Around The Black Atlantic 1

Around Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness

Syllabus / Handbook created by Dr Vanessa Mongey in 2018

Overview

This course is constructed around the study of a single seminal secondary text and will students to explore the themes, evidence, approach, argument, literary merit and methodology of said text within the broader context of the historiography that came before and after.

By taking the “Atlantic as one single, complex unit of analysis,” Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic will make us travel through the triangle of Africa, Britain and America. This book charts the existence of a counterculture to modernity among black intellectuals, activists, writers, speakers, poets, and artists between approximately the 1850s and the 1980s. The Black Atlantic is outside of national belonging, using examples ranging from slave narratives and novels to jazz and hip-hop.

Around The Black Atlantic 2

Gilroy’s ‘Black Atlantic’ delineates a distinctively modern, cultural, and political space that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but is, rather, a mix of all of these.

This book triggered debates and raised questions of the place of Africa in our historical imagination, transnational history, pan-Africanism, and the relationships of past to present. We will address some combination of: historiography, methodology, theoretical approach(es), concepts (conceived or developed in the book in question), connections/relevance/usefulness to history, and opportunities for comparison with other examples from different periods of world regions, or with other historical works. The students are encouraged to draw comparative or related examples from all the modules they have studied to date, as well as from other sources of information (the media, literature, etc).

You need to bring the book every week unless otherwise instructed. Week 1: Introduction

Key themes: This session will largely be an introductory session. We will discuss the general aims of the Reading History module and the more specific aims of this particular seminar. It will be a chance for you to ask questions about the module, so do come with any queries you have. We will also talk about to the book and some of the key themes and debates it has aroused. I will also give you a brief historical overview. Please try to come to this seminar with a copy of the book in hand.

- Art of the day: M. NourbeSe Philips, Zong! (2008) - Colin MacCabe “Paul Gilroy: Against the Grain,” OpenDemocracy April 20, 2006 here - Tommie Shelby and Paul Gilroy “Cosmopolitanism, Blackness, and Utopia” Transition 98 (2008): 116-135 - David Olusoga, “The reality of being black in today’s Britain” The Guardian 30 October 2016 - Patricia Saunders, "Defending the Dead, Confronting the Archive: A Conversation with M. NourbeSe Philip" Small Axe 12:2 (2008): 63-79 - If you're not familiar with the Zong case, please check the following page.

Around The Black Atlantic 3

Week 2: The Enlightenment and Modernity Projects

- Art of the day: Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari by Jean-Michel Basquiat (1982)

“Redemption song” by Bob Marley (1979) - Gilroy, Black Atlantic, chap 1 & 2

There are only 70 pages to read and you can take the time to read slowly. Take notes as you read, thinking through the implications of Gilroy’s arguments and sources. These two chapters contain many references. Do not be intimidated by them: we will study some of them this semester. You should also read critically: think about what the limitations of Gilroy’s arguments are. Are there logical problems, weaknesses of evidence? Pay particular attention to concepts or signal keywords. Summarize them in your own words.

To prepare, ask yourself what key points Gilroy is making in the chapter that you are introducing. Think not only about the historical claims he is making, but also about the conceptual issues he raises, the theoretical assumptions he makes, the arguments he puts forward, and the evidence he marshals to support these claims and arguments. As you read, make sure that your notes are organized towards understanding the ideas and getting a feel of the language and style of the book. Do not note simply for fact. When you come to the seminar, make sure that you can find exactly where Gilroy says something that you find important (i.e. note page numbers and mark where on a page the idea appears). You will need to do this in your essays and it makes discussion of the book a lot easier.

- David Scott, “Antinomies of Slavery, Enlightenment, and Universal History,” Small Axe 33 (2010): 152-162 Note: This review assesses Susan Buck-Morss’ work –which can be hard to understand for non-philosophers! If you want to give a try, Susan Buck-Morss, "Hegel and Haiti," Critical Inquiry 26, no. 4 (2000): 821-865. This blogpost also summarizes Buck-Morss’ argument:

-Mark Reinhardt “Who Speaks for Margaret Garner? Slavery, Silence, and the Politics of Ventriloquism,” Critical Inquiry 29: 1 (2002): 81-119

- Sarah Parker Remond, Anti-Slavery Advocate, April 1859, 15-16

- Frederick Douglass, Narrative, chapter 10, 37-56

Around The Black Atlantic 4

Week 3: Black Cultural Studies - Art of the day: Sonia Boyce, From Tarzan to Rambo: English Born “Native” Considers her Relationship to the Constructed/Self Image and her Roots in Reconstruction (1987)

- Gilroy, Black Atlantic, chap 3 & 4

- Nara Improta, “20 Years of Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic” 2013 here.

