The Black Atantc

Modrnit and Doubl Cnsciousnes

PAUL GILROY
VA5O
| NeYd
)tcs Weldon Johnn, "0 Blck and Unkown Ba" coyrght 1917 by lames Wddon
Jon, fom Sit Ptt Rt/tts U1"'"'"' b lame Weldo }ohrn. Usd by prmis
sion of Ving Penguin, divion of Penguin Bok USA Inc.
Per Mycld, 1Te KV|ilnviuton," on 1 lnclihle PerMJl, Scialt
Mt0Nl,h:||v,|.Usd b prmiuion of MC Music Lmited.
Rchard Wright, quotations &om manusrpt Meloy lmited," Yale Cllecton of Acr
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l"r 1 Cta"irinPbliwian Oat
Gilroy, Pau.
Te bbck Acantc : moernity a dVblIconsiunc$ I Paul
Giro.
p. |0
Inclues biblioaphic references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-674-0765-2 (acidfe Mr) (doth)
ISBN 06740760 (pbk.}
l. Black-lntelcctu Hfe. 2. MoAercw-lntellec
le. 3. Aoentsm. I. Tie.
CB235.G55193
30S.896'073-dc20
93-162
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The Black Atlantc H a
Conntercuture of Modernity
We who ae homeles,-Aong Europ toda there is no lack of tho who are
enttled to ca themslves homeles m a distctv ad honouble snse . . We
chidren of the ftur, how could b U home m this toy? We ll disfur
fr ideas tt migt lead one to f l at home even in Ufagle, broken tme
of tsiton; a fr "reaite," we do not believe that they will 18 Te ice tat
Usuppor pple toay has bcome ver U the wind that brngs the Uu
blowing we ourelves who a homelescontute a force tt br opn ice a
other to t "rae."
Ni
O te notn o ndit. It u a ved queton. Is not ever er "moem" m
relaton to the preceding mc? It sem that at leat one of te componnts of
"our" mernity u the sprad of the awarenes we have of it. Te awarenes mour
aaness (te double, the second dege) u our source of stength ad our
tennt.
wmClmnr
SJ8VIlG JO BE both European and black rqus some specc
forms of double consciousness. By sayng this I do not men to sugest
that taking on either or both of these ushed identtes necess ex
haust the subjectve resoures of any pacular individua. However
where rcst, natonaist, or ethncaly absolutt disco orchestte po
ltcal relatonships b tat tee identtes appr 0 b mutually eclusive,
occupying the space between them or tg to demonstate thei contnu
ity has been viewed as a provoatve ad CC oppositonal act of pltc
insubordinaton.
Te contempor black Englsh, like the Aglo-Afcans of earlier gen
eratons and prhaps, le all black i the West, stand beteen (at lest)
two get cultur assemblages, bt of which have mutated through the
course of te moem world that formed them and d ed ne congu
rtons. At present, they rmai locked symbiotcaly m an atagonistc r
latonship marked out by the smbolm of colou which adds to the con
spicuous om pwer of their cnta Manchea dnamic-black and
2
T BlMnt M LmkrtmmrrofModit
white. Tese colou supprt a spial rhetorc tat has gown to be asoci
ated wth a language of natonality ad natonal blongng as well as the
laguages of"race" and ethnic identty.
Though larely ignored by rcent debates over moder and its discon
tent, te ideas about natonalty, etnicit authentcity, and cultu in
tegit ar characteristcally modem phenomena that have profund impli
catons for cultu critcism and culturl histor. Tey crstalisd wth the
revolutonary tnsformatons of the West at the end of the eighteenth ad
re begng of the nneteenth centues ad involved novel tloes
and moes of identcaton. Any sh towards a posrmodem conditon
should not, howevr, mean that te conspicuous poer of these moder
subjecttes and the movement tey aculated h been lef behind.
Teir power has, if anything, grown, and their ubiquit as a means to make
plitcal sen of the word is currently unparaleled by the language of
class and soialism by which tey once appeaed to have ben surpassed.
My concer her is les with explaining their longevity and endung appeal
than with explorg some of the special politcal problems that aise fom
the ftal juncton of the concept of natonaty wit the concept of cultur
and te afte and af atons which l the blacks of the West to one
of their adoptve, parntl cutures: the intellectual heritage of the West
since the Enlightenment. I hae become fscinated with how succes ive
generatons of black intellectuals have undertood m connecton ad
how tey have projected it in their wrtng ad speaking in purt of fee
dom, citenship, ad soial ad plitcal autonomy
If this appears to b little more than a roundabout way of saying that
the rfleive cultures ad consiousneof te Europen settler and those
of the Afcans they enslaved, the "Indias" they slaughtered, ad the
Asians they indenturd were not, even i sitatons of te most exteme
brutait sealed of hermetcally fom each other, then s b K. Ths seems
as though it ought to be a obvious ad self-evident obseraton, but its
stark charcter has been systematcally obscurd by commentator fom
side of politcal opinion. Rgardle of their af aton to the rgt, lef, or
cente, goups have flen back on the ide of cmnatonalm, on the
overntegated conceptons of culture WO preent immutable, etc
diferences an absolute brak in the histores and experences of"black"
ad "white" people. Ag tis choice stands aother, more df cult op
ton: the theorsaton of croliston, metsg, metzaje, and hybridit
From the viewint of ethnic abslutsm, d would b a litny of poUu
ton ad impurity. Tese terms are rather unsatsfctor ways of naing
the proeses of cm mutton and retless (dis )contnuity that exceed
racial doue and avoid capture by it agent.
3
1 bok adds one small aa in te gand consequence of ths
hstorical conjuncton-the sterophonc, bingua, or bifoa cultu
forms originated by but no longer the exclusive proper of, blacks dis
p w the stcs of feeling, proucing, communicatng, and
remembrng that I have heurstcaly caled the black Atlantc word. Ts
chapter is therefore roted i and routed through the special stes tat
gows w te efor involved in tng to fce (at leat) to ways at once.
My concers at t stage a prmarly conceptu I hae ted to ad
dres the contnuing lur of ethnic abslutsms in cultural critcsm pro
duced bot by blacks ad by whites. parcular, t chapter seks to
eplore the spal relatonshis bteen "race," cuture, natonaity, and
ethnicity which hae a bg on the histores ad plitcal cm of
Brtn's black citens. I hae aued elwhere that the culturs of d
goup have been prouce i a syncretc patter in wc the style and
fors of the Cabbea, the United State, ad Ahave ben reworked
and rinsrbed in the novel context of moem Brtains own untdy en
semble of regonal and cla-orented confct. Rather ta make the in
vgortng fu of those mongel cultural forms my foal concer her,
want instead to look at broader quetons of ethnic ident that have con
tbuted to the scholahip and the plitcal statees that Britas black
settler have geneated ad to the underlying snse of Englad a cohe
sive cutural community agast which their slf-concepton ha b ofen
ben defed. Here the ideas of naton, natonaity, natonal blongng, ad
natonaism a parount. Tey a extensively suppored by a clutch of
rhetorcal stateges that can b named "cultural insiderism."1 Te essental
tdemark of cultural insiderism wc a supplie te key to its popular
q is an absolute s of ethnic diference. Ts is maxmised so tat it
distnguishe people fom one aoter and at the same tme acquires a
incontestable priorty over M other dimensions of their socia ad hstor
c exerience, OD ad identtes. Characterstcally, these claims a
as ated wth the idea of natonal belonging or the pmaonto natonal
it ad other more lo but equivalent forms of cultural kinship. Te
range and complexty of thee ides in English cultural life defe simple
suary or expsiton. Hoever, the forms of cultl insidersm they
sncton typicly constct te naton a ethnically homogeneous ob
ject and invok ethnicity a second tme in the hereneutc proedures de
ployed to make sns of it distnctve mmcontent.
Te intellectual s u which English cutl studies h positoned
ielf-through innovative work in the fed of social history and literar
critcism-ca b indicted here. Te statst moalites of Mt aalysis
tht view moes of matera prouction and plitca domnaton cOu
4
sivdy entte are only one source of mproblem. Another factor,
mor evasive but nonetheless potent for it intangble ubiquty, is a quiet
cultural natonalism which prvades the wrk of some radical tne.
T crypto-natonalism means that they ar ofen dsinclined to consider
the cros catalytc or tansvere dyamics of rcal politc as a sigifi cant
element in the formaton ad reproducton of English natonal identes.
Tes formatons are trated as i they spring, flly formed, fom teir own
spec vc.
My search for rsource 'th which to comprehend the doubleness and
cultural intermixtre tat dtnguish the experience of black Brtons in
contemporry Europe requird me to sek inspiraton fom other source
and, m efect, to make an intellecual jouey acros the Atlantc. Ublack
America's historie of culturl and politcal debate and oraniton I found
another, second perve with which to orient my own positon. Her
too the lure of enic partcularsm and natonalism hproided an ever
present danger. But tat narrowness of vsion which is content wth the
merly natonal ha been challenged fom 'thin that black commu
nity by thinkers wbo were prepard to renounce the easy claims of Acan
American exceptonalsm in fvour of a gobal, coalitonal politcs mwhich
ant-imperialism and ant-rcsm might be se n to interact Unot to m.
The wrk o some of those thinker w be examined m subsequent
chapter.
Tis chapter proposes sme new chronotops2 that might fit 'ith a
theory tat was le intmidated by and rspectl of the boundaries and
integity of moem naton states meither English or Acan-America
ctal studies have so far been. I have stled on the image of ships i
moton acros the spaces btwen Europe, America, Aica, and the Cb
bas a cental oraising symbol for uenterprise and as my stang
pint. Te image of the ship-a living, miccutural, micro-politca ss
tem i moton-is espcially imprtnt for historical and theoretcal re
sons tat I hope wbecome clear blow Ships immediately focus atten
ton on the middle pasge, on te various projects for redemptve rtun
to a Aican homeland, on the circulaton of ideas and actvist a well as
the movement of key cultural and politcal arefacts: DCbooks, gramo
phone rcords, and choirs:
Te rst of Uchapter falls into msectons. Te fst part addsses
some conceptual problems common to Englsh and Aican-Amercan ver
sions of cultural studies wich, I argue, sha a natonaistc focus that is
antthetcal to the rhomorhic, factal stuoof the msm, in
teratonal formaton C the black Atlantc. Te second secton uses
the m ad wmgof N Rbison Delany, an ealy architect of black
b
natonaism whose influence stll regsters m contempra politca move
ment, to bring the black Atlantc to H and to extend the general agu
ments by introucing a number of key themes that w b used to map the
responses to moerty's promiss and flures produced by later tker.
Te fal secton explore the spcc counterculture of modert pro
duced by black intellectuals and makes sme prelminary pit about the
interaity of blacks to the West. It initates a plemic which rs through
the of the b k against the ethnc absolutsm that currently dominates
black politcal clt.
Cultural Studies in Black ad Wte
Any satsfacon to b exprienced fom te recent spctacular growth of
cultral studies as academic project shoud not obse its conspicuous
problems wit etocentism and natonalsm. Understnding thee d
cultes might commence wit a critcal evaluaton of the ways in which
notons of ethnicity have been mobilisd, ofen by default rther than de
sign, as part of the dstnctve hermeneutics of CHM studies or wth the
untg dption that culture always fow into patters conguent
with the border of essentally homogeneous nation states. The maketng
and inevitable reificaton of cultural studies as a discrete academic subject
aso has what might be called a secondary ethnic aspct. The project of
cultura studies ua more or less attactve cadidate for insttutonaisaton
according to the ethnic gab in which it appear. Te queston of whose
cultures are being studied is therefore an important one, as i the issue of
where the instrument which w make tat study possible are going t
come fom. In these circumstnces it is hard not to wnder how much
of the recent interatonal entusiasm for cultural stude is generated
by it profound associatons wt England and ideas of Englishnes. Tis
pssibility can busd a point of ent into consideration of the etno
historcal spcficity of the discours of cultural studies itself.
