves'
point of view? To Naipaul'sc laim thatt he Caribbeanis nothingb ut the "ThirdW orld'sT hird World," Sidney Mintz argues that the
and again "the complicity of rationality and ethnocidal terror to which this book is
Caribbean was "being force fit into the socalled First World before anything like a Third World ever existed" (47). As best testing ground for the
claims and coercions of capital, the colonies could be argued to be more Western than what we deem to be West: places for excess, where a
Jacobin could be more Jacobin than allowed in France, and Lady Maria Nugent in 18th-centuryJ amaicac ould be morel uxuriouslyd ressedbearing gifts from Pauline Bonaparte Leclerc next door in Haiti-than a lady in London. There's an odd way in which the Caribbean colonies drop
out of Gilroy's historiography. For Gilroy seems haunted by the ghosts of terms already defined by the metropolitan definers. In quest of what he
calls a "compound outlook" in place of "a pre-rational, spiritual mode of African thought" (60-61), Gilroy oversimplifies the precarious
encountero f colonial spiritualityt,a kingf or grantedt he very dichotomyh e claims to be debunking. Since he deals with late-in-coming cultural
products as exempla, he ignores the contextualization of his supposed subject: slavery. To take an example from my recent Haiti, History, and the
Gods, I am less interested in how the enlightenmenta nd the philosopherso f modernityw, hetherc alled Habermaso r Du Bois, Hegel, or Douglass,
crafted their analyses out of the "brute facts of
The INSTRUMENTALIZATION of the ocean was crucial to
starting the translatlantic slave trade - ontology comes first in this
relation, both HISTORICALLY and CONCEPTUALLY
Jacques 12
Environmental Governance: Power and Knowledge in a Local-Global World, ed Gabriela
Kütting, Ronnie Lipschutz Peter Jacques, Ph.D. Department of Political Science University of
Central Florida P.O. Box 161356 4000 Central Florida Blvd. Orlando, FL 32816 1356 Phone:
(407) 823 6773 Home (407) 977 0880 Fax (407) 823 0051 pjacques@mail.ucf.edu website:
http://ucf.academia.edu/PeterJacques Education Ph.D., Political Science, Northern Arizona
University, 2003, with distinction. Masters in Public Administration (M.P.A.), environmental
policy focus, Northern Arizona University, 2000. B.A., Philosophy, Montana State University,
with honors, 1993. B.A., Film and Theater Arts, Montana State University, with honors, 1993
Connery (2006: 499) writes that there is such
an extensive Western antagonism to the sea
that was
not found
elsewhere in the world, seen through Western biblical and mythological triumph over the sea until it is defeated and eliminated, that it
serves as an elemental antithesis—or “object of elemental rage.” This, he notes, feeds into metaphors that make the ocean
“ meaningless materiality,” like that pointed out by Steinberg, where a 1990 Meryl Lynch two-page ad shows the ocean with the
caption, “for us, this doesn’t exist” implying a mare nuUius . It is easy to also read both the Grotian and Seldenian ocean as one that is
filled with meaningless materiality to be superseded: and, if this is the birth of “the international” then it is based on nullifying non-instrumental
materiality for vulgar accumulation. International relations, then, is a study in irony. We might argue that both perspectives
did eventually take hold, with Grotian law grasping the first chokehold on the oceans with free seas, then mare clausum national enclosures to
200 miles taking the second. In either case,
the ocean is cast as commodity for global capitalist interests,
epitomized through interests in accumulating wealth through overfishing, mining, enclosing
of common pool mangroves
for private shrimp ponds, global trade in seafood, and transportation of nearly all commodities. As Steinberg (2001) writes, the social
construction of the ocean has changed from “Davy Jones’ Locker to the Foot Locker” (referring to the preternatural life-taking power of the
ocean being transformed into a highway for commodity flows, where in one example, the cargo of shoes are lost at sea), and that it is insufiicient
to refer to the usual supposed dichotomy of Grotius vs. Selden. Of power The power to dominate ways of being in the world has repercussions for
the generation of all other types of power, from material use of force to agendasetting, because it normalizes one way of living in the world over
others. At first, we see that the ocean was imbued with multiplicities and particular meanings through a great
variety of cultures around the world. Many imbued the ocean with its own power and agency, as in indigenous coastal cultures, which limited
what these cultures saw as legitimate uses of their own power and effort in the sea. Some of these cultures saw a multitude of spaces and
identities as ontologically integrated with the rest of the world, and constitutive. Then, by “Art” as Ovid prescicntly describes,
transformations of control spread over the Earth at the same time that European jurisprudence not
only constituted the ocean as a tool for accumulation, but erased other ontological priorities and
particularities,
as a way to preclude other non-instrumental uses. Without this step, the rest would
likely not have followed. If the ocean were the Christian god, it is difficult to imagine Grotius saying it could be used
indiscriminately, and that anyone interfering with this use could be punished via war. Thus, the first modern power of the sea is to erase other
notions and meanings with its own design. This
design is made in a specific historical time of imperial nation-building that
grows into diffuse, globalized commodified relations of contemporary corporate-led global
capitalism that still sees the ocean as a tool for immediate (oil, fish) accumulation and intermediate accumulation through
container ships, trawlers, and oil tankers. The Spanish saw fit to use the ocean to conquer and destroy people like the Taino as an opportunity to
build up the proto-Spanish state, pretending to “civilize” indigenous peoples through dispossession. While Grotius rejects this pretense, the ocean
is still a passage for imperio-corporate trade and profit which he believes is ordained in immutable natural law. Selden sees the ocean as limited
and able to be dominated and controlled like any other “dull heap,” which also creates ideational pathways for trade and conquest. Grotius’ and
Selden's arguments have often been counterposed, but their ontological assumptions and projects are the same, and both
assume that the
ocean belongs to and can be disposed of as their empires see fit. Ultimately, Mare Liberum was persuasive among
the colonial set, imagining the World Ocean into the ultimate abstraction—limitless, vast, and free for all
to use indiscriminately. This is exactly the kind of abstraction of space that Connery, via Edward Casey, notes was a “hegemonic
category of thought” that emerged during the seventeenth century (remember Mare Liberum was published in 1604) for the purposes of
nation-building. Here the ocean, as Connery describes it, becomes mere distance, “something to be superseded” (Connery 2006:
497). In superseding the dead “dull heap” of ocean, nations with imperial fleets can connect to other places to annihilate other people, as in the
Taino, and loot its shores .