- Armin Fardis, “Anticolonial Visions: Revisiting Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic in 2013” here

- Stuart Hall, “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power,” in Formations of Modernity, ed. S. Hall and B. Gieben (1992), 275-331

- Group reading: Group A: Peter Kolchin, “Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America,” Journal of American History, 89: 1 (2002), 154-173

Group B: Paulette Caldwell, “Hair piece: Perspectives on the intersection of race and gender” Duke Law Journal (1991), 365-396

Group C: Simone Browne, “Everybody’s got a little light under the sun,” Cultural Studies, 26:4 (2012), 542-564

Group D: Christina Sharpe, “Black Studies: In the Wake,” The Black Scholar 44:2 (2015), 59-69

I also want to hear your responses to this week’s reading. Please email me a 50 to 70-word comment / question for discussion, by 2 pm the day before the seminar on anything you found interesting, or intriguing, or incomprehensible.

Around The Black Atlantic 5

Week 4: Culture & Performance

- Art of the day: Hew Locke Colston (Restoration series) 2006

Isaac Mendes Belisario, ‘Jaw-Bone, or House John-Canoe’, from Sketches of Character: In Illustration of the Habits, Occupation, and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica (Kingston, 1837–1838

- Gilroy, Black Atlantic, Chap 5-6

We will also have oral presentations:

 Length: 10-12’ then 5’ Q&A  Format: Introduction explains what your talk will be about. It should make clear how your talk will be organized and your main points. It is almost impossible for an introduction to be too explicit in its explanation of your topic, thesis, and organization. Do not be afraid to list, for instance, the four main points of your argument. Body of presentation: Assume that your audience is smart, but completely unfamiliar with your articles. Remember that your listeners cannot “reread” your talk in order to understand parts that you do not make clear. Conclusion: You should reiterate the key points of your presentation and maybe bring up questions / reflection points for the Q&A.

Remember to research who the authors are (for example Stuart Hall and the Birmingham school). It helps to contextualize and understand the reading.

Group A: - Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in The Interpretation Of Cultures (1977), 412-53

- Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984), 75-104

- Dominick LaCapra, “Chartier, Darnton, and the Great Symbol Massacre,” Journal of Modern History 60: 1 (1988), 95–112

Group B: - E. Patrick Johnson, “Black Performance Studies: Genealogies, Politics and Futures” Performance Studies Handbook, (2005), 446-463

- Mae G. Henderson Josephine Baker and La Revue Negre: from ethnography to performance, Text and Performance Quarterly, 23:2 (2010)

Group C: - Stuart Hall, “What is this “Black” in Black Popular Culture?” Social Justice 20: 1/2 (1993), 104- 114

- Claire Alexander, “Stuart Hall and Race,” Cultural Studies, 23:4 (2009), 457-482

Around The Black Atlantic 6

Week 5: What is the job of a reviewer?

- Art of the day: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West by Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña (1992)

- Lucy Evans, “The Black Atlantic: Exploring Gilroy’s legacy,” Atlantic Studies, 6: 2 (2009), 255-268

- Pete Nowakoski, “Paul Gilroy and the Black Atlantic” 2014

- Alsadair Pettinger, “Enduring Fortress –A Review of the Black Atlantic,” Research in African Literatures 29: 4 (1998), 142-147

- Simon Gikandi, “Introduction,” Research in African Literatures 27: 4 (1996): 1-6

- Masilela, Ntongela. ‘‘The ‘Black Atlantic’ and African Modernity in South Africa.’’ Research in African Literatures 27, no. 4 (1996), 88-96

- Yogita Goyal, “Africa and the Black Atlantic,” Research in African Literatures 45, no. 3 (2014): v-xxv

- Joan Dayan, “Paul Gilroy’s Slaves, Ships, and Routes. The Middle Passage as Metaphor” Research in African Literatures 27: 4 (1996), 7-

- Optional: Caroline Lee Schwenz "Intellectual history in a Transatlantic Frame" https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2014/06/19/gilroy-paul-the-black-atlantic/ Week 6: Diaspora

- Art of the day: Lubaina Himid 'Between the Two my Heart is Balanced', 1991

- Review your notes on chap 1 of Gilroy, Black Atlantic.

- Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” 222-236

Group work around “Retention” vs. Creolization

Note: Most scholars are responding to Herskovits' argument so you should read about him first.

- Melville Herskovits, Myth of the Negro Past, Short documentary: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/herskovits/film.html

- Nathan Glazer, "Out of Africa," New Republic https://newrepublic.com/article/68045/out-africa-0 [If you're interested in reading Herskovits directly, I recommend pp. 1-14, 158-167, 213-224, 292- 299 on https://archive.org/details/mythofthenegropa033515mbp]

Group A: Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective, 1-37

Around The Black Atlantic 7

Group B: Robin D.G. Kelley, “How the West was One: On the Uses and Limitations of the Diaspora,” Black Scholar 30, 3-4 (2000), 31-35.