Lookng at cultural studies fom a etohistorical perpectve require
mor than just noting u assoiaton w English literature, hstor, and
New Lf plitcs. It necesitate constuctng an account of te bor
rowigs made by these Engish .nitatves fom ."der, moem, European
taditons of tg abut culture, and at every stage exaining the place
which these cmperpectve provide for the image of their racaled3
others a objects of knowledge, power, and ct ccm. It H impera
tve, though ver hard, to combine tg about tese issue wth con
sideraton of the prssing need to get black CD exprsions, aalys,
and histories taken serously in academic crcles rather than assig

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7
Getbyond these natonal and natonalistc prpctves has bcome
essental for to additonal reasons. Te marses fom the uent obliga
ton to reevaluate the signcance of te modem naton state as a politcal,
eonmic, and cm unit. Neithr political nor economic O of
dominaton ar stll simply co-extensive with natonal brder. Tis has a
scia sigcance in contemporar Eup, where new plitcal and eco
nomic rlatons 8 being crate seemingly day b da, bu it i a world
wide phenomenon wm sigcant consquences for te relatonhip b-
tween the politcs oinforaton and the practce of capitl accumulaton.
It efect underin more rcogly plitca change like the gowg
centrity of tansnatonal eclogcal movements wich, through their m-
sistence on the as ton of sustainabilt djce, do so much to shif
the mora and scentfc prcet on which te moem spaaton of pli
ocsand ethicsw built. Te scond rn rlates to the tgc ppularit
of ideas about the inte and purit of cm.mparc, Aconcers
the relatonhp between natonait and etnict T to O tly has a
special force i Euro, but uis also refeted directly i te pot-colon
historie and complex, tnscultural, plitca tjctores ofBrtas blac
settlers.
Wt migt be called the pculiart of the black Egl rq atten
ton to te inter oa variety of docmforms. Pouly
sepated plitcal intelect taditons convere and, i their com
ing tgcc, overdetermined the process of black Britain's sial and
historcal formton. Tblending is msdro i it is concei in
siple ethnic terms, but rght and lef, mostand o-most, black and
white tactly shae a vew of K as little more da collision between fl
fored and mutually exclusive cultul communites. Ts has become the
dominat ve where black history and cult prceived, W black
sette temlves, as an ilegtmate intsion into a vision of authentic
Britsh natonal life that, pror to their ,W as stable and a peacefl
uW ethnically udrtte. Consideng dhistory pint to i
sue of pwer and knowlege that a byond the scop of d bok.
HOr, toug R aris fm present rther U past conditons, con
temprar Brsh racism bthe imprint of te past i many ways. Te
eally crude and reductve notons of cultur tat frm the sbstace
of racal phtcstoday ar dely aaed wt an older discourse of rc
and ethnic difrnce which i everwher entangled i the history of the
ide of cult i the modem We. Tis history has itelf beome hotl
contested since debates about multcusm, culturl plu, and te
respons to tem tat a smetmes dismissively called "politcal cor
res " arrved to query the ease and sped wt which European pae-

ularisms are mbing translated into abslute, uversal standards for hu

man achievement, norms, and aspiratons.
It is sigcant that pror to the consoldaton of sientc racism in the
nineteent century,5 the term "race" was used ver much i the way that
the word "culture" i usd toay. But mthe attempts to diferentate the
tue, the god, and the beautl which characterise the juncton point of
capitalism, industaisaton, and pltical democracy ad gve substance to
the disouse of wster moderty, it is important to appreciate that scien
tsts did not monoplise either the image of the black or the emergent
concept of biologicaly based racial diference. A far as the ft of c
tural studies is concered, it shoud D equally imprant tat bth were
centally employed m UO Europea attempts to dthrough beauty,
taste , and aesthetc judgement tat the pr of contemporary cul
mcritcism.
Tracing the racial sigs fom which the disourse of cultural value was
coDcted and their conditons of existence in relaton to European aes
thetcs and philosophy as well European sience can contbute much
to a ethnohistorica1 reading of the aspirtons of weter moder as a
whole and to the critque of Enlightenment assumptons in parc. It is
cety the cas tt ideas abut "race," ethnicity, and natonality form
an imprtant seam of contnuity lg English ct studies wt one
of its sources of inspiraton-the does of modem Europan aestetcs
that are consistently configurd by the appeal to natonal and ofen racial
parcularty.6
J is not the place to go deeply into the broader dmensions of m
intellectual inheritance. Valuable work has already been done by Sander
Gilman/ Henr Louis Gte, Jr.,8 ad others on the history and role of te
image of the black i the discusions whch found modern cmaxol
Q Gima pint out useflly that the fi gur of the black appear i dif
frent forms i the aesthetc of Hegel, Shopenhauer, and Nietzsche
(among others) as a marker for moment of cmrlatvism and to sup
port te producton of aesthetc judgement of a supposedly universal
character to diferentate, for example, btween authentc music and, as
Hegel puts it, "the mot detestable noise." Gates emphasises a comple
genealogy in which abiges in Montesquieu's discussion of slavery
prompt responses i Hume that can D related, u D to philosphical
debates over the nature ofbuty and sublimity found i the work of Burke
and Knt. Critcal evaluaton of these rpresentatons of blacknes might
also be connected to the contoversie over the place of racism and ant
Smitsm in the work of Enlightenment fgures le Kant ad Volta.9
Te issues derve an extended treatent that cannot b provided here.
Wat H Ctal for the puross of this openng chapter is that debates
T Bl Mnt maCuntrculture o Modi 9
of tis sort should not b brought to a end simply by denouncng those
who raise awkward or embarrasing isue as totan force workng to
legtmate their own politcal line. Nor should imprtant enquires into the
contgity of racialised reason and unreasonable rcism b dismissed a
tvial matters. Thee issue go to the heart of contempora debates about
what consttutes the canon of weter csaton ad how d prcous
legcy should b taugt.
I thes embattled circumstances, it is regrettable that questons of
"rce" and reprentaton have ben ry banished fom orthodox
histories of weter aesthetc judgement, taste, and cultu value.10 Ter
H a plea her that frher enquiries should be made into prly how
dscussions of"race," beauty, ethnicty, and clt hav contibuted to te
crtca tg that eventually gae rise to cultural stdes. Te Uof the
concept of fetshisr i Marxism ad psychonalytc studies is one obvious
means to open up problem.11 Te emphatcally natonal character as
crbed to the concept of moe of producton (cultural and otherwise)
is aother fndamental queston which demoDte te ethnohstorcal
spcificity of dominant approaches to ct politcs, soial movements,
ad oppositonal consciousnesses.
Tee general issues app in a specifc form in the dstnctve English
idioms of om rfecton. Here to, the momand politcaJ problem of
slaver loomed lare not least becau it wa once recognised as intral
to the MO of wester csaton and appd a cental politcal
ad phosphical concept in the emerent discoue of modem English
cmuniqueness. 12 Notons of the prtve and the cvilised which had
been inteal to pre-moder understanding of "ethnic" difernces b
came fdaental cogitve and aestetc markers in te proesses which
generatd a constellaton of subject positons i which Englishness, Chs
tanty, and oter ethnic ad rcialised attibutes would fally gve way to
te disloatng dazzle of "wbiteness."13 T small but telling insight into this
ca b found m Edmund Burke's dscussion of the suble, which ha
achieed a certain currncy lately. He make elaborte use of the aa
ton of darknes with blackness, lg ttm to te skin of a ral, live black
woman. Seeing her produces a sublime feeling of terror in a by wo
sight has ben rstored to mby a surgcal operton.
Perhaps it may appar on enquiry that bJackes and darkness d in
some dege p by their natl operton, independent of any
astons whatever. I must obsere that the ideas of bJackness and
darknes much the sae; and they difer only in u,tat blackness
is a mo confed idea.
Cheselden has gven us a ver curious stor of a boy who had
I0
bbor blind, and contnued so utl he was thirteen or fourteen
years old; he wa then couched for a catarct, by whch opraton he
received msight ... Cheselden tells us tat the ft tme the boy sw
a black object, it gave hm gat uneasines; ad tat some tme aer,
upon accidentay seeing a neo woman, he was stck with geat
horror at the sigt.14
Burke, who opposd slavery and arued for it gradual aboliton, sd at
the dooray of the tditon of enquiry mapped b Ray mond Wia
wich uthe itucture on which much of English cultural studies
came to be founded. Tis orgn H part of the eplaaton of how sme of
the contempor manifestatons of t tditon I3 ito what C only
be cled a morbid celebraton of England and Englishness. Tese modes
of subjectity and identcaton acquire a renewed politcal chae in the
pst-imperal history that sa black sttlers fom Brtains colonies tae
their ctenshp ngc as subject i the United Kingdom. Te enty of
blacks into natonal life was itelf a powerl fctor contbutng to the cir
cstances i which the formaton of bt ct studies ad CH
politcs became posible. It idexe the prfound transformatons of Brt
ish soal and culturl life i the 1950s and stands, again usualy uac
knowledged, at the heart of laments fr a more human scale of soial living
tat semed no longer practcable aer the 1939-5 wa.
Te convoluted history of black setement nee not be rcapitulated
her. One rcent fagent fom it, the stugge over b Rsh
die's b k TrSaratr Vrnrs,i sufcent to demonstate that racialised
confct over the meing of English ct is mvery much ale and to
show tat the atagonisms hae become enmeshed u a second sres of
stugle i which Enlightenment asumptons about cult, O
value, and aesthetcs go on being tested b tose who do not accept them
a univers moral standards. Tese conct in a sns, the outcome
of a distnct historical perod in which a new, etnical ablute ad cul
m racism was prouced. It would eplain te bug of boks on
English stets manifestatons of irreducible ct diferences tat
sigpted the path to domestc racial catatophe. T new racism was
generated i part by the move towards a politcal dsoure whch alige
"race" closel wt te idea of natonal blongng and which stsed com
plex cultl difrnce rater ta simple biologcal hierahy. Tese
stnge conct emered in circumstances wher blacknes and Eng
lishnes appeard suddenly to b mutl exclusive atibutes and wher
te consicuous antagonism btween them proeeded on te terrain of
Ot not that of politcs. Watever c of Rushdie one holds, m fate
11
ofer another small, but sigcant, omen of the extent to wc the
most metaphyical values of England and Englishnes 8 currnty being
contested through their connecton to "race" and ethnicity. His cn
ences 8 als a rminder of the dfculte involved in atempt to con
stct a mor plurc, post-colonial snse of Brsh mmand natonal
identt In dcontex, locatng and aswering the natonalism dnot the
rcism and etoentrism of English cutural studies m itslf bcome a
drectly politca issue.
