The Black Atlantic
by Paul Gilroy
Presentation by Julie Hewitt
Couple of Terms
Modernity- state or quality of being
modern. Not traditional.
“Double Conciousness”- way of
perceiving the world divided between
two cultures. Term coined by W.E.B Du
Bois, a scholar, activist, and co-founder
of the NAACP.
Cultural nationalism portrays the “black
culture” and the “white culture” as two
completely separate cultures having
nothing at all to do with one another.
British/European/American cultures
completely separated and differentiated
from African culture.
Black & White
“Regardless of their affiliation to
the right, left, or centre,
groups (political) have fallen
back on the idea of cultural
nationalism, on the
overintegrated conceptions
of culture which present
immutable, ethnic
differences in an absolute
break in the histories and
experiences of ‘black’ and
‘white’ people.”
This suggests there is a
sense of an absolute
ethnic difference and
this difference is seen
as being the most
important aspect of
one’s identity, culture or
experience (cultural
insiderism). Negationthe difference is noted
and focused on, not
similarities.
“ethnic absolutisms” make believe that groups
are culturally very similar (homogenous) and
distinct from any other group. They ignore any
mixed aspects of the black and white cultures,
any intersecting of the two or any overlapping.
Basically anyone white (Caucasian, Anglo
(Saxon). Pure white.
“Theorization of creolisation,
metissage, mestizaje, and
hybridity. From the viewpoint
of ethnic absolutism, this
would be a litany of pollution
and impurity. These terms
are rather unsatisfactory
ways of naming the
processes of cultural
mutation and restless
(dis)continuity that exceed
racial discourse.”
The theories of:
Creolization- new African
American cultures
emerging in the New
World, mixture of
African European.
Metissage- mixed heritage
Mestizaje- mixed
And hybridity are
suggesting that an
impure race, or polluted
race, exists.
Black Atlantic- Ships
The Black Atlantic is both
an actual space and a
symbol of the
intersecting and contact
of passengers from
Africa, Europe,
America, and the
Caribbean.
“Ships immediately focus
attention on the middle
passage”
“They were mobile elements
that stood for the shifting
spaces in between the fixed
places that they connected.”
Rather than focus on “English
Blacks” or “American
Blacks”, he proposes we talk
about the Black Atlantic as a
single unit where different
identities are tied together.
Focus on the combining
force.
No Binaries Please
No longer look at the history of ethnicity
and race in the West as being that of
“white” versus “black”, but focus on the
the combination of the two. No
black/white, but the mixed cultures that
live together. The Black Atlantic is where
this happens.
Slavery
“A quarter of the British
Navy was composed of
Africans for whom the
experience of slavery
was a powerful
orientation to the
ideologies of liberty and
justice.”
The ideologies of those
who kept them. Wake
up call to the policies of
their white captors.
Slavery was a very pivotal
moment for the rise of
modernity, the modern
thoughts on race, and the
Black Atlantic as a
“counterculture of
modernity”- the different
ways people of African
descent reacted to as well as
resisted that in this Modern
West, the racial fear and the
reasoning behind it were
very connected to one
another.
Racism
Dichotomy (splitting) of black
and white, which first
appeared in modern times, is
not a thing of the past.
Operates by relating the
concept of nationality with
the concept of culture. More
about racial identity than
cultural identity. More about
color than about beliefs or
practices.
Our present day, current
racism is inherited of
the modern idea of a
state inhabited by
people all of the same
culture, language, etc, a
homogenous culture
(nation states). This is
still very much present
in contemporary cultural
studies.
Paul Gilroy
“The specificity of the
modern political and
cultural formation I want
to call the black Atlantic
can be defined, on one
level, through this
desire to transcend both
the structures of the
nation state and the
constraints of ethnicity
and national
particularity.”
Pop Culture/Real World Example
Idris Elba
British Actor- “Luther”
Done American work“The Wire” (HBO)
African AmericanBritish manblending of the
cultures