Colin Palmer, “Defining and Studying the Modern African Diaspora,” Perspectives: American Historical Association Newsletter, September 1998

Group C: Sandra Gunning, “Nancy Prince and the Politics of Mobility, Home and Diasporic (Mis)Identification,” American Quarterly 53, 1 (2001), 32-69

Group D: James H. Sweet, “Mistaken Identities? Olaudah Equiano, Domingos Álvares, and the Methodological Challenges of Studying the African Diaspora,” The American Historical Review, 114: 2 (2009), 279-306 Week 7: Gender & Sexuality

- Art of the day: “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” by Ntozake Shange (1974)

- Review your notes for chap 2, Gilroy’s Black Atlantic.

- H. Safia Mirza, ‘Introduction: Mapping a Genealogy of Black British Feminism’, in H. Safia Mirza, Black British Feminism (1997), 1-28

- Sojourner Truth “Women’s Rights” or “”when Women Get Her Rights Man will be right” speech to Equal Rights Association in NYC in May 1867 as reported in National Anti-Slavery Standard, 1 June 1867

Group A: - Beyoncé n***Flawless

- Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983)

Group B: - Papa Wemba “Yolele”

- Dominic Thomas, “Fashion Matters: La Sape and Vestimentary Codes in Transnational Contexts and Urban Diasporas.” MLN 118 (2003): 947–73

Group C: - Beyoncé, “Partition” (warning: the video is explicit. Another option is “Pretty hurts”)

- Audre Lorde “Uses of the Erotic” (1978)

- Nicole Ivy. “Bodies of Work: A Meditation on Medical Imaginaries and Enslaved Women.” Souls 18 (2016): 11–31

Group D: - Beyoncé, “Sorry”

Around The Black Atlantic 8

- bell hooks “Sexism and the Black Female Experience” or “Continued Devaluation of Black womanhood” from Aint’ I a Woman (1981) Week 8: Sound

- Art of the day: Sound installation The Dark by Braunarts (2007)

- Review your notes for chap 3, Gilroy’s Black Atlantic.

- Bruno Muzi, “Culture, politics and intellectual practice through Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic” 2013 here

- WEB Dubois, Chapter 14: Of the Sorrow Songs, The souls of black folk (1903)

- Zora Neale Hurston, “Characteristics of Negro Expression” (1934)

- Sara Rimer, “Obscenity or Art? Trial on Rap Lyrics Opens” Special to The New York Times October 17, 1990

Group A:

- bell hooks, “Moving beyond pain” 2016 http://www.bellhooksinstitute.com/blog/2016/5/9/moving-beyond-painL

- Roxanne Gay, “Beyoncé's Control of Her Own Image Belies the bell hooks 'Slave 'Critique” The Guardian, 2014

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “We should all be feminists” Watch: http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/We-should-all-be-feminists-Chim

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on the use of her TED talk in Beyonces’s ***Flawless (October 2016)

Group B: Kobena Mercer, “Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson’s Thriller,” in Welcome to the Jungle (1994), pp. 33-51

Group C: Robin Kelley, “Kickin’ Reality, Kickin’ Ballistics: Gangsta Rap” and Postindustrial Los Angeles,” in Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (1994), pp. 183-227 B

Group D: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, “When the Lights Shut Off: Kendrick Lamar and the Decline of the Black Blues Narrative” LA Review of books (2013)

Around The Black Atlantic 9

Week 9: Nationalism, capitalism and slavery

- Art of the day: Lorna Simpson, Untitled (Two Necklines), 1989

- Review your notes for chap. 4, Gilroy’s Black Atlantic

- WEB Du Bois, Color Line, selections

- Eric Williams, “The Development of British Capitalism, 1783-1833,” Capitalism and Slavery 126-134

- Guy Emerson Mount, “Capitalism and Slavery: Reflections on the Williams Thesis” (November 2015): https://www.aaihs.org/capitalism-and-slavery-reflections-on-the-williams-thesis/

[Note: We will use Mount’s piece as an example of a historiographical review so read it not only for the contents but also for the structure itself.]