Rtg to the imperal fgures who supplied Rymond Willias with
the raw material for h own brilliat critcal rcoDcton of Engish i
tellectual lfe is instctve. Aart fom Bue, Tomas Carlyle, John b-
kn, Chales Kingsley, and the rest of Wlliams's cast of worthy chaacters
Cbecome valuable not simly in attempts to purge mmstudie of it
doggedly ethnoentic fous but i the more ambitous and mor usefl
task of actvely rhaping contempra England by reinterretng the cul
tral cor of it suppdly authentc natonal life. U the wor of reiter
pretaton and reconstcton, reipton and rloaton required to
tansform England and Englishness, dsion of the cleaage i the Vic
torian intellgentia around the response to Goveror Eyr's handling of
the Mornt Bay Rbllion in Jaac in 1865 is likely to be prorent.15
Like the English rsponses to the 1857 uprsing i India examined by
Jenny Share, 16 it may well U out to be a much mor frmatve moment
than has s far be n appreciated. Mornt Bay u doubly sigcat bcause
it reprsents an istance of metopln, inter confict that emaates
drecty fom an exteral colonial exprence. Te crses in mpn
pwer demonstate thei continuity. It is par of my arument that ths
inside/ outside rlatonship should b rcogsed as a more powerfl, more
complex, ad mor contested element i the hstorical, soial, ad cultural
memor of our glorious naton U has prevously ben suppsed.
I a suggestng that C the laudable, radical varetes of English cul
tl snsibility examined by Wil s and celebrate by Edwad Thomp
son dothers wer not produced spontaeously fom thei own interal
and intic dynamics. The othat smeof the most potent conceptons
of Englishnes have been constucted by aien outiders like Carlyle, Swf,
Scott, or Eliot should augent the note of cauton sounded here. Te
mot heroic, subalte Engish natalisms and countercultl patro
tsms are prhaps btter understoo as havng been generted i a comple
patter of atagonistc relatnships with the supr-natonal and imperial
world for WO the ides of "rce," natonalty, and natonal mmgD
vde te prma (though not the only) indices. T s approach would obvi
ously brng William Blake's work into a rather dfnt for ta
12
supplied by orthoox cultura htory, and, as Peter Lnebaugh has sug
geste this overdue re ment L b redily complemented by char
ing the long-neglected involvement of black slaves and meudescendant
i the radical history of our county in general and its working-class move
ment in parcular.17 Oluadah Equiao, whose involvement in the begn
ng of organised worng-class politcs unow being widely rcognised;
the anarchist, Jacobin, ulta-radical, and Methost hertc Roben Wed
derbu; Wll a Daidson, sn of Jamaca's attorey general, hanged for
hs role i meCato Stet conspircy to blow up the Britsh cabinet i
1819;18 and the Chanst Wil a Cufy are only Umost urgent, obvious
candidate for rehabilitaton. Teir lives ofer invaluable means of seeing
how tg with ad trough the disoures and the imagery of "race"
appers i the core rather tan at the finges ofEnglish politcal life. David
son's speech fom the scaf old bfor being subject to te lat public decap
itaton in Englad is, for exaple, one moving appropriaton of the rights
of disident feebr Englishmen that i not widely red to.
Of Uiaou to, Wedderbu Hperhaps te best known, thans to
the efort of Peter Lnebaugh and M McCalman.19 Te child of a slave
dealer, James Wedderbu, ad a slave woman, Roben was brought up by
a Kngton conjur woman who acted as an agent for smugglers. He m
gated to Lndon at the age of seventeen i 1778. Ter, having published
a number of disrputable ulta-rdical tracts as prt of h subversive polit
cal labur, he presnted himself as a living emboiment of the horror of
slavery i a debatng chapl in Hopkns Street near the Haymarket, where
he prached a verion of chiliastc aachm based on the teaching of
Tomas Spence and infsed with deliberte blasphemy. one of the de
bate held mhis "ruinous haylof w200 persons of the lowet descrp
ton," Wedderburn defended te inhernt rigts of the Caribbean slave t
slay his master promising to write home and 'tell them to murder their
master as son as they please." Afer U occasion he was tred and acquit
ted on a charge of blasphemy aer prsuading the ju that he had not
been uttering sediton but merely prctsing the "te and il ble geniu
of prophetic sk2
It is pancularly sigfcant for the directon of my overall argument that
both Wedderbu ad his sometme asate Davdson had ben sailors,
movig to ad fo bteen natons, crossing brders in moern machines
that were themselve mico-systems of lguistc ad politcal hybridity.
Teir rlatonshp to te sea may D out to be espcialy impont for
bt the early plitc ad potcs of the black Atatc world that I w
to counte against the narow nationalism of b much English histor
ogaphy Wedderbu sre in te Royal Navy and as a prvateer, while
13
Ddson, wo away to instead of studying law wa pressed into
nava service on Wsubsequent ocaions. Davidson inhabited the same
ult-radical subculture as Wedderbu and was a actve pacpant in the
Marlebne Rding Soiety, a radical boy formed m 1819 aer the
Peterlo massacre. He is kown to hae acted a the custodian of their
black fag, which sigcantly bre a skll ad crossbnes with te legend
"Lt us die like men ad not b sold as slaves," at an open 3 meetng i
Smithfeld later that year.21 Te prcis details of how radica ideologes
arculated the ct of the Lndon poor bfor the insttuton of the
factory system to the insuborinate maritme culture of pirtes and other
pre-industa worker of the world wl have to await the innovatve laburs
ofPeter Lnebaugh and Marcus Rdiker.22 However, it has been estated
tat at the end of the eighteenth century a quer of the Brtsh uywas
compsed of Afcans for whom the exprence of slavery was a powerfl
orientaton to te ideologes of liberty and justce. Lokng for simiar pat
terns on the other side of the Atlatc network we can loate Crspus At
tucks at the head of his "motley rabble of saucy boys, negoes, muattoes,
Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars"23 and L tack Denmar Vesey s
ing the Caribbean and picking up inspiratona stores of the Hatan rvo
luton (one of his co-conspirators testified tat he had said they would
"not spar one white skin alive for this was the plan they pursued mSan
Domingo").24 There is also the shining exaple of Frederck Douglass,
whose autobiogaphie revea tat he leat of feedom mthe Norh fom
Ish sailors while working as a ship's caulker in Baltmore. He had less to
say abut the embarrassing fact that the vessels he radied for the oean
Batmore Clippers-wer slavers, the fastet ships in the word and the
only craf capable of outn g the Britsh blokade. Douglass, who
played a neglected role in English ant-slavery actvity, escapd fom bnd
age disguisd as a sailor and put this succes down to his ability to "talk
sailor like old salt."25 These are only a few of the nineteenth-century
eample. The involvement of Marcus Garey, George Padmore, Claude
McKay, and Lngston Hughe with ships and salors lends additonal sup
pnto Lnebaugh's prescient suggeton that "the ship remained prhaps
the most important conduit of Pa-Afcan communication befor the ap
pce of the long-playing record."26
Ships and other maritme scenes have a specal place i the work of
J. M. W. Tuer, an artst whose picturs repreent, in te view of many
contemprry ctc, the pinnacle of achievement i the English schol in
pantng. Any visitor to Lndon wtest to the importance of the Clor
Glery as a natona insttuton and of the place ofTuer's a a an endur
ing expr ion of the very essnce of English ciaton. Turner was se-
14
c on the sumit of citcal ap rcaton by John Kwho, as w
ha se n, ocupies a special plae in W1 's constellation of gat Eng
lishmen. Tue's celebrted pctu of a slae shlp27 throwing overboard
its dead and dying as a storm comes on was eibied at te Royal Academy
U coincde w the world ant-slaery conventon held in Lndon in
180. Te pict, owne by K fr some twnt-eight yers, was
rather more tha an answer to te absntee Cabbean ladlors who had
coms oned it ceator to record the tnted splendour of their count
house, wc,as Patck Wrght has eloquently demoDed, became a
imprt sige of the contempor, mdistllate of natonal
@
78
Itofrd a power protest ag te dcton and moral tone of Eng
lish politcs. Ts was made explicit m an eigph Tuer took fom h
own pq and which has itself rtained a plitical infecton: "Hope,
hop, fallacous hope where i thy market no?" Te yers afer his e
tensive involvement in the campaign to dend Gernor Eyr/9 8k
put the slave ship pantng for sale at Christe's. It i sd that he had
bgun to fd ttoo pa to liv with. No buer was found at tat tme,
and he sold te pict to an Amercan mye later. Te paintg has
remaned i the Unite Sttes eer since. It exile i Boston is yet another
pointer towars the shape ote Atantc as a system of cmexhange.
It u mor import, though, U draw attenton to Rs ibility to
dute piC except in ters of what it rvaled about the aesthetics
of paintng water. He releate the inrmaton that mvessel wa a slave
ship to a fotote H the mvolume of Mode Paite.3
spite oflapses like this, te Ne Lf heirs to the aestetc and ctal
tditon mwhich Tuer and Kstand compounded and reproduced
its natonasm and it etnoentsm by denyg imagina invented Eng
lshnes any externa rfernts whatoever. Engand ceaselesly gve birth
to mseemingly fom Britn ia's head. Te politcal af atons and cul
tul prefrnces of d New Lgoup apled tese problems. Tey
8 most visible ad most intnse in te mmc hstoriogaphy tat sup
ple a counterar to W11 's sbtle literary reflectons. For M their en
thuasm for the work of C. L. R. Jae, the iuental Britsh Communist
Pa's hsorans' goup31 i culpble hee. Teir predilecon for the im
age of te feebor Englishman and the of soialism i one county
that fmed their wor 8 both to be found watng when it comes to
natonalism. Tis uncomfortable pang can be taced tug te wok
of ETompson and Eric Hobsb, visiona wrter who contb
utd so much to the stong foundatons of Englsh cultul smdies and
who sha a non-reductve approach to economc, sa, and cul
m htry in which the naton-understod as a stable rceptacle for
7Blk Mnt M CnmmrrofModit
counter-hegemonic ca stuggle-is te pr fous. Te problems
WEnglish cmstudies form at Rjuncton point WU practcal pl
itcs and instantate wder difculties wt natonalism ad Wte disur
sive slippage or conotatve resonace between "rc," ethnicity, and
naton.
Simila problems app in rather difernt form m Acan-American
letter where an equaly volish popular cmnatonalism ufeatured m
the wor of several generatons of radica sholars and an equa number of
not s rdical one. We w see blow tat abslutst conceptons of cul
tural difrnce aled to a culturast understandng of"race" and ethnicity
ca be found in t locaton to.
In oppsiton to bth of the natonalist or ethcaly abslute ap
proaches, I want to develop te suggeston that cultl historians could
take the Atlantc as one single, complex unit of aalysis in their discusions
of the modem world and us it to produce an explictly transnatonal and
interultural perspectve.32 Apart fom the confontaton with English his
toroghy and literary history this entails a chalenge to te way mwhich
black American cultural and politcal histories have s mben conceived.
I wat to suggest that much of the prcious intellectual legacy claimed by
Afcan-American intellectuas as the substance of their parcularty is in
fact only pay their absolute ethnic propert. No less than u the ca of
the Engish New Lf, the ide of the black Atantc can b used to show
that there are other claims to i which can be based on the stucture of the
Afica diaspra into the wester hemispher. A concer with the Atlantc
as a cultul and plitca sstem h been fored on black historioghy
ad intellectua history by the economic and historical matx i which
plataton slaer-"capitaism w its clothes ot-was one spcial mo
ment. Te fctal patters of cmad plitcal exchage ad tansfor
maton that we ty ad specif troug mafesty inadequate teoretca
terms like creolisaton and sncretsm indcate how both ethnicite ad
politcal cultur have been made anew in way that are sigcant not
simply for the people of te Cabb but for Europe, for Aica, espe
cally Libria and Sierr Lone, and of course, for black Amerca.