Mare Liberum normalizes the oceans
for just this type of enterprise, Grotius willing or not. This is
seen historically in the Spanish search for gold, but also in the intercontinental sugar-cotton-slave triangle of domination
operated by the British, among others, that took slaves from Africa, enslaved them in the Caribbean and the colonial and post-colonial United
States, and shipped their cotton and sugar to Europe for manufacturing (Jacques 2006). Steinberg points out that mare liberum was much less
absolute until the British imposed end to slavery—but
modernity’s ontology of the ocean was necessary for the
beginning of the intercontinental slave trade that rested upon the imperial bursting outward from
the European continent.
ALTERNATIVE: we should root our discussions of the OCEAN in
its MATERIALITY, not its status in human relations. We can talk
about the Middle Passage, and we can talk about the ocean, but we
should not EQUATE one with the other
Eckel 14
(Leslie Elizabeth Eckel, Associate professor of English at Suffolk University, “Atlantic Studies:
Global Currents, Oceanic mirrors: Atlantic literature and the global chaosmos,” Pg. 129-131,
03/04/14)
In Frederick Douglass’s novella The Heroic Slave (1853), a first mate who has witnessed a consciousness-altering shipboard slave rebellion
explains to a stubborn “old salt” that his national and racial prejudices simply will not “stand the test of salt water.” 1 What the first mate has
experienced onboard the Creole, an actual ship that changed hands from masters to slaves on its intended passage from Richmond, Virginia to
New Orleans in 1841, shakes his old assumptions loose and forces him to rethink the validity of territorial American law and its entrenched social
hierarchies. Now a central text of what William Boelhower has called “the new Atlantic studies matrix,” 2 , Douglass’s narrative suggests that the
Atlantic Ocean has a life of its own that is fundamentally separate from the historically implicated, culturally delineated lives led in the nations
around its rim. The familiar revolutionary rhetoric used by Douglass’s protagonist can be misleading, as we think we know whose side the ocean
is taking when we hear Madison Washington proclaim, “you cannot write the bloody laws of slavery on those restless billows. The ocean, if not
the land, is free” (Douglass, 504). Washington sounds like a new Founding Father, a man clever enough to use the liberating space of the ocean to
assert those transnational human rights that are not recognized on land. What both he and Douglass only begin to realize, however, is the
extremity of the oceanic “free[dom]” that he invokes, as well as the extent to which the “restless billows” of the ocean’s waters threaten to
obliterate all certainties belonging to those who attempt to “write” them into history – American, Atlantic, or global. As he shores up his own
defense, the Creole’s former first mate describes the danger involved in any ocean voyage. Reversals of fortune can be comprehended, he says,
“[…] when we learn, that by some mysterious disturbance in nature, the waters parted beneath, and swallowed the ship up, we lose our
indignation and disgust in lamentation of the disaster, and in awe of the Power which controls the elements” (Douglass, 501). Here, Washington’s
“restless billows” menace the very existence of the craft they grudgingly support, and through some “mysterious disturbance” display their
elemental “Power,” subject to neither the words nor the will of any human being. This
scene of conflict between those who attempt to
points us toward two versions of Atlantic theory: the first
rooted in the politics of human societies on land, which the narrative implies can be altered in a watery instant, and the
second subject to the unfathomable nature of the ocean itself. It is this second, more disruptive form of Atlantic
interpret the Creole’s dramatic change of course
theory whose potential I intend to explore here by drawing on three oceanic novels: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), CharlesJohnson’s
Middle Passage (1990), and Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (2008). Studies of Atlantic world literatures tend to lean heavily on historical
approaches to knowledge. Recognizing their indebtedness to the paradigms constructed by Atlantic historians from the 1980s onwards, Atlantic
literary scholars may struggle with the belatedness of their approaches or even with “plaintive” feelings about the comparative value of their own
discipline, as Elizabeth Maddock Dillon has noted.3 These scholars
often follow the interdisciplinary lines of inquiry established by Paul
Gilroy and Joseph Roach, which, as Gilroy explains, “take the Atlantic as one single, complex unit of analysis” as they
investigate the myriad cross-fertilizations generated by the movement of people, ideas, and cultural practices across the ocean and around the
Atlantic rim.4 Critical
studies of this kind often identify themselves with Gilroy’s Atlantic “unit of analysis” in a
variety of ethnic, linguistic, and color-coded terms: black Atlantic , “ Indian” Atlantic , transatlantic, circumatlantic, British,
Dutch, French, Portuguese, or Spanish Atlantic,
and “red” or “green” Atlantic
(the latter two designations focus on revolutionary
history and the Irish diaspora, respectively).