- Cedric Robinson, “DuBois and the Myths of National History," "Slavery and Capitalism" “Labor, Capitalism and Slavery” “Slavery and Democracy” in Black Marxism (1983), 185-194 and 199-205

Group A: Cedric Robinson, “Capitalism, Slavery and Bourgeois Historiography,” History Workshop Journal, 23:1 (1987): 122–140

Group B: Walter Johnson, “To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism and Justice,” Boston Review 26 October 2016

Group C: Saidiya Hartman, “The Belly of the World: A Note on Black Women’s Labors,” Souls, 18:1 (2016), 166-173

Optional: - African-Intellectual History Society had a great round table on Cedric Robinson: please check their posts starting from here.

-Angela Davis: An Interview on the Futures of Black Radicalism

Around The Black Atlantic 10

Week 10: Space & Modernity

- Art of the day: Kara Walker. The moral arc of history ideally bends towards justice but just as soon as not curves back around toward barbarism, sadism, and unrestrained chaos 2010

- Review your notes for chap 5 & 6, Gilroy’s Black Atlantic.

- Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire” Representations 26 (1989), 7-25

- George Yancy and Molefi Kete Asante, “Molefi Kete Asante: Why Afrocentricity?” New York Times, May 7, 2015

Group A: Eileen Julien, “Terrains de Rencontre: Cesaire, Fanon, and Wright on culture and Decolonization,” Yale French Studies, No 98 (2000), pp. 149-166

Group B: Jacqueline Nassy Brown, “Black Liverpool, Black America, and the Gendering of Diasporic Space,” Cultural Anthropology 13: 3 (1998), pp. 291-325

Group C: Catherine Hall, "Doing reparatory history: bringing 'race' and slavery home," Race & Class, 60: 1 (2018): 3-21

Additional material  To watch: The Language You Cry In Rue Cases-Nègres Aimé Césaire : Une Voix pour L’histoire Taxi to Timbuktu Quartier Mozart Anything by Isaac Julien Ole Time Carnival, 1959, Trinidad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owvlto0GoEo

Around The Black Atlantic 11

Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, 1947- 1954: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BaKwREgKUs Leah Gordon, Kanaval: A People’s History of Haiti (2010) https://vimeo.com/59334947 and Bounda pa Bounda: a drag zakahttps://vimeo.com/14672870 PBS documentary Slavery and the Making of the Americans (US): http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/ PBS documentary The Black Atlantic 1500-1800 (recommended): http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african- americans-many-rivers-to-cross/video/the-black-atlantic/ BBC 2 documentary "Britain’s Forgotten Slave-Owners" Adanggaman (2000 Roger Gnoan M'Bala). Fiction in West Africa during the late 17th century, King Adanggaman leads a war against his neighbouring ethnic groups, ordering his soldiers to torch enemy villages, kill the elderly and capture the healthy to sell to the European slave traders. When his village falls prey to one of Adanggaman's attacks, Ossei manages to escape, but his family is murdered except for his captured mother. The Last Supper (La última cena in Spanish 1976 Tomás Gutiérrez Alea) : A plantation owner during Spanish colonial times recreates the last supper using slaves, in order to teach them about Christianity. Things do go so well. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113613/ The Empire Pays Back (2005): Documentary in which Dr Robert Beckford looks at how much Britain profited from the transatlantic slave trade, arguing that Britain should repay its debt to the descendants of slaves. Passage du milieu (1999 French Guy Deslauriers): Docudrama about a trans-Atlantic slave ship voyage of black slaves from the West Coast of Africa to the Caribbean. Amazing Grace (2006) biographical movie about the Abolitionist William Wilberforce's campaign against the slave trade in the British Empire, and features Olaudah Equiano in a blink-and-you-miss- it appearance The Book of Negroes (2015): six-part TV mini-series based on the novel of the same name by Lawrence Hill. The six-part miniseries derives its origins from the historical document Book of Negroes and tells the story of a woman forcefully brought to South Carolina from West Africa at the time of the American Revolution. Recommended : Ep 1 on capture in Africa and ep 6 on Sierra Leone and English abolition. Amistad (Steven Spileberg, : In 1839 a slave revolt takes place on the Spanish ship heading to Cuba. Two white survivors are ordered to navigate the ship back to Africa, but navigate the ship to the United States instead. Most of the movie is actually about the court case and the white lawyers. -Marcus Rediker, author of the Slave Ship, chronicles a trip to Sierra Leone in 2013 to visit the home villages of the people who seized the slave schooner Amistad in 1839, to interview elders about local memory of the case, and to search for the long-lost ruins of Lomboko, the slave trading factory Belle (2013 Amma Asante) In the 18th c, a mixed-race girl. Not much about slavery than about prejudice and gender roles. On the painting that inspired the director http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/27/dido-belle-enigmatic-painting-that-inspired- a-movie Los Palenqueros: documentary. In Colombia, the descendants of runaway black captives are known marroons. Two continental-born African examines the cultural memory of a group of people cut off from their source for over 200 years.