It bars repettion that Brtain's black settler comunite hae forged a
compund cultur fom disparate sources. Elements of plitcal sensibiity
ad cultural exression tnsmitted fom black America over a long perod
of time have been reaccentuated u Britn. Tey 8 centl, though no
longer dominat, WUthe mcmnovel confgtons that charac
terise another newer black veacular cm. Tis is not content to be
either dependent upon or simply imitatve of the Acan daspra cultues
of America and the Carbba. 'e ris and r of Jazzie B ad Sul II
16
Su at the Dof the last decade consttuted one vauable sig of ths new
aserive mod. Norh Lndon's Fu Drds, whose name itslf project a
newly hybrdbd identty, have projected the distnct cult and rhym
oflife of black Brtain outwards into the world. Tei sng "Keep LMo
ing" was notable for having ben prouced in England by the childrn of
Cbba stter ad then re-mied in a (Jamaican) dub forat i the
United State by Tedd Rley, an Afcan-Aeric. It included seent
or smples of music taken fom American ad Jaaica records by the JBs
ad Mikey Dred resectvely. This fora unity of diverse cm ele
ments was mor tha just a powerl symboL It encapsulated the playfl
diasporc intmacy that D ben a maked featur of tnsnatonal black
Alantc ceatvty. The record ad it eordinar popularty enacted the
tes of af aton and afect wc arculated the discontnuous hstores of
black stter m the new world. The fndamentl injuncton to "Kep On
Movng" a exprste rstesness of spirit which makes that diasora
OD vital. Te contempray black a movement m m, vm a,
ad theat as well as music, whch provded the backgound to this musi
crelease, have cated a new topgphy ofloyalty and identty Uwhi!h
the stuc and presuppitons of the naton state have been lef bhind
bcause they 8 seen to be outoed. It is imporant to rmembr tat
te recent black Atlantc phenomena may not b as novel as their dgt
encoing va the tansnatona force of nort Lndons Su II Soul sug
gest. Columbus's pilot, Pedro Nino, was also an Aican. Te histor of
the black Atlantc since then, contnua y crisrosed b the movements of
black people-not only as commodes but engaged m various stuges
towards emancipaton, autonomy, and ctzenship-provides a means to
rexamine the problems of natonait, loaton, identt, ad hstorcal
memor They aemere fom it wth spcal clat i we contst the na
tonal, natonastic, and ethnically absolute paadigs of cultl crtcsm
to be found m Englad ad America wth those hidden exprs ions, both
residua ad emergent, tat attempt to be global or outer-natonal i na
tur. Te taditons hae supprted counterculture omoert that
touched the worker' movment bu not rducible to it. They supplied
imporant foundatons on which it could build.
Tuer's extaord paintng of the slave ship rmains a usf image
not only for its self-conscous moral power ad the stg way that it M
directly for the sublime i its invoaton of racial terror, commerce, and
England's ethico-politcal degeneraton. It should b emphasised that
shps were the livng means by which the pints wthin that Atlantc world
wer joined. They were mobile element tat stod for the shg spaces
m btween the fed places that tey connected. 33 According they need
17
to be thought of a cultral and politcal units rter than abstct embodi
ment of the tngular tade. They were sometng mor-a means to
conduct politcal dissent and possibly a distnct mode of cutura produc
ton. Te shp provides a chance to eore te aculations between the
discontuous histores of England's pott, R interfces wit te wider
world. Ships also rfer us back to the middle passag, to te haf
rmembered micro-politcs of the slave tde and it relatonship to both
industialisaton and modersaton. A i wer, gettng on board promiss
a means to rconceptualise the oroox relatonship betwen modert
and what passe fr it prehstor It provide a diferent snse of wher
modert might itself be thougt to begn i the consttutve rlatonhips
wth outsider that both found ad temper a self-conscious sense of wet
em cviliston. For M these reasons, te ship is the frst of te novel
c.hronotopes prsuppsed by my attempt to rt modety via the his
tory of the black Atlantc and the Acan diaspora into the wster hemi
spher.
m the venturesome s proposed by James Cliford in his iuental
work on telling cm,I want to consider te impact that mouter
natona, tasut reconceptualisaton mg.t have on the politcal and
cmhistor of black Amercans and that of blacks m Euroe. Lrecent
hstory, this wceny mean reevaluatng Garey and Garveism, pan
Acanism, ad Black Power as hemspheric unot global phenomena. In
periosing moem black politc it W requir feh tg about the
impornce of Hait and its revoluton for the development of Acan
Amercan politcal thought and movement of risance. From te Euro
pean side, it wno doubt be necessa to reconsider Frderck Douglas's
relatonship to English and Scottsh radicalisms and to medtate on the
sigcance ofWtlliam WeUs Bron's fve years in Europe as a fgve slave,
on Aeander CO ell's lving and studyng in Cambrdge, M upon
Ma Delany's exprences at the Lndon conges of the Interatona
Statstcal Congres i 80.'Irw rqui comprehension of such df
cult and complex questons as W E. B. Du Bois's childhood interst in
Bisark, his ivestment in modelling his dress ad moustche on tat of
Kiser Wlhelm II, his likely thought while sitng in Heinrich Von
Tritchke's seminars,3 and te us his tc heros make of European
cultur.
Notable black American teller, fm the pot Phyllis Wheatley on
wards, went to Europe and had their perceptons of America and m
dominaton shifed as a rsult of their eperiences ther. Tis had im
portant consequences for their understanding of racia identte. Te radi
cal joualis and politcal organiser Ida B. Wells is tica, describing her
18
prouctve tmes in England as le "being br again in a new condi
oon." Pans is a more problematc figure mthe pltcal hstor
of black Aerica,40 but how might her encounters with William Morris,
Annie Besat, ad Peter Koptkn impact upn a rewrting of the histor
of English radicalism? What of NeUa Lrsen's relatonshp to Den,
where George Padmor was held ujail durng the early 1930s and which
was also the home base of his banned paper the Negro Work crculated
across the world by its supporters m the Colonial Seamens Asoiaton?41
What of Sarah Parker Remond's work as a medical practtoner in Italy and
the b ofEdmonia Lewis,42 the sculptor, who made her home i Rome?
What efects did living i Paris have upon Anna Cooper, Je ie Faust,
Gwendolyn Bennett,43 and Lis Maillou Jones?
It would appear that there a lare questons raised abut the directon
ad character of black CUD and a uwe take the powerl efects of even
temporary experiences of exile, relocaton, ad dsplacement into account.
How, for example, was the coue of the black vernacular M of jazz
chaged by what happned to Quincy Jones i Sweden and Donald Byrd
i Pas? Js is especally interestng because both men played pwer
role in the remakng of jazz as a popular form mthe early 1970s. Byrd
describs his sn of Europ's appeal as somethng that grew out of the
view of Canada he developed as a young man gowing up in Detoit:
That's why Europe was so important to me. Living acros the river
fom Canada d a kid, I used to go down and sit and look at Wmdsr,
Ontario. Wmdsor represented Europe t me. That was the rest of the
world that was foreign to me. So I always had a feelg for the foreig,
the European thing, because Canada was ngtthere. We usd to go
to Canada. For black people, you see, Canada was a place that treated
you beter than America, the Norh. For my fther Detoit was better
than the Suth, to me br in the North, Canada was btter. At least
that was what I thought. Later on I found out otherwise, but anyway,
Canada represented for me something foreign, exotc, that was not
the United States.44
Rchard Wright's life i exle, which has ben wrtten of as a betayal of
his authentcity and as a proess of seducton by philosophical tditons
suppoedly outside Dnarrow ethnic compass,"5 W b explored blow as
an exemplary instance of how the pohoc olocaton and the plitcs of
identty get inscibed in analyses of blck cultur. May of the figures listed
here W b dealt wt i later chapters. They are all ptental candidates
for inclusion i the latet Afcan-American cultural canon, a canon that is
conditonal on and pssibly required by the academic packagng of black
cultural stde.4 Chapter 4 w ds what version of the plitcs and
1Bl k Ant MCuntrcNtre u Mtit 19
phloophy of E. B. D BoD w b constucted for that canon fom
the rch tnsnatonal texts of his long and nomadic life. Du Bois's
tel eerences raise in te sharesrp ible form B queston common
to the lives of almost M these fgures who begn as Am-Acncsor
Cbbean people and then cha.ged into smethng else which evades
tho spc labls and with them afed notons of natonalit ad na
tonal ident Wether their exprience of exile is enforced or chosen,
temprar or pent, te intellectuals and actvst, wrters, speaker,
pots, and M rptedy artculate a deire to escape the retctve
bnds of ethnicit, natona identfcaton, and sometme even "race" it
sl Some speak, mWels ad Wrght, in terms of the rebirth that Europe
ofered them. Whether they dissolved their Aican-Amercan sensibilty
into an eplicitly pan-Aicanist disou or politcal commitent, their
relatonship to the lad of their birth and their ethnic politcal consttuency
was absolutely tansformed. The specfcity of the modem plitcal and cul
tr formaton I want to call the black Atantic c b defed, on one
level, trough ts deire to tansend both the stucD of the naton
state dthe constaints of ethnicity and natonal parcularit. These de
sires are rlevant to undertanding politcal oranising and cultu crt
cism. Tey have always sat uneasily alongside the stategc choices forced
on black movements and individuals embedded i natonal poltcal cul
Dand naton states in America, the Cabba, and Europe.
Oyand te Ittton of te Fatelnd
The pwerl and important fgu of Ma Robison Delany-jouralist,
editor, dotor, scientst, judge, soldier, inventor customs inspector, ortor,
plitcian, ad novelist-provides a opprty to examine the distnc
tve efects prouced wher the black Atlantc plitcs of locaton fames
the dooray of double consciouness. Hs life also ofer invauable op
port t consider some of te issues raised witn the histores of black
culte and polics by tavel and voluntary reloaton. Mae by its Euro
pean orgns, modem black poltcal cutur has always been more inter
eted m the relatonship of identt to roots and rootednes than in seeing
identty as a proes of movement and mediaton that Hmore appropriately
approached via the homonym routes. Fousing on a fgre le Delay de
mands carefl attenton to te interlay between these two dimensions of
rcia ontolog life rveals a confntaton between hs natonalism
and the experences of tavel that have been laely ignord by historans
except where they can be read as Ethiopianist or emgatonist ges
against Acncracism. This is no longer suf cent.
Delany is vital to te conce of d bok for svera other rons. He
20 1 BI Atnt MM Cntr&utre ofMoriP
is mrgularly hailed as the principal progenitor of black natonaism in
America. Tough he itouced h 1879 Pncipa ofEthnoly w a
fawning dedicaton to the Earl ofShafesbur which would not fid favour
among Acentst thee days, his aruments i this fal publicaton do
prefigur the tone and content of contemporary Aicalogcal thought m
d uncanny manner. Delany ha been idented by Molef Kete Asnte as
a pioneer in this feld47 and makes a attacve ancestor for Aicentists
thanks to endearing tts like his wl geto don his da while deliv
erng lectures on Aica in the Town Hall, the Baptt church, and "the
colord bhol" i Chatham, Ontario, where he made his home i exile.