With so much emphasis on categorizing and cataloguing its cultural
activity, however, a full and balanced understanding of the oceanic element of the Atlantic has
been lost . In his field-defining essay, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” David Armitage contends that circumatlantic, transatlantic, and
cisatlantic studies together constitute a uniquely “three-dimensional” area of inquiry, but his analysis largely excludes the oceanic fourth
dimension that can further deepen and complicate our understanding of the Atlantic world.5 Margaret Cohen recognizes this loss, calling it
“ hydrophasia, ” a
condition in which the ocean itself is forgotten en route to other critical
destinations .6 Before it became a field upon which scholars could stake their territorial claims, the Atlantic was a
space held in suspension by water , whose properties and influences are inherently distinct from those of earth.7 An oceanic
theory of Atlantic studies invites us to imagine a true “history from below,” one that is less concerned
with the immanence of slavery’s legacy
or the exigencies of seafaring labor than
with the ways in which the
ocean, by what Kate Flint terms its “fluid, mutable, dangerous” nature, overwhelms the human mind
and undermines attempts
to analyze the meaning of its vast expanse.8 Both Boelhower, a literary scholar, and Armitage, an historian, have asked what
would
happen if we put the ocean itself at the center of our conception of the Atlantic world.9 Would this
constitute, as Jed Esty has suggested, a “radical” change in our understanding of transatlantic studies, or, I would add, a productive challenge to
our thinking about any geopolitical region defined by an ocean, including the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Rim, and the Mediterranean Sea?10 Can
focusing on the Atlantic’s normally hidden identity as one ocean among many, all with a shared elemental nature, yet possessing separate
historical footprints, uncover common losses and ruptures in consciousness that trouble the field imaginary of a “single, complex” Atlantic
studies? The essays gathered in the Oceanic Studies cluster of the May 2010 issue of PMLA respond in part to these provocations, charting a
promising “oceanic turn in literary studies” that considers the environmental implications, genre shifts, identity formations, and power relations
constituted in human interactions with the sea.11 From Hester Blum’s perspective, attention to “the material conditions and praxis” of oceanic
experience, particularly the working lives of sailors, “allow[s] for a galvanization of the erasure, elision, and fluidity at work in the metaphorics
of the sea that would better enable us to see and to study the work of oceanic literature.”12 I want to suggest that an important way in which
oceanic texts do this work is by mirroring the strong currents and blank zones of the waters they
travel, especially as one ocean flows into and mingles with another: the Atlantic folds into the Indian Ocean, for instance, and then again into
the Pacific. My critical method of “galvanizing” the global ocean’s power draws on both the figurative images of emptiness and perpetual
transformation that the sea presents as well as the literal implications that those fluid conditions have for the cultures connected by the ocean’s
waves. From a nineteenthcentury American standpoint, the prospect of oceanic emptiness is a daunting one, as it threatens to annihilate the
nationally grounded self carefully cultivated by the precepts of Romantic individualism. Such is the case for Ishmael, the narrator of Melville’s
Moby- Dick. In Middle Passage, Johnson challenges that assumption by exploring what emptiness looks like from a black Buddhist perspective,
following Atlantic currents from the Americas to Africa and then into the Indian Ocean (and by religious implication, the Pacific). Finally, Ghosh
considers the Indian Ocean as a dynamic mirror image of the Atlantic world in Sea of Poppies – a novel that dislocates the Atlantic’s categories
of racial and national identity even as it recreates familiar oceanic patterns of the slave trade, the creolization of language, and the painful loss of
landed bearings. The three novels with Atlantic roots (as well as global “routes,” accessed via Gilroy’s suggestive homonym) on which this essay
focuses its attention bring oceanic encounters into their imaginative foreground and allow their narratives to flow with
the sea’s shifting currents.13 They ask questions that shift our cultural frames of reference: How can emptiness be considered a victory, not a
void? Where is “blackness” a sign of divinity, not a social danger? As they do so, they
Isabel Hofmeyr notes, putting it in dialogue with other oceanic world systems,
not only “relativize the Atlantic,” as
but they invoke Johnson’s idea of the ocean
as a spiritual “chaosmos,” in which a world that devolves into “chaos” from one perspective may also be recreated from another.14
That dynamic situates these novels between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans but also between human territory and divine cosmos: standing, or
rather, sailing on what Cohen identifies as “the edge of knowledge,” facing the incomprehensible and the theoretically impossible.15 We have
already been warned by Douglass and the Creole’s first mate – the farther we sail from land and away from the known world, the more dangerous
the ocean will become.
When we truly immerse ourselves in the vortex of the sea, all of our systems of
thought will be called into question.
Case
We reject the affirmative narrative of PURE natal alienation – the
Middle Passage should not be PURELY mourned, but
STRATEGICALLY REAPPROPRIATED. It created a BLACK
ATLANTIC COMMUNITY – which allows resistance to its horrors
from the standpoint of HYBRIDITY instead of ABSOLUTIST
REFUSAL
Pettinger 93 Alasdair, studied at the Universities of Birmingham and Essex, completing his
PhD in Literature in 1988 while working as a civil servant in London. Since 1992, he has been
based in Glasgow, working at the Scottish Music Centre and pursuing his academic interests as
an independent scholar. He has held visiting research fellowships at the University of Central
Lancashire (2000) and Nottingham Trent University (2004-2007) and is currently an Honorary
Research Fellow in the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of
Liverpool (2010-2013). He is the editor of Always Elsewhere: Travels of the Black Atlantic
(1998), and has published a number of essays reflecting his (overlapping) interests in travel
literature, the cultures of slavery and abolitionism, and representations of Haiti. His current
projects include a study of Frederick Douglass' visit to Scotland in the 1840s and a history of the
word voodoo in English, available from JSTOR, Research in African Literatures, 29.4, pg. 14244, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3820848, “Enduring Fortresses: A Review of ‘The Black
Atlantic’” | ADM
First and foremost, perhaps, the "black Atlantic" is a slogan, a call for a strategic realignment
that will encourage scholars to move away from what Gilroy sees as narrowly national or
ethnically exclusive frames of reference. Because even when they do cross borders and broaden
their perspective, there remains a tendency to think of black expressive cultures in terms of a single
narrative trajectory that runs either back to Africa (the pull of the ancient homeland, if you like)
or forwards to (nowadays, usually) North America (the promise?however distant?of full
participa- tion in modernity). Now it may be true that Gilroy exaggerates the extent to which this
tendency has taken hold, but let me provide a few examples of the kind of approach he might have
had in mind. Consider, for instance, James Weldon Johnson's account of his visit to Haiti in 1920,
ostensibly to report on the American occupation. But Americans hardly figure in his text: he is
interested in the "real" Haiti. He saw beautiful villas, inspected the clean, native huts, and
admired the mag- nificent countrywomen. The weather was glorious, the scenery stunning, but
the sensation of his trip was a visit to Christophe's Citadel in the north: In places the walls were
from eight to twelve feet thick. Some of the size of the citadel may be gained from the statement
that Christophe built it to quarter thirty thousand soldiers. The more I saw of it, the more the
wonder grew on me not only as to the exe- cution but as to the mere conception of such a work. I
should say that it is the most wonderful ruin in the Western Hemisphere, and, for the amount of
human energy and labor sacrificed in its construction, can be compared to the pyramids of Egypt.