Apart fom h sartoral and ideologcal prolivtes, the proxmity to Aica
i Delany's famly histor ha te efect of making h politcal choice look
stark ad vvid. They are far less abiguous, for example, than those of his
sometme iate Frederick Dougas, who had been sired by a white
man, taught to red by a white woma, and had his fedom bught by
two more. This much is clear fm te cloig passage of Delany's fit
book, Te Condition, Eation, Emitin and Detiny q the Coled
Peol of the United Sttes PoiitcaUy Considrd (1852 ). Tough its asr
te Christanity stkes a somewhat discorant note, the work ends mov
ingly with a recogably pan-Acan fourish that places the forces of s
ence, Enlghtenment, and progess i concer with the project of racia
regeneraton i the priod afer slaver:
"Princes shall come forth out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall so n stetch
forth her hands unto G" Ps.li.31. Wit faith in d blesed
promise, thank God; i this our gand advent into Aca, we want
"No kettle drums nor fageolets, Bag pipes, tombones, nor bayo
nets" but with an abiding tust i Gc our heaenly king, we shal
bldy advance, singng sweet songs of redempton, in the regenera
ton of our race and restoraton of our father-land fom the glom
and darknes of our superstton and ignornce, to the glorious light
of a more prstne brightess-the light of the highest goly civi
zaton.48
Delany is a figure of extordinary complexity whoe politcal tajectory
through abolitonisms and ergatonisms, fom Republicans to Demo
crat/
9
dissolves any simple attempts to mmas consistently either con
seratve or radical. Tirdly, Delany's life is valuable because of h seven
month spll in England,50 his exle i Chatham, his tavels u the South
and in Aca, as well as his dreams of autonomous black settlement in Cen
tal and South America. He i justly renowned for havng organised and
led the m scientfc expediton to Aca fom the wester hemispher:
T Bl Ant M Cuntrcultre ofModri 21
the 1859 Niger Valey Exploring Party marshaed by Delany in conjunc
ton with Robert CampbU, a Jamaican naturalist who had been head of
the science departent at the Insttute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia.
Tese prations are r-coed in the wanderings of Henrico Blacus/
Henry Holland, the eponymous hero of Delay's novel Blke; M the Hut
ofAmerca, his singe venture into :ction, seraised in the Angl Afican
Mazine during 1859 and the Weeky Anw-A.n in 1861. Delany is
also interestng because he thought of himself as a man of scence.51 His
idea ofhimself as a polymath aspird to and indeed expressed acompetence
across disciplines that distnguishes him as an eceptonal intellect. He
modelled his career on sdd of approprately manly achievement st
in the eighteenth century by savants and philosophes whose legacy, a we
shal se, was readily approprated for his theorie of racal integr and
citenshp. He was, like William Wells Brown, Sarah Parker Remond, and
oter, a black pron studyng ad practising medcine in a period when
slaves' desires to awa fom bondage were stll sometmes bing raton
alised by medical opiion as an illness-drapetomania or dysesthesia Ae
theopis52-and when J. Marion Sims was perfectg the procedures of @
aecologcal surery on the women he held i bondage. 53 Quite apat fom
m more practcally orented medcal studie, Delany is known to hae
taken Q phrenology mpursuit of answer to the auments of racist eth
nolog Hi work in this area could be used to initate some interg
inquiries into the relatonshp between scientfc reason and racial domina
ton. We will see blow that his pirato as a cultvated man of science
were interned with his politcal radcalisaton in complex ways. Both
were gven an additonal @u by Delany's bitter recton to being denied
the rght to patent his 1852 inventon for tansprng locomotves over
mountainous terrain because, thoug fe, he was not formally a CD2of
the United State.5
Delany was br in Charlestown, Virgnia, in May 1812. He was the
son of a slave father ad a fee mother who had bth apparently enjoyed
the bnefit of Afcan blo wch was not only pure but royal too. Dela
ny's Mandigo gradfather had retured to Afica afer being manumitted
and h father, Samuel, had purchased his own feedom in the early 1820s.
Te family made their home in Chabersbur, Pennsylvaia. Actve in ab
olitonist crcle as a speaker, jouaist, ad wrter, Delany published the
Mysr in 1843 and became co-editor with Douglass of the Norh Star
( 1847). He ce under the spell of Gar sonan abolitonsm55 at an ely
age and complemented mwork in the ant-slavery 1M with his medical
acvtes as cupper, leecher, and bleeder. U 1850, havng studied med
cie under a numbr of dif erent practoners, he applied to Haard to
22 T Bll Antc m Cntutr ofModni-
tn i medicine there and was accepted along with two other black stu
dent, Isa Snowden ad Dael Hunt, on the conditon that they were
sponsored by the Amercan Clonisaton Siet and would only practce
teir meical skills outside the United States i bra afer gaduaton. 57
A white female student, Harriot K. Hunt, who had been admitted at the
same tme as the three black men, wa persuaded to withdraw afer private
meetngs with members of the facult Delany, Snowden, and Dad Hunt
bega to attend lectures i November of that year but were asked to wt
draw fom the college by the Dea-Olier WendeU Holmes, a celebrated
admirer of Samuel Mortons Crani Amna-at the end of the winter
term afer protests fom ang white student who felt tat their presencl
would lower educatonal standards. The bittere and righteous anger
that had ben compunded in Delany by a fuitles leal bate to claim
his wfe's inheritance were elabrated fer a result of ts additonal
humiliaton at the hads of Haard. He retured to Philadelphia eager to
make the clarion C for Amercan citenship and i favour of a pla for
black emigraton to Centrl or South Amerca that would be anounced
by his ft book.
Published on Delany's forteth birthday, The Gdition tempred its emi
gatonist proposals wth a polemic against the Aerca Coloniston So
cety and it plans for Lbra settlement. Te bo k is notable for the
elaborate theore of natonality ad citenshp it derived fom a reading
of Europn histor and perhaps most of 1 for it outspken advocacy of
a stong state that could fous te zionist aspiratons of America blacks
and aid i building their political counter-pwer against the white suprem
acist state. It bgan by comparing the lot of blacks m America to that of
the dsenfnchised minority natons found i Europe.
That then have [sic] i a ages, malmost ever naton, existed a na
ton wt a naton-a pople who although forming a part ad par
cel of the populaton, yet wen fom force of circumstances, known by
the pcuar psiton tey ocupied, forming i fact, by deprvaton of
plitcal equality wt others, no pa, ad Uany, but a resticted part
of the boy politcs of such natons, H M te. Such ten the
Poles in Rsia, the Hungarians m Austa, the Sotch, Irish ad
Welsh m the United Kingdom, and such alo are the Jew scattered
troughout not only te ingth and breadt ofEurqe but almost te hab
itable glbe, maintaining teir natonal carctersic, and loking fr
war in high hoes ofseeing the day when the may rtur to teir fer
natinal poitn ofsel-ovement and independence let that be in
whatever par o te habitabl =mM it may . . Such then u the condi
ton of various classes in Europe; ye, nations, for centes wt
T Bl Anti MM Cntr&ure ofMoit 23
natons, even without the hop of redempton among those who op
pres them. And however unfavourable their condton, there is none
more so than that of the coloured people of the United States. 58 (em
phasis added)
From the pint of view of the history of the diaspora concept explored i
Chapter 0it is especinterestng that though he dos not Uthat piv
otal term Delay looks immediately to Jewish experiences of dispersal as a
model for comprehending the histor of black Amercans and, more sig
ncantly stll, cites this history as a means to focus his own zionist propos
1 for black Amercan coloniston ofNicaragua59 and elsewher. The ac
quisiton of a pwerfl fatherland that could guarantee and champion the
rghtsof slave was, for Delany, far more signicant tha pet details like
a geogaphical locaton witin what h collabrator, Rober Campbell,
cled i his own report of their Niger Expedton te Acan mother land.
Delany's prmary conce was not wth Aica such but rather with the
forms of citznship and blongng that arose fom the (re)generaton of
moer natonality i the form of an autonomous, black naton state. l
beria was rejected i this role because it was not an adequate or sufciently
serious vehicle fr the hops and dm of black soldier citzens and their
families. Its geography was one factor mits disfavour, but it centrality to
the "deep laid scheme" of American slaveholders proved to be a more sub
stantal disdvantage. 60 With his appeals to gain Amerca citzenship lok
ing iLeasigly fitles, Delany lef Aerca U 1b0. However, he went
north not est, not to Aica but to Canada.61 It was fom t new loaton
that he planned his tp to Aica and to Europe. He lef the new world for
the old i 1859, nvgu Monrovia, te Lberian caital, on July 12t.
There he met with Aexander Cell and oter dgte.
Delany's 1bV reprt of his tp, the Ofial Repo ofthe Nier Val
Elng Part/2 is an interesting dLent that outines his vision of a
dynamic alliance, bth commercial ad civilisig, btween English capital,
black Acnc intellect, and Acan labur power. Thes dispaate forces
wer to collaborate to their mutual beneft i the exprt of Aican cotton
to England for proces ing. The Report is more interstng i the context of
mischapter for the iasigtsit provides into those stuctures of feeling that
migt be termed the iner dialectcs of daspra identcaton. Delany ever
the doctor and rtonalist, descrbed i detail the squence of clinical
symptoms he exprienced d h inital elaton at arrivng in Aica gave way
to a sp and characteristc form of melancholy:
The ft sight ad impressions of the coast of Aica 8 always inspir
ing, producing the most plCt emotons. Tes plesing senstons
contnue for several days, more or less nt they merge into feeling
7
of amost intense excitement a harity of feelg almost a to
approaching intoxication . like the sensaton produced by mbev
erage of champage wine Te f symptoms are succeeded by a
rty of feelgs in WC ther is a disositon to stetch, gape and
jW with fatgue. The second may or may not b succeeded by actual
febrile attack but wheter or not such symptoms ensue, ter i
one mst remarkable . . . A feling of rget that yu lef yur natve
country for a stange one; almost fntc desire to see fends and
natvity; a despondency and loss of mchop oever seeig those you
love at home again. These felgs, ocourse, must be resisted ad
rgarded as a mere morbid afecton [sic] of the mind We an
ente rcovery tke place, the love of d county is most ardent
and abiding.6
The ambivlence over exle and homecoming conveyd by these remarks
has a history that is probably as long as the prsence of Aican slaves i
the west. At dpoint, it is necessary to appreciate that any discomfort at
the prosp of fiss ad fult les i te topogaphy of aaton that
made pa-Acasm such a power discourse was not e by refer
ences to some Aican essence that could magcally connect all blacks to
gether. Nowadays, ts potent idea is fequently wheeled in when it i nec
essary to appreciate the thing that (ptentally) connect black people U
one another rther t t seriousl about diisions i the imagned
community of the rce and the means to comprhend or overcome them, if
indeed that upossible. Dela's AC tour conrmed the dissime
btween Aic-Aera idelogues and me Acs wit whom they
teated. Tu it is not surrig that tough at the end of his account of
his adventurs i Aca Dela promised to nnmto Aca with mf,
he never did so.
More ta anything prouced b Edward Wimot Blyden Aleander
Crummell, and mother proto-natonast peers, Delany's w rs
terd contadicrory responses toward Aca. Te ancient, ance home
simply would not do as R w~ He ws acutely awa that it needed to be.
rmade wholele. mpar, Uw to b acomplished throug gndiose
moernistion schemes like the tans-Aican commercial railway l he
had ft proposed in an eoar append to Tt Criton. Acas
suprton and it heathen cmwere to be swept aay. Te plans
revealed muthe proposed mission to elevate the black Aerican rcial
self was iparable fom a second mision to elevate and enligten te
unculturd Aicm by oferng them te bnefit of csed life: ces
pools, :tur, cudcq, miocs, ad "Some srt of a gament to
T Bl k Atnt M Cnuluwof Modit 25
cover the entre person abve the kee, should it b but a single shirt or
chemise, instead of a lose native doth thrown around them, to be
dropped at pleasure, at any moment expsing the entir upper pa of te
person in Lberia, where tat part of the person is entrely uncoverd
am cenain that it would go far towards impressing them with some of
the habit of civiisd life . If this statement can be rd as a small sig of
Delany's practcal commitent to the ft ofEuro-America moderty,
it is less surprising that his plitcal psitons could sh once more in later
life and blend his natonalism anew with a decidedly America-centc brand
of patiotsm. Te civil wa was the catalyst for this process. It rekndled
his enthusiasm for an American fture for American black. Delay was
commissioned a major mthe Union army, proudly assuming the ra
of the mblack feld ofcer in the histor of the United State. Te publi
caton that had seralsed Blke now ofered its readers gorous photo
ghic pstcards of Delany in h dark blue uniform for enty-fe cents.
decision to rman inside the shell of that patiotsm afer the wa
was over was facilitated by the same resolutely elitst verion of black na
tionalism that hd animated h earler project. It stessed the obligaton
of blacks to btter themselves throug the universal values of m, tem
perance, and hard work. Ts brand of black natonalism had also proved
extemely popular wth English ant-slaver audience whose movement
Delay's visit had helped to rvitalise. He arved in London fom Ac
during the spring ofl860 i search of backing for the enterprising colonial
schemes: "fearless, bold and adventurous deeds of daring"65 whch were
integ to reaising the special respect that followed fom the p ion
of natona stts.
I have already pointed out that the contstng account that Delany and
Cabl provided of the Niger Valley experences ae at varance over the
gendering of their Aican homeland. Campbell Aica as his mother
land whle Delany, even when he refered to Aca wth the female pro
noun, pristed i caling the contnent the fatherland. Iwant to suggest
that tis obstacy ep someting profound and characterstc abut
Delay's snse of the necesary relatonship bteen natonaity, citzen
ship, MUmascty He was probably the frt blc tinker to make the
argument that the integty of te rce is prmarily the integty of it male
heads of household and secondarily the integty of the families over which
they preside. Te model he proposed aigned the power of the male head
of houshold m the prvate sphere with te noble status of the soldier
cten which complemented it in the public realm. Delany's appeal toy
is tat of a supreme patah. He sought a varety of pwer for the black
man in the white wrld that could only be built on the foundatons which
26 T Bk Al nt M Cntcutr ofModrit
the roles of husband and father provided. Tere is somethig of the same
atttude conveyed in the way that he named Dseven childn afer fmous
figures of Ac descent: Alexadre Dumas, Toussaint L'OuveO,
Rmess Placdo, St. Cypria, Faustn Soulouque, Charles Lnox R
mond, Ethiopia Halle. ma secton on the educaton of grls in TtCondi
tion Delany made his views on the propr relatonship btween the ses
cleaer stll.
Lt our young women have an educaton; let their minds be well m
formed; well stored wth uf informaton and practcal profciency
rather than the ligt, supercial acquirement, popularly and fashion
ably called accomplishments. We desire accomplishments, but they
must be u.
Our females must be qued, because they are to be the mothers
of our childn. A mothers a the fit n and instctors of chi
den; fom them childn consequently get theit fs impressions,
which being always the most lastng should be the mot corrct.
Women were to be educated but only for motherhod. Te public sphere
was to b the sole province of enlightened male citenr who sem to
have taken their cues fom Roussau's concepton of civic life mSparta.
Delany L now be rcognised a the progenitor of black Atlantc pati
archy.
Wt the fndamental queston of gender roles and relations M in
mind, I want brefy to eaine his novel 3mkt,g Te Huts ofAmca as
a narrtve of familial reconstucton. The momentum of the bok is sup
plied by the zeal with which its hero stves to rconstuct and regenerte
his family life. Tis stggle u preented as absolutely homologous with
both the liberaton of slaves and the regeneraton of Afica which Delany
had described dumthe Niger Valley rport:
Aica is our fatherland and we its legtate descendants . I have
outgrow, long since, the boundaries of North Amerca, and wth
them hae also outgown the bundaries of teir clams . . Aca, to
be regenerated must have a natonal character, and her positon
among the exstng natons of the earth w depnd mainly upn the
hgstandard she may ga compaed wth them m her relatons,
morally, religously, soially, politcally and commercially
I hae determined to leae to my chdn the inhertance of a coun
try, the posssion of territoral domain, the blessings of a natonal
educton, ad the indisputable rght of slf-goverent; that they
may not succeed to the sert and degadaton bqueathed to us by
27
ou fther. uwe have not been bor to fortune, should impat
the seds wich mgerminate and give birth to fornes fr them. 67
Blk was the fu novel written by a black Amercan and cery a
mor radica work Uthe other comparable early attempt at ficton. The
bok tok its epigph fom Harriet Beecher Stowe's Unrk Tm1Cn
ad was, as Delany's domiciary ttle implies, an elicit, interte re
qmto that work. Both the stuctre of the book it geogphical
compass confrm Delany's U to hae outgow te boundares of
Nort Amerca. Blk was wtn in Canada and concer a Cuban who,
aer tavelling to Afca as a saior on a slave ship, i himself enslaed in the
Uned States. He escap to Canada, but ten rtrns to te United States
in order to fd the wife who has ben unjustly parted fom mb an evil
slave master and to lad slave rsistance ther. He discover her in Cuba
M secure her fedom. He ten vsit Ac again, this U as a snior
cre on a second slaer. T joue, acros the Atlantc fom west to
eat-a midde pasge mrre-is underten W par of a gand plan
to lead a rvolutonar slae rvolt i Cub whch is at that moment in
danger of being ee by the souther American ste. Te topogaphy
of the black Atlantc world i dicty incorratd into Delany's tle.
tavelling heo, Blake, assumes viou names in the d erent loctons he
visits, but his Egish appellaton is surly signicat in tat it ofers an
echo of a earlier, explicity Atlantcist radic.
Ships ocupy a prmary symbolc and plitcl place m lhe work. One
chapter i called "Ttlantc" and another, chapter 52, is enttled "Te
Middle Pasage" and include a harrowing scene of a slaer throwig over
board the dead and dyg just as Tuer had depicted it: dn the rage
of natu itself Delany's U of music is complex and bold and has been
undertood as fer evidence of his deeply contadctory relatonhip t
Amerca and i om.Te sharp paoe of patiotc song and pular
materal by Stephen Foster that he h h characters sing can b inter
prted as illustatons of te dens cutu sycretsms tat double con
sousness can generate.
Blk include some stgy sympathetc portt ofblack women and
ofers one of the feprsnttns of te mddle pasg and life i te
barcons to b found i nineteenth-centu black wrtng. It makes
Afican-Amercan eence visible wt a hemisherc order of racal
dominaton. Te verion ofblac soldart Bk advances is elicty ant
etnic and gpnarrow Afcan-Aercan excptonalism in the nae
of a tuly pan-Afcan, diaspora sensibilt. T makes blackes a mater
of plics rater tha a common OO condton. Te terror of slar
2 T B k .nt NM Cuntrcuture ofModit
is pwerlinvoked, only p fom wt the conventons of a aboli
tonst literary gen that exhibits an intense finaton with the image of
dvided filies. Slavery is seen i a ethical ligt but is prmaly presented
as an exploitatve economic sstem of an interatonal nature. Delay was
a member of the Afcan Methodst Episopal church, but he used bis hero
Blake to convey crtcisms of religon in general and Christanit in partcu
lar. It is reprsentaton of rligious belief which supplies the key to the
bok's ant-ethnic, pan-Acan stance. Blae refsed to "stand stU and see
svaton" wherever it was ofered to bim: by the rtuals of the wbite church
on the plantaton, in the Catholic chuch or in the supersttons of the
conjuers he interC with durng a mit to the Dismal Swamp. His
sceptcism and strictly in5ental orentaton towards rlgon, which he
as a valuable tool for the polical project he sught to advance, are
import bcaus Afcan-Amercan religon i S ofen the cent sign
for the folk-cultural, narowly ethnc defton of racial authentcity that
is bing challenged here in the name of rhizomorhic,69 routed, diaspra
cultures.
Both Delay and h hero boast of their ratona principles. Stealing
fom the master was ratonalised i terms derived fom a labour theory of
value and, fom this ratonalist stance, blacks wer rbued for confsing
spitual means wt moral ends. Black Aercan were not unquely op
pressed, ad Uthey were to b fe, they must contibute to the establish
ment of the stong and completely synthetc supra-ethnic naton state that
Delany saw as indispensble to the ongoing stuggle to defeat racial op
presion everywhere i the new word ad to the longer-term project of
Afcan regeneraton. J ant-mystca racial rationalism required that
blacks of all shade, classes, and ethc goups gve gthe merely accidental
d erences that sered only to mask the deepr unity watng to be con
stucted not so much fom their Ac heritage as fom the common
orentaton to the fm produced by their militant stuggles aganst slav
er. Ethnic ad religous dif erences symbolis intaracial divisions m the
bok. Black surival depnds upn forgng a new means to build alliance
above and beyond pet issue like language, religon, skin colou, and to
a lesser extent gender. The best way to create the new metactural identity
which the new black citizenship demands was provided by the abject con
diton of the slaes and ironically fcitated by the transnatonal stucture
of the slae tde itl Abyssa, a Soudae slave and former txtle mer
chant, brought fom Afca on Blae's second transatlantc trip; Placido, a
Cuban revolutonar pot who is also Blae's cousin; Gofer Gondolier a
Wet UU cook who has attended a Spanish gandee i Genoa; the
welthy quadrons and octoron of Cuba; Blake himslf and indeed their
T Bl k Antk MM Cuntrcutre o Moit 29
white revolutonary supporters consttute something le a rainbow army
for the emancipton of te opprssed men and women of the world.
Because religon marks these petty ethnic difernces with spcial clarity, its
overcoming siges the utopian move beyond ethnicity and the etablish
ment of a new basis for community, mutuaity and rcproity:
I fit a catholic and my wife bred as such M both Baptst; Abyssa
Soudan once a pagan was in her own native land converted to the
Methodst or Wesleyan belief; Madame Sabasta and family Epis
copalans; Camina fom long rsidence in the colony a Presbterian
and Placido is a believer in the Swedenborgan doctes. We have
ageed to kow no sects, no denominaton and but one religion for
the sake of our rdempton fom Bondage ad degadaton No
religon but that which brig us libery wwe know; no Go but he
who owns us his chdren Wwe sre. Te whites accept nothig
but that which promote their interest and happines, socially plit
cally ad rligously. Tey would discard a religon, tear down a
church, overthrow a goverment or desert a county which did not
enhance their feedom. I Go's geat and rghteous name are we not
wlg to do the smeF0
Blke is usefl to this chapter's arment against ethnic absolutsms be
CU its a aton of the intercural and tansnatonal is more than
enough to move discussion of black plitical culture beynd the binary
oppositon between natonal and diaspora perpves. Te suggestve way
that it locates the black Atantc world H a webbed network, between the
local and the global, challenges the coherence of all narow nationalist per
spectves and points to the surous invocaton of etnic partcularty to
enorce them and to ensure the tidy fow of cultural outut into neat, sym
metrical mu. should add that mapplies whether this impulse comes
fom the opprsor or the oppressed.
Black Poltc d NomQ
Rerading Blk i this way and lookng at the routes of it natonalist
author leads M back to the queston of whether natonalist perpectves are
a adequate means to udertand the forms of resistance and accommoa
ton intsic to moder black politcal cultur. Te recent history of
blacks, as pople in but not necesarly of the moem, wester world, a
history which involves processes of plcal organisaton that are explicity
tansnatonal and interatonal i natu, demands that this queston is
considered very caefl y. Wat, afer 1 is being oppsed by the move-

ment of slaves and thei descendants: slavery? capitalism? coerced indust

aisaton? racal terror? or the ethnocentsm and European solipsism tat
these proesses help to reprouce? How ae the discontnuous histore of
diaspora resistance raised in fctonal form by Band lived by figure like
its creator to be togh? How have they been theord by those who have
experienced the consequences of racial domnaton?