As I stood on the highest point, where the sheer drop from the walls was more than 2000 feet,
and looked out over the rich plains of Northern Haiti, I was impressed with the thought that, if
ever a man had the right to feel himself a king, that man was Christophe when he walked around
the parapets of his citadel. (352) And secondly by contrast here is an extract from a rather
notorious article written in 1995 by Keith Richburg, reflecting on three years as African
correspondent with the Washington Post. Standing on a bridge in Tanzania, watching corpses
float down a river from Rwanda he comments: I know exacdy the feeling that haunts me, but I've
just been too embarrassed to say it. So let me drop the charade and put it as simply as I can:
There but for the grace of God go I. Somewhere, sometime, maybe 400 years ago, an ancestor of
mine whose name I'U never know was shackled in leg irons, kept in a dark pit, possibly at Goree
Island off the coast of Senegal, and then put with thousands of other Africans into the crowded,
filthy cargo hold of a ship for the long and treacherous journey across the Atlantic. Many of
them died along the way, of disease, of hunger. But my ancestor survived, maybe because he was
strong, maybe stubborn enough to want to live, or maybe just lucky. He was ripped away from
his country and his family, forced into slavery somewhere in the Caribbean. Then one of his
descendants some- how made it up to South Carolina, and one of those descendants, my father,
made it to Detroit during the Second World War, and there I was born, 36 years ago. And if that
original ancestor hadn't been forced to make that horrific journey, I would not have been
standing there that day on the Rusumo Falls bridge, a journalist? a mere spectator?watching the
bodies glide past me like river logs. No, I might have instead been one of them?or have met
some similarly anonymous fate in any one of the coundess ongoing civil wars or tribal clashes on
this brutal continent. And so I thank God my ancestor made that voyage. (18) Both authors have
traveled extensively and are well aware of the dias- poric dimensions of black expressive cultures.
Yet in these extracts, they allow themselves to reduce these dimensions to well-rehearsed
unidirectional narratives of descent and ascent. The writers offer not so much travel accounts as
extravagant homespun fantasies: they visit foreign lands but the scenarios they evoke are so
familiar (Johnson recalls Edmund Blyden, for instance, while in Richburg one hears an echo of
Phillis Wheadey), they hardly seem to have traveled at all. Gilroy insists that things are a good
deal more complicated than this, and his emphasis on the Atlantic precisely because it lies between
these points of anchorage, so to speak furnishes us with a brilliant metaphor . The diaspora
resembles not a river, gathering its tributaries in a relendess voyage to a final destination, but a
vast stretch of water that touches many shores: Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the Americas .
None of which, for Gilroy, has any special privilege over the others; it is the relationships between
them that matter, the ways in which they influence each other and become enmeshed. He
deliberately chooses examples of cross-cultural encounters that do not meet the demands of that
hyphenated couple, the African American, by pointing to the central importance of a third term:
Europe. Whether it is Du Bois in Hegelian Berlin, Richard Wright in existentialist Paris, or the
restless "travels" implicit in the hybrid creations of contemporary British dance records, we get a
sense of a more diverse and de-centered field of cross-fertilization, which cannot be accommodated
in grand narratives of assimilation or separation . Now many of the examples he cites have been
marginalized by more orthodox scholars, marked out as somehow inauthentic, bracketed off as if
they are not part of the "tradition" if only because of the prevailing institu? tional division of
academic labor. But I don't think Gilroy is just asking us to reconsider their application for
membership of that tradition, as if the "black atlantic" is just another cultural world searching for
recognition alongside more "solid" entities such as North America, Africa, the Caribbean, and so
on. On the contrary, I think he is suggesting that the hybrid, restless character of the literary and
musical forms he discusses are typical – that they represent the normal condition of black cultures
everywhere. The implica- tion is that even the least promising site – the remotest village or the
busiest financial headquarters – turns out on closer analysis to be intersected by a range of
transcontinental networks (recognizably "black" if not purely so) without which they cannot be
fully understood. These networks of information, mutual aid, emotional solidarity, political
collaboration would include the abolitionist movement ; the many initiatives embraced by the term
Pan-African' , syncretic cultural formations such as vodun, cricket, or jazz; and the traveling,
mailing, and phoning that keep the members of extended diasporic families in touch with each
other. If this is the case, then the "black Atlantic" is not about evening things up?if you
like?between the national and the international, the pure and the corrupt, the hardcore and the
sell-out, but challenging these very distinctions altogether.
We SHOULD embrace a very PARTICULAR form of
progressivisimmm – Black Atlanticism finds the possibility of
REDEMPTION and LIBERATION in strategic reapppropriation
and movement within the history of the Middle Passage
Murray 05 Rolland D., Associate Professor of English at Brown University, author of Our
Living Manhood: Literature, Black Power, and Masculine Ideology (U of Pennsylvania P, 2007).