U the final par of this chapter, I want to look mor specifically at te
positons of the naton state, and the idea of natonality in account of
black oppsiton ad expressive culture, parcularly music. I wl a
a bref dsion of black music that antcipate a more extensive teat
ment of thes themes in Chapter 3 to ask implicit questons about the
tendencies towads ethnoentrsm and ethnic absolutsm of black cultral
theor
The problem of weighing the claims of natonal identty against other
contng varetes of subjectvty and identcaton has a special place in
the intellectual histor of blacks i the west. Du Bois's concept of double
consiousness has ben refered to already and w be explored in gater
detail in Chapter 4. It is only the bst-known resoluton of a familiar prob
lem which points towards te core dynamic of racal oppression as well as
the fndamental antinomy of diaspora blacks. How has this doubleness,
what Rchard Wright calls the ded objectvt71 which folows fom
being both inside and outside the West, afected the conduct of plitcal
movements against racial opprssion ad towards black autonomy? Are the
inescapable pluralites involved i the movements of black poples, in A
rc and in exile, ever to be synchronised? How would tese suggles b
periodised i relaton to moety: the fatal intermediaton of capitalism,
industaliston, ad a new concepton of politcal demoracy? Does pos
ing tese quetons m this way sig anything more than te reluctnt
intellectual a ton of diaspor black to an approach which mistkenly
attempts a premature totaliston of ite stugges, an approach which
itl has deep and problematc root within the ambiguous intellectual
traditons of the Europa Enghtenment which have, at difernt mo
ments, been bth a lifeline and a fetter
Delay's work has provided some powerf evidence to show that the
intellectual heritage ofEuro-American modernity determined ad pssibly
stll determines the manner i which natonality Runderstod within black
politcal discourse. partcular, this legacy conditons the contnuing aspi
rton to acquire a suppsedly authentc, naturl, and stable "rooted"
identty. This invariant identty Rm Dthe premise of a tg "racial"
sl that Rbt socialised and unified by its connecton with other kindred
suls encountered usually, tough not aways, within the fored fonter
7Bl Atnt M Cntrur o Moit 31
of those discrete ethnic cultures which also happen to coincide with the
contours of a sovereig naton state that guarantee their contnuity.
Consider for a moment the loseness wth which the ter "black na
tonalism" is used both by its advocates and by sceptc. Wy is a more
refned plitcal language for deaing wth thee cc issues of identty,
knship, generaton, afect, and a aton such a long tme coming? A small
but telling example L b drawn fom the cae ofEdouard Glisant, who
has contibute so much to the emergence of a creole counter-discoue
that ca answer the alchemy of natonalsms. Discusion of these problems
sufers when h translator excises Glissant's rferences to the work of De
leuze and Gut fom the Engh edion of h 1981 bok dicours
antilais72 presumably because to acknowledge this exchange would some
how volate the aura of Caribbea authentcity that is a desirable fame
around the work. Tis typical refsal to accept the complicity and syncrecc
interdepndency of black and white thinkers has rcently bcome associ
ated with a second difculty: the overntegated conceptions of pure and
homogeneous culture which mean that black politcal stuggle a con
stued as somehow automatcally exresive of the natona or ethnic difer
ences with which they are associated.
Tis overintegated sense of cultural and ethnic partcularity is ver pop
ular today, and blacks do not monopolise it. It masks the arbitarines of
its own politcal choices Uthe morally chared language of ethnic absolut
ism and this pses additonal dangers bcu it overlooks the development
and change of black pltcal ideologes and igore the retless, rcombi
nant qualites of the black Atlantc's af atve politca cultures. The plit
ical project forged by thinkers like Delan in the difcult jourey fom slave
ship to citzenship is in danger of being wrcked by the seemingly insoluble
conict between to distnct but currently symbiotc perspctves. Te
L b loosely identfed as the C ntat ad the pluralist standpint
though they a in fact two diferent varietes of essentalism: one ontolog
6 the other sttegc. Te antagonistc relatonship between these to
outlooks has been especially intens udiscussions of black a and cultural
critcism. The ontologcal C ntst vew has ofen been characterised by
abrte pan-Aficanism. It has proved unable U specif prcsely where the
highly przed but doggedly evasive essence of black arc ad politcal
sensibility is V ntly loted, but that is no obstacle to its ppular circula
ton. This perpctive sees the black intellectual and artst d a leader.
Where it pronounces on mm matters, it is ofen allied to a ralist ap
proach to aestetc vaue that minimises the substantve politcal and philo
sphical issues involved in the processe of ac reprsentaton. Its abso
lutst concepton of ethnic culturs can b idented by te way in which
Z 1Bltk Ant M Cuntrcultre ofMonit
it rers incomprehending disppointent with the actual cultural
choices ad patters of the mass of black people. It has little to s about
the profane, contaminated world of black ppular culture and looks i
stead for an arstc practce that can disabuse the mass of black pople of
the illusions into which they have been seduced by their conditon of exile
ad untg consumpton of inappropriate cultural objects like the
wrong hair cae products, pp music, and wester clothing. Te commu
nity is felt to be on the wrong road, and it is the intellectua's job to gve
them a new directon, fsty by recoverng ad then by donatng the raca
awareness that the masses sem to lack.
Tis persve curently confonts a pluralistc position which
blackness as an opn signifer ad seks to celebrate complex represnta
tions of a black parcularity that is inte y divided: by clas, sexuality,
gender, age, ethnicity, economics, and politcal consciousness. Ther i no
unitary idea of black community here, and the authoritarian tendencie of
tose who would polce black cultural expression in the name of their own
pacula history or priorite rightly repudiated. Te ontologcally
gounded essentalism is replaced by a liberan, stategc alteratve: the
cultural stalia which attends the end of innocent notons of the en
ta black subject.73 Her, the polyphonic que of black cultura expres
sion form the ma aesthetc consideraton ad there H ofen uneasy
but exhilaratng fsion of modert and populst techniques and stles.
From d perpectve, te achievements of popular black cultura forms
like muic are a constant source of inspiraton. Tey a prized for their
implicit wag against the pitalls of artistc conceit. Te df culty with
t second tendency is that i leaving racia e ntalism bhnd by viewg
"rce" itself as a soial and cmconstcton, it has ben insufciently
alive to the lingering pwer of scally racialised frms of power and
subrdinaton.
Each outlook compenstes for the obvous weae s i the other
camp, but so fr there has been little open and explicit debate btween
them. Teir conict, initally frmulated in debate over black aethetcs
and cultura prouction/4 R vauable as a preliminary guide to some of
the diemmas faced by cultural and intelectual horns of the moern,
wester, Aican diaspr. The prblems it raises become acute, partcu
larly for those who seek to comprehend culturl development and poltcal
rsistaces wich have had stregard for either moer border or pr
modem fonters. A it worst, the lazy, casual invoaton of cultural insid
ersm which fequently chaacterises te ontologcal esentalist view H
nothing more tha symptom of the gowing cleavages witin the black
communtes. There, uneasy spkepople of the black elite-some of
T Blk At nt MH Cuntultre q Modnit
them professional cmacommentators, artsts, wrters, painters, and h
makers as well as politca leaders-have fbricated a volsh oudook as an
eres ion of their own contradictory positon. lis neenationalism
seem out of tune with the spirit of the novel Aicentic garb in which it
appears before us today. It incorortes commentary on the special needs
and deires of the rlatvely privileged castes within black communites, but
it most consistent tademar is the persistent mystcaton of tat group's
increasingly problematc relatonships with the black poor, who, afer ,
supply the elite wit a dubious enttement to spak on bhalf of the phan
tom consttuency of black people in general. Te idea of blacks as a na
tonal or proto-natonal goup with its own hermetcally enclosed cultre
plays a key role in tis mystcaton, and, though seldom overtly named,
the misplaced idea of a natonal interst gets inked as a meas to silence
dissnt and censor pltc debate when te incoherences and inconsisten
cie of Acalogical disourse put on display
Te problems take on a spc aspect in Britain, WOcurenty lacks
anyting that ca be credibly called a black boureoisie. However, they d
not conned to tis country and tey canot be overloked. Te idea of
nationality and te a umptions of cm abslutsm come toether in
other ways.75 It shoud b emphasised that, wher the archaeolog of black
crtcal knowledges enters te academy, it currently involves the constuc
ton of canons which seems to be proceeding on an exlusively natnal
basis-Aican-American, Anglophone Caribben, and s on. Tis is not
an oblique plea for the legtacy of an equally distnctve black English or
Britsh cm inventory. If it seems indelicate to ask who the formaton
of such canons might sere, then the related queston of where the impulse
to formalise and codif elements. of our cmheritage mdparcuar
patter come fom may be a better one to pursue. Is this impulse towards
cultural protectonism te most cruel tick which the west L play upon
its disident afliates? Te same problem of the status enjoyed by natonal
boundaries in te writng of cultural histor is evident in rcent debates
over hip hop cmo,the powerl exressive medium of America's urban
black por which has created a global youth movement of considerable
sigcance. The musical components of hip hop are a hybrid form nur
tured by the social relatons of the Sout Bronx where Jaac sound
system cuture was tansplanted durng the 1970s and put down new
roots. conjuncton with spcifc techologcal innovatons, this routed
andr-rooted Caribb cultu set mua proess tat was to tansform
black America's sense of itself and a lare poron of te popular music
industy as well. Here have to ask how a form which flaunt and glories
in its own malleability as well as its tsnatonal character becomes inter-

prted as an eresion of some authentc Afican-American essnce? How

can rap be discussed uu sprang intact fom the entls of the blue?76
Aother way of approaching U would b to ask what is it about black
America's wtng elite which meas that they need to claim this diasporc
cmform in such a assertvely natonast way?77
A additonal, and posibly more profound, aea of poltcal difcult
comes into view when the voguish laguage of absolute cta diference
a ted with the ontolocal esntalist stadpoint provides embar
rssing l between the practce of blacks who comprehend rcal poltcs
tough it ad the actvites of their foreswor opponents-the ethnic ab
solutsts of the racist rght-who approach the complex dynamics of race,
natonaty, and ethnicit trough a simila set of pseudo-prcise, culturalist
equatons. T unlikely converence is part of the histor of hip hop b
cause black music is so ofen the principal symbol of racial authenticity.
Analysing it lead rapidly ad directly back to the status of natonality and
natonal cultures u a post-moder world where naton states a bing
eclipsed by a new economy of power that accords natonal citenship ad
natonal boundarie a new sigcance. In seeking to account for the con
toversy over hip hop's origins we als have to explore how the absolutst
ad exclusivist approach to the relatonship bteen "race," ethnicity, ad
culture place thos who claim to b able to reolve the rlatonship b
tween the suppodly incommensurable discou characteristc of difer
ent racal goup, in commad of the CUresurces of their own goup
as a whole. Intellectuals c claim this vanguard positon by virtue of a
ability to taslate fom one ctr to another, mediatng decisive opposi
tons along the way It matter lit e whether the the black comunites
involved ae conceived entre ad sel-sustaining natons or proto
natonal collectivites.
No less than their predecessor Martin Delay, toay's black intelectuals
have peristently succumbed to the lure of those romantc conceptions of
"race," "people," and "naton" which place themselve, rather than the
people they supposedly reprsent, m charge of the strateges for naton
building, state formaton, and racial upl. Tis point underscors the fact
that the status of natonality ad the precise weight we should attach t
the conspicuous diferences oflanguage, cultur, and identty which divide
te blacks of the diaspora fom one another, let alone fom Aficans, a
unresolved within the politcal culture that promise to bring the disparate
peoples of the black Atlantc world together one day. Furherore, the
dependence of thoe black intellectuals who hae tied to deal w these
matter on theoretcal reflections derved fom te canon of occidental ML
derty-fom Herder to Von Trietsche and beyond-is surely salient.