His current project considers the impact of postidentity politics on contemporary African
American culture. His essays have been published in such journals as the Yale Journal of
Criticism, Contemporary Literature, and Callaloo. He has been awarded fellowships from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as well as the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American
and African Studies at the University of Virginia, available from Project MUSE, Contemporary
Literature, 46.1, pg. 58-59,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/contemporary_literature/v046/46.1murray.html, “Diaspora by Bus:
Reginald McKnight, Postmodernism, and Transatlantic Subjectivity” | ADM
Evan's encounter with slavery thus tracks a far more unstable play between the present and the
recollection of the slave past than do some of our most sophisticated contemporary meditations
on this matter. Works as intricate as Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic and as polyvocal as Toni
Morrison's Beloved present the Middle Passage and slavery as a historical experience that offers
redemption and even liberation to those who remember it. Gilroy argues that from the
nineteenth century forward, New World blacks have reconstructed slavery through "storytelling
and music making" in order to build " insubordinate racial countercultures " (200). In this view,
the reproduction of cultural practices that sustained blacks from the edges of the Middle Passage
through enslavement has been instrumental in forging oppositional racial identities and
emancipatory cultural practices throughout the diaspora. A related investment in the redemptive
also shapes Morrison's Beloved, a work that tells the story of a child, Beloved, who is murdered
by her slave mother, Sethe. When the murdered child's ghost returns in the body of a young
woman, only by grappling with this phantom incarnation of slavery do the novel's characters
truly realize themselves as both autonomous subjects and members of a black collective. This
logic governs a climactic scene in which a group of black women come to Sethe's home to rid
the family of Beloved's ghost. When the women begin to sing outside the house, their voices
converge in a chorus that builds into "a wave wide enough to sound deep water and knock the
pods off chestnut trees. It broke over Sethe like a baptism" (261). For Sethe, the women's
collective confrontation with the ghost proves a liberatory cleansing. That is, despite the havoc
produced by Beloved, Sethe's eventual autonomy, her recognition that she is her own "best
thing," transpires because she recollects theslave past. And only as the community itself engages
with theembodiment of its slave past is it able to consolidate its collective identity, its voice.
Animating the projects of Morrison and Gilroy, then, is an impulse to frame remembrance as a
political gesture with extraordinary therapeutic and emancipatory potential . Alternately,
McKnight's novel seems to resist such strategies, for Evan's disorienting encounter with the
legacy of slavery only forces him to recognize the bursts of half-legible signs that render him a
mystery to himself. Slavery occasions individual reflection [End Page 58] on the historical
grounds that constitute being but not a cathartic resolution of past crisis. This refusal to posit
slavery as an avenue toward redemption prompts the question of what alternative the novel poses
to the diasporic imaginings of the past century. What else might be adumbrated in considering a
black identity that is fundamentally without a homeland, dispersed, as it were, in the Atlantic ?
Toward the end of his search for origins, Evan struggles to answer a similar question, and his
efforts lead him back to the sea: I bleed my way from Africa to America. In time I will no longer
be able to hold each particle together. The slow boil of the ocean will break me down, atom by
atom. . . . My consciousness will rise up like vapor, will steam and roll, half-invisible, far into
the sky, get caught up in the clouds, choke them till they can hold no more of me. The clouds
will cast me down in a silent dry rain. I will hang in the air, between sky and soil, sky and sea,
floating in disjointed voiceless madness for all eternity. The wind will rise and push these
fragments around the circuits of the world. Everywhere, people will breath my hunger, grow
dizzy with the pangs of emptiness, consume one another. There is never enough to go all the way
around. Look out for the hungry ones. (220–21) This breathtaking depiction of a self in the
throes of dissolution offers a canny synthesis of the aesthetic and political project of the novel.
There is a note of euphoria in Evan's account of his madness that echoes the pleasure the novel
takes in displacing conventional renderings of diasporic identity. The novel builds a world in
which the effect of diasporic ideology is in perpetual suspension, a space in which one can imagine
the diasporic subject's hunger for roots with out having to identify with the particular ideologies
constructed to realize that rootedness.
They also link by CENTERING the debate on the USFG. Black
atlanticism demands that we move BEYOND the nation state
formation. We understand that they don’t ENDORSE the nationstate, but they still FRAME the debate around it. Reject this
centering in favor of a TRANSNATIONAL DIASPORIC mode of
identification
Elmer 5
Jonathan, Associate Professor of English at Indiana University, he has published on Jefferson,
Poe, Wright, and Lacan, and is completing a book titled On Lingering and Being Last: Race,
Sovereignty, and Archive, available from Project MUSE, American Literary History, 17.1, pg
165-67, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_literary_history/v017/17.1elmer.html#authbio,
“The Black Atlantic Archive” | ADM
"Face Zion Forward" is a collection of primary documents from the late eighteenth century,
several of them already printed elsewhere, introduced by a scholarly introduction; its focus is the
post-Revolutionary black loyalist diaspora, tracking the movements of Marrant, Boston King, and
David George as they move into and out of a dangerous revolutionary environment that more or
less forces them to seek community in extranational ways , through the development of patronage
in England and through the black community-building projects in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone.
The texts in Brooks and Saillant "represent a foundational moment in black Atlantic intellectual
history, a moment that generated two essential modes of black thought about Africa. The first
imagined Africa as a place to be redeemed through emigration, colonization, and proselytization
by once-enslaved Christian blacks, and the second conceived of Africa as a recollected group
consciousness among the members of the modern black diaspora" (18–19). Gilroy had argued for
a black Atlantic "counterculture of modernity" that evaded the hegemony of the nation-form , but
nationalist impulses were never far from view; indeed, he began his study by exploring the
powerful hold of black [End Page 165] nationalist thought in the career of Martin R. Delaney.
The authors in "Face Zion Forward" further complicate the idea that black Atlantic writers set
themselves against the idea of nation, having little to gain from it. On the contrary, Brooks and
Saillant reiterate the familiar point that "[t]he move to Sierra Leone occurred just as a crucial link
of the modern world was being forged: the creation of nations through democratic revolution and
an attack on unfreedom, whether it was the bondage of the colonist, of the citizen without
representation, or of the slave" (13). The entire question of national identification on the part of
early black Atlantic figures remains to be sorted out . Black loyalists during the American
Revolution may have taken their position because the British offered them their freedom, or
because they found the colonies more systemically brutal toward blacks, or because they felt some
degree of patriotic allegiance to the Crown. When Equiano gains his manumission, he longs to
return home—to England. Is this a rhetorical ploy from this most sophisticated of black Atlantic
writers, or an expression of true sentiment? Jeffrey Bolster, in Blacks Jacks (1997), presents
some fascinating material about black sailors during the War of 1812 choosing prison in England
over impressment on ships engaged in battle with their fellow Americans: was this defiance of the
English an expression of patriotism, a calculation that prison was all in all a safer place to be, or,
as Bolster speculates, a "rear-guard action to disavow blacks' defilement in the [US] national
imagination and todefy the popular fusion of republicanism and whiteness that increasingly
defined American citizenship by excluding people of color" (115)? These narratives by black
writers of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century are so fascinating in part because
they show how difficult it is to answer such questions . Most of these narratives focus resolutely on
the vagaries of experience and present a world of such profound dislocation, risk, and contingency
that we are forced to acknowledge that questions of national, religious, and ethnic identity are very
often up for grabs according to the pressures of the moment. To focus on local environments of
risk expands our analytic frame, in one sense: thus, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker's
emphasis, in The Many-Headed Hydra (2000), on social terror and natural risk allows them to
argue for the existence of a multiethnic early modern proletariat dispersed across the Atlantic
world. But it also narrows our focus to suggest how experience and its discursive codification
emerge in resolutely contingent environments, emerge, that is, as essentially volatile and thus
revisable. Does Equiano's having listed his birthplace as Carolina represent a truth that his
Interesting Narrative revises, or are these two documents themselves the revision enacted under a
local pressure we can only guess at? We [End Page 166] tend to think of chattel slavery as a kind
of ontological divide , but the texts reprinted and discussed in these books remind us that slave
had a more unstable meaning at this time. Part of this is the result of complex interactions between
discourses: slave could always mean— and often did—slave to sin; it could also mean simply
laboring, as in Equiano's remark that, after his manumission, he "consented to slave on as before"
(141). Such ambiguities crop up in biographical details, as well: Marrant was born free, but did
he, as Carretta has suggested, have a slave himself (Unchained Voices 129n9)? Was Briton
Hammon a slave to his "master," General Winslow, or merely a servant (Carretta argues the
latter [Unchained Voices 24])? Robert Desrochers, Jr., is surely right to place such uncertainties
in a larger world of "hierarchies of servitude": Hammon was a "man with a demonstrated knack
for staying alive and optimizing personal security and relative freedom in an Atlantic world
governed by hierarchies of servitude" (159), and his Narrative is "a portrait of a man struggling
to maintain and extend personal sovereignty under less than ideal circumstances" (Caretta and
Gould, Genius 159). What these ambiguities point to, it seems to me, is that while the work on the
black Atlantic has done much to call into question the explanatory paradigms of nation and ethnic
identity , we have not yet settled on new paradigms to help us move beyond merely raising such
problems to an attempt to resolve them in some interpretively satisfying
Cultural hybridity – as opposed to a BLACK WHITE BINARY breaks down dyads that pervade critical and political discourse and
animate debates about race, gender, and nation.
McBride 95 Dwight, Dean of The Graduate School & Associate Provost at Northwestern
University, Daniel Hale Williams Professor of African American Studies, English, &
Performance Studies, available from Project MUSE, Modern Fiction Studies, 41.2, pg 388-91,
https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_fiction_studies/v041/41.2br_gilroy.html, “The Black
Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness” | ADM
Dyads like essentialism/constructionism, sexism/feminism and nationalism/pluralism proliferate
much of contemporary critical and political discourse in the academy. They animate debates around race,
gender, nation , and even issues as large in scope as the character of modernity. In The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double
Consciousness, Paul Gilroy, through his use of the metaphor of "
and finally limiting,
the black atlantic ," demonstrates that such dyads are not only reductive
but that any true understanding of black atlantic culture must recognize and account for
its very hybridity . For Gilroy, any serious study of black atlantic culture must include the influences of the
European as well as the African American cultures. In the very first chapter, Gilroy tells us that "commentators from all
sides of political opinion " have " systematically obscured " the existence of the very evident cultural hybridity
that he argues for in The Black Atlantic. Gilroy, characterizing the state of contemporary political and intellectual discourses about ethnic cultures, states that Regardless of their affiliation to the
right, left, or centre, groups have fallen back on the idea of cultural nationalism , on the overintegrated conceptions of
culture which present immutable, ethnic differences as an absolute break in the histories and
experiences of "black" and "white" people. Against this choice stands another, more difficult option: the theorisation of
creolisation, métissage, mestizaje, and hybridity. From the viewpoint of ethnic absolutism, this would [End Page 388] be a litany of
pollution and impurity . These terms are rather unsatisfactory ways of naming the process of cultural
mutation and restless (dis)continuity that exceed racial discourse and avoid capture by its agents. Based on these ideas, what Gilroy offers in The Black
Atlantic is a practice for "reading" the cultural production of the black atlantic-with examples ranging from slave narratives and novels to hip-hop. Many reviewers of this text mention Gilroy's masterful reading, in chapter 2, of
Frederick Douglass as the "progenitor of black nationalism," commenting on how Douglass and others, by raising the issue of slavery as they do, complicate circulating, nascent theories of modernity.
Gilroy clearly calls
for a reconstruction of "the primal history of modernity from the slave's point of view ." He demonstrates, through a
thorough reading of Douglass along with an impressive subset of related texts, that when the idea of history as progress (the dominant paradigm in Western historiography)
confronts the lived and narrative critique of the slave, our understanding of "progress" has to be
completely rethought along with our understanding of "modernity." Other reviewers laud Gilroy's evaluation of black atlantic musical
production from spirituals to rap, reminding us that the slave's access to literacy was often denied on pain of death and only a few cultural opportunities were offered as a surrogate for the other forms of individual autonomy denied by
life on the plantation and in the barracoons. Music becomes vital at the point at which linguistic and semantic indeterminacy/polyphony arise amidst the protracted battle between masters, mistresses, and slaves. In this vein, Gilroy
makes a larger argument about the music of the black atlantic being the medium that can respond to the poststructuralist overdetermined concern with textuality and the impossibility of any unmediated representation. He argues that
black musical expression has played a role in reproducing . . . a distinctive counterculture of
modernity." In his consideration of black musical development he moves beyond an understanding of
cultural processes which . . . is currently torn between seeing them either as the expression of an essential,
unchanging, sovereign racial self or as [End Page 389] the effluent from a constituted subjectivity that
emerges contingently from the endless play of racial signification. This is usually conceived solely in terms of the inappropriate model which
"
textuality provides. The vitality and complexity of this musical culture offers a means to get beyond the related oppositions between essentialists and pseudo-pluralists on the one hand and between totalising conceptions of tradition,
modernity and post-modernity on the other. It also provides a model of performance which can supplement and partially displace concern with textuality. Gilroy's brilliantly executed readings of musical artists in chapter 3 include
such varied examples as the Fisk University Jubilee Singers, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis and 2 Live Crew. Still other critics notice the new readings of W. E. B. Du Bois (chapter 4) and Richard Wright (chapter 5) that Gilroy
articulates. While Gilroy's reasons for including Du Bois are certainly clear, the reasons for the inclusion of Wright may not be for some readers. Gilroy includes a discussion of Wright here because he is "the first black writer to be
put forward as a major figure in world literature." His re-evaluation of Wright centers on taking seriously the depth of Wright's philosophical interests, which have been "either overlooked or misconceived by the almost exclusively
literary enquiries that have dominated analysis of [Wright's] writing." Gilroy makes several rhetorical moves to achieve this aim, including comparing Wright's understanding of human progress to that of Nietzsche and reading Wright
against Du Bois. He provides a thoughtful overview of Wright's Marxism and his involvement with the Communist party. He also defends, with readings of The Outsider and The Long Dream, against claims made by Arnold
Gilroy interrogates what he sees as the
glossing and/or reducing of the debates between Zora Neale Hurston and Wright over the uses of "the folk" in art as
well as Wright's representations of black women in his work to mere "misogyny." Citing critics Barbara Johnson and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as
examples of those participating in discussions of Wright as a misogynist, Gilroy moves to provide a re-mapping of that critical historical terrain upon which such arguments have been made. Gilroy's
conclusions here are startling and [End Page 390] demand serious re-thinking on the reader's part of this crucial debate in the history
Rampersad and other critics that Wright's literary career took a turn for the worse with his expatriation to Paris. And perhaps most interesting,
of African American letters . In addition to these major figures often cited in reviews of Gilroy's text are a host of others that receive brief critical attention. For example, in chapter 1 Gilroy
produces an extremely rich reading of Martin Delany's The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States Politically Considered and his Blake. In chapter 6 we get a reading of the Margaret
Garner story (which was the basis for Toni Morrison's Beloved) and of the positionality of slave women.
way.
The Black Atlantic opens space for a Black Internationalism that
struggles for universal emancipation. Refuse to take the nation-state
as its unit of analysis. Reclaiming and advancing the Black
Internationalist counter-narrative effectively challenges white
supremacy on a GLOBAL scale
West and Martin 9
— Michael O. West, Professor in the Department of Sociology at Binghamton University, holds
a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University, and William G. Martin, Professor in the Department
of Sociology at Binghamton University, holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University of
New York at Binghamton, 2009 (“Introduction: Contours of the Black International From
Toussaint to Tupac,” From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of
Revolution, Edited By Michael O. West, William G. Martin, and Fanon Che Wilkins, Published
by the University of North Carolina Press, ISBN 9780807833094, p. 1-4)
This volume is an act of recuperation. It seeks to reclaim and advance an old, but largely
unheralded, story of black struggles worldwide. The subject, in brief, is black internationalism .
The black international, we argue, has a single defining characteristic: struggle . Yet struggle,
resistance to oppression by black folk, did not mechanically produce black internationalism.
Rather, black internationalism is a product of consciousness , that is, the conscious interconnection
and interlocution of black struggles across man-made and natural boundaries—including the
boundaries of nations , empires , continents , oceans , and seas . From the outset, black
internationalism envisioned a circle of universal emancipation , unbroken in space and time.1 It is
a vision personified, respectively, by the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture and the U.S.
rap impresario Tupac Shakur, the one illustrating the struggles against slavery and the other
signifying contemporary cultural insurgencies.¶ Our collection examines a variety of events and
movements that manifest the multilayered and interconnected character of black
internationalism. First, the essays show the emergence of black traditions of struggle and
resistance in particular localities. Second, the contributions demonstrate how local struggles
intersected with one another across diverse boundaries to form, loosely and informally, a black
international that was greater than the sum total of its constituent parts. Third, the black
international, in its turn, variously quickened, inspired, and stimulated local struggles. These
essays chart aspects of that black internationalist resistance, from the onset of modern capitalism
to the current postmodern era, in sum, since the Age of Revolution.2¶ Historical scholarship,
including most of the writings on black experiences, has not been kind to black internationalism.
Two dominant scholarly traditions, [end page 1] the metanarrative and the national narrative,
have intellectually marginalized the black international. The metanarrative, despite its vaunted
claim to universality, pays scant attention to most of humanity outside the white Atlantic, while
the national narrative, with its singular focus on the nationstate, is largely oblivious to
transnational concerns.3 Caught between these two hegemons—the Eurocentric metanarrative and
the exclusivist national narrative—the discourse of black internationalism, although never fully
silenced, has been much muted .¶ The recuperation we attempt in this volume necessarily runs
counter to the dominant master narrative , whether in the form of the metanarrative or of the
national narrative. Contrary to the existing literature on social movements and revolutions,4 we
argue that black movements have been a leading force in the search for emancipation since at least
the second half of the eighteenth century. In contrast to those who celebrate globalization as a new
phenomenon,5 we maintain that black movements have long imagined and operated on a world
scale . Against the master narrative, we posit that successive waves of black international struggles
have countered , shaped , and at times destroyed central pillars of capital and empire, racial as
well as political. In short, the story of the black international requires nothing less than a
rethinking of received wisdom about life under capitalism over the long durée—and the
possibility of alternative social worlds in the past and the future.¶ Our project, as noted, is more
reclamation than innovation. Black activists, scholars, and movements have long made many of
the claims we sketch here, in broad outline if not in specific detail.6 But the master narrative, as
produced especially in the historically white academy, has steadily and effectively effaced the black
internationalist counternarrative. Thus we have been told of an “Age of Revolution” with little, if
any, mention of the Haitian Revolution. Repeatedly, we hear stories of twentieth-century
revolutions that conveniently elide black internationalism. Incessantly, we are regaled with praise
poems about the good, nonviolent 1960s and the new social movements it spawned, with scant
reference to their black internationalist antecedents.¶ In our own time, the erasure of global black
histories , which is to say the story of the black international, may be attributed primarily to the
remaking of the Western academy, and especially the U.S. academy, after World War II. The
demands of the Cold War, as determined by the national security state, gave rise to a new
Orientalist-style branch of knowledge, area studies, of which African studies was a component part.
African studies, as we have argued else [end page 2] where,7 separated and isolated continental
Africa from black North America , and both from the Caribbean and Latin America. Thus did an
iron curtain , to appropriate a formulation made famous elsewhere, descend over the study of
African peoples. With the possible exception of Atlantic slavery, the resulting intellectual
segregation generally precluded investigation of shared black or African experiences , much less
shared black struggles for emancipation across nations and empires, continents and oceans.
Accordingly, black studies in North America, which emerged out of later struggles in the 1960s
and 1970s,8 were increasingly confined to a narrower, national locale . Likewise, black British
studies remained separate from African studies in the British academy, just as African American
studies and African studies were distinct areas of inquiry in the leading U.S. universities.9
Taking the nation-state as the unit of analysis, and utilizing a comparative method that required
isolated cases, the Cold War academy effectively ruled out the notion of a black international that
cohered the freedom struggles of African peoples globally.¶ But no condition, it has been noted, is
permanent. More recent scholarship, driven by forces as diverse as the Afrocentric protests of the
1980s and the end of the Cold War, has challenged the master narrative, including the African
studies one.10 By the beginning of the new millennium, more and more scholars and activists
were being drawn to the connections, old and new, between peoples and movements across the
globe. As area studies and African studies receded, along with the Cold War, insurgent forces
within and without the academy forged new ties between the previously discrete fields of
African, African American, Caribbean, Latin American, and Black European studies. These
trends resulted in the appearance of new journals (e.g., Contours, Diaspora, and Black
Renaissance), new Ph.D. programs in diaspora and Africana studies, and new conferences and
associations dedicated to the black world (e.g., the Association for the Study of the Worldwide
African Diaspora). The resulting synergy has, among other things, sparked renewed interest in
the forces —ideological, cultural, and organizational —that have long linked black life and
activity in various parts of the globe.11¶ The studies brought together in this volume represent
some of the first fruit of the most recent labor. Collectively, they demonstrate the multiple and
complex ways in which local black struggles and revolts have been conjoined to larger processes
and movements among black folk here and there,12 such that one can credibly speak of globally
connected waves of struggles by African peoples over the past two and half centuries. These
struggles, and their [end page 3] cumulative effect, are fundamental to a full accounting of the
early formation and transformation of capitalism in the Atlantic world, specifically, and more
generally to the story of humankind in the modern world.¶ Such a project, furthermore, recovers a
past within the world of activist scholarship. Already at the turn of the twentieth century, circles
of movements and bodies of scholarship had emerged with a common mission: to challenge
scientific racism worldwide, to contest colonialism and its reputed civilizing mission in Africa and
the Caribbean, and to confront new forms of racial oppression in postemancipation societies such
as the United States, Brazil, and Cuba.13 These antinomian expressions, in turn, were built on still
older traditions of common resistance, traditions that date back to the second half of the
eighteenth century. In that era of ferment throughout the Atlantic world, local struggles for
emancipation, although expressing a wide range of lived experiences in specific societies, began to
link together in a broad insurgency against imperial and racial orders.14 The linkages were
forged amid the iconic movements of the modern North Atlantic, notably the Enlightenment, the
Evangelical Revival, and the U.S., French, and Haitian revolutions. These were not just
European and European-settler phenomena but, rather, world-historical events that were
fundamentally shaped by the African agency and the African presence, literal and figurative.
Such lines of inquiry, however, were largely foreclosed by the post–World War II rise of U.S.
hegemony and, more specifically, by what it wrought: area and African studies. Exiled from the
mainstream academy, black counternarratives were literally driven underground .¶ Reclaiming
and advancing that intellectual tradition is a huge task, one that will have to be collaborative and
can only be achieved over the long haul. We certainly make no pretense here of offering anything
approximating a comprehensive accounting of the emergence and evolution of black
internationalism. What we attempt, rather, is a rough outline of such a project and its promise.
Our volume unearths moments when struggles against a racially ordered world system coalesced,
creating black international moments of considerable —and often violent —force. In so doing,
we claim uniformity of neither conditions, identities, nor movements; just the contrary, racial
identities and forms of protest varied over space and time . The notion of black or African
remained in constant flux, changing over time. At certain moments , however, racial struggles and
identities cohered across vast masses of land and bodies of water , challenging and changing
dominant modes of white supremacy . The volume focuses on three such moments of black
internationalism —and their legacy.