35
W E. B. 1 Bois's work wbe explored below as a site of m af aton.
The case of his 1888 Fisk gaduaton address on Bismarck provides a pre
l eample. Rflecting on it some years later in Dusk ofDaw he
wote, "Bismarck wa my hero. He made a nation out of a mas of bick
erng poples. He had dominated the whole development whis stength
untl he crowned an empror at Versilles. J foreshadowed u my mnd
the kind of thing that Aerican Negroes must do, marching forward with
stengt and determinaton under trained ledership.ms Tis model of na
tnal development has a special appeal to the bickerng poples of the
black Atatc diapora. It is an iteg compnent of teir rsponses to
modem racism ad directy inspired their eforts to constuct naton states
on Acan si ad elsewher. Te idea of natonalit occupies a cental,
i shifng place in the work of Aexander Crummell, Edwa Blyden,
Marn Delay, ad Frederick Dougas. T important group of post
Enlightnment men, who live and politca sensibilites can ironically be
defined through the prsistent cisscrosing of naona boundaries, ofen
sem to M8the decidedly Hegelian belef tht the combinaton of Chris
tanit and a naton state represents the overcoming of a antnomies.
Te theme of natonality, exile, and cutura a liaton accentuate te
ineapable fagentaton and diferentaton of the black subject. T
fagmentaton ha rcently been compounded frer by the questons of
gender, sexuality, and mae dominaton which have been made unavoidable
by the stggles of black women and the vic ofblack gay men and lesbi
M. I cannot attempt to resolve these tensions here, but the dimension of
soial ad plitcal df erentaton to which they rer provdes a fame for
what follows. A indice of diferentaton, they epcaly imprtant
becaus the intacommunal atgonisms whch appear btween te lol
ad immediate levels of our stuggle and their hemispheric and global
dynamics can only gow. Black voices fom WUuthe overeveloped coun
ties may b able to go on resonating in hamony wit those produced
fom inside A or they ma, w varying degees of reluctance, tur
away fom the gobal project of black advancement once the symbolic and
political, unot the material and economic, libraton of Suthe Aca
is completed.
I want to make these abstact and df cult pints more concrete ad
more accesible by constuctng a conclusion for t chapter out of some
of the les ons waitng to be leed fom considering elements of the musi
coutput of blacks i the Wewhich w be explored in more detail in
Chapter 3. The history and sigcance of these musics are consistently
overloked by black wrters for two reasons: buse they exceed the
famework of natonal or ethnoentc aalysis wwhich we have been
m
to easily stsfed, and bcause tg sriouly about the pltc and aes
tetcs of black veracular cultur demands an embarrasing confonta
ton with substantve intaracial diference that make te easy esntaism
fom whch mot critca judgement ae constructed simply untenable. A
tese interal disions have grown, the price of that embarrassment h
been aching silence.
To brak that sience, I want to arue that black musical expresion has
played a role mrproducing what Zygunt Bauman has caled a distnctve
counterculture of moder 7 I wu a brief considertion of black mu
sica! development to move byond an undertading of moproesses
whch, as I have alrady suggested, U currently tor between seeing them
either as the exprssion of an essental, unchangng, soverig racial self or
d the efuent fom a consttted subjectvity that emeres contngently
fom the endleplay of mcmsigcaton. 1is is usually conceivd solely
mterms of the iproprate moel which teali
t
provdes. Te vtalty
and complexity of d musical cultre ofer a means to get beyond the
rlated oppositions btween essentalist and pseudo-pluralists on the one
hand and beteen totalsing conceptions of taditon, moderty, and pot
mocmpon the other. It also provide a moc| of perormace which
Csupplement and parally displace concer with tex.
Black music's obstnate and consistent commitent to the idea of a bet
ter mD i a puzzle to which te enfrced separaton of slaves fom lter
acy and their compenstory refement of muical a supplies lesthan half
an answer. Te power of music in developing black stuggle by communi
catng informaton, orgaising consciousnes, and teng out or deploying
te forms of subjectvt whch a requird by politcal agency, whether
individual or collectve, defnsive or tormatonal, demands atenton
to both the formal attbutes of this exprsive culture and its distnctive
mal bsis. Te forma qualites of this muic ae bcoming btter
known,80 and I want to concentrate instead on the moral aspects and in
partcular on te disjuncton between the ethical value of the music and it
status as an ethnic sig.
D the simplest posible terms, b posing the world d it against the
world as the rcially subrdinated would like it to b, tis musical culture
supplie a geat dea of the courage required to go on living in te present.
It Hboth prouced by ad exprs ive of that "tansvaluaton of all value"
precipitated by the history of racia terror in te new world. It contains a
theoicy but movs beyond it bcause the profane dimensions of that rcia
terror made theoicy impossible. 81 I have considerd its distinctve crtque
of capitalist sorlatons elsewher.82 Her, bcause I wat to show tat
its critcal edge includes but als surpas ant -capitalism, it is necessry to
T Blk A nt H Cuntrcultre o Monit 37
draw out some of the inner philosophical dynamics of this counterculture
and to explore the connecton between ID normatve character and its uto
pian aspiratons. Tes a interrelated ad even insepble fom each
other and fom the crtque of rca capitism83 that the expresie cul
tures construct but also surass. Comprehending them necessitates an
analysis of the lyrical content and the forms of musica expression well
as the ofen hidden soia rlatons in which these deeply encoed oppoi
tional prctices are created and consumed. Te issue of normatve content
f1 attenton on what might be called the politcs of fent:84 the
noton that a ftur soiety W b able U ralise the socia ad politc
promise that present sety ha lef unaccomplished. Rfectng te foun
datonal semantc positon of the Bible, t is a discursive mode of com
municaton. Tough by no means literal, it ca bgap trough what
is said, shouted, sced, or sung. The politc of fment practsed by
the decendants of slaves demands, as Delany dd, that bureois civl s
ety liv up to the promises ofits own rhetorc. It creates a medium in which
demad fr goals like non-raciased justce and rtonal oranisaton of
the productive procc can be expressed. It is immanent wt moder
nity ad is no les d vauable element of modernity's counter-dscourse for
bing consistently igored.
Te isue of how Ltopias a conceived is more complex not least b
cause they stve contnually to move beyond the gasp of the merely l
guistc, textual, and discurive. Te invoton of utopia reference what,
following Seyla Benhabib's suggestve led, I QDpLe to cthe politcs of
tansfguraton. 1is emphasises the emerence of qualitatvely new de
sires, scal rlto, ad moes of 3 iaton wt the racial commu
nity of interpretaton and resistance and between that goup and it erst
while oppressors. It pints speccally to the formation of a community of
needs and solidarity which is magclly made audible in the muic itself
and papable m the social relatons of it cutural utlity and reproducton.
Created under the very no of the overseers, the utopian desires which
fel the complementary plitcs of tnsfguraton must b invoked by
other, more delibrately opaque means. Tpolitcs exst on a lower fe
quency where it is played, dance and acted, well as sung and sung
abut, because words, even words sttched by melisma and supplemented
or mutated by the screams WC stll inde the conspicuous power of the
slav sublime, W never be enough U communicate it unsayable clams
to tuth. Te wf y damaged sigs which btay the reolutely utopian
politc of tsfguraton therefore partaly tanscend moderty, con
stuctng both a imag anti-moer past and a pstoer yet-to
come. Tis is not a counter-discour but a counterculture that defantly

reconstct it own critcal, intellectual, ad mora genealogy i a partaly

hidden public sphere of its own. Te politc of tansfguraton therfore
reve the hidden interal m i te concept of moder Te
bounds of plitc a eended prcisly becaus this taditon oexrs
sion refses to accept that the politcal is a radily separable domain. Its
basic desir is to conju up and enact the ne mode of fendship, happi
ness, and solidarty that are consequent on the overcoming of the racal
oprssion on which modrnit and it antnomy of ratona, wetern prog
rs excessive baty rlied. Tus the veacular a of the chldrn of
slaves ge Oto a verdict on the role of a which is stgly in harmony
wit Adoro's rfletons on the dynamics of Euopea artstic erssion
i the wae of Auschwit: "Art's Utopia, the counterfactual yet-to-come,
is draped in black. It goes on being a recollecton of te possible wth a
crtcal edge against the ra i is a kind of imag rton of tat
catastophe, which is word history; it is a fedom which did not Q u
der the spell of necesity and which may whnot come to pass ever at a."85
Thee sibling dimensons of black sensibilit, te politcs of flfilment and
the politcs of traguraton, M not co-extensi. Te ae sigcant
tenions between tem but they closely asoiated i te veracula
ct of the black Adatc daspor. They can be used to refect the
idea of doublenes wth which m chapter bean ad which is ofen ar
gued to be te consttutve force gving rise t black experience in the
moern word. Te plitcs of fent i mosdy content to play ocden
ratonality at it own gae. It neces itte a hermeneutc orientaton
that can a te the semiotc, verbal, and UO. Te poltcs of tans
fguraton stves i pursuit of te sublime, stggg to rpat the unre
peatble, to prent te unprentble. It rater dirnt hermeneutc
mpushes towars te mimetc, drmatc, and perforatve.
useems especlsigcant that te cnltual exressions which tese
muic ou to map out do not seek to eclude problems of inequalt
or to make te achievement of racial justce an exclusively abstact matter.
Te gnded ethics ofer, among other things, a contnuous commen
t on the sytematc and pervasive rlatos of dominaton that supply it
conditons of estence. Teir grounded aesthetcs is never sparate of
into a autonomous realm wher fa polcal re c t be applied
and where, aS Salman Rush die memorably put it, "the little rom of lite
tue"lk can contnue to enjoy it special prvleges a heroic rsoue for
the wll-heeled adversaries of liberal capitism.
I am proposing, then, ta we rread ad rthin dexressive counter
m not simply as a succesion of literary top and genrs but as a
philoophicl discour which rfs the moern, ocidental seon of
V
ethics and aethetcs, culture ad politcs. The taditonal teaching of ethics
ad plitcs-practcal phlosphy-came to an end sme tme ago, even
uits death agonies wer prolonged. Ts taditon had maintned the idea
that a go life for the individual and the problem of the bst social and
politcal order for the collectvity could b dscered by rtonal mens.
Tough it is seldom acknowledged even now, d taditon lost it exclu
sive claim to rationalit partly through the way that slavery bcame interal
to wester cvilisaton and through the obvious complicity which both
plantaton slavery and colonial rme revealed between ratonality and
the practce of racial terror. Not perceiving its residual conditon, blacks
in the west eavedroppd on and then took over a fndaentl queston
fom the intellectal obsessions of teir enlightened ruler. Their progss
fom the status of slaves to the status of cizens led them to enquire into
what the best possible forms of soial and politcal exstence might b. The
memory of slavery, actvely presrved d a living intellectual resource in
their exprs ive politcal cultu, helped them to generte a new set of an
swers to Uenqu Tey had to fght-ofen through their spirituality
to hold on to the ut of ethics and politcs sundered fom each other by
moderty's insistence that the tue, the goo, and the bautil had dis
tnct origns and blong to d erent domains of knowledge. First slaery
itself ad then their memoryofit induced many of them to quer the foun
datonal moves of modem philosophy and soial thought, whether they
came fom the natral rights theorists who sought to distnguish btween
the spheres of morality and legality, the idealists who wanted to emancipate
politcs fom morals so that it could become a sphere of stategc acton,
or the politcal economists of the burgeoisie who fst formulated the sep
araton of economic acvt fom bth ethics and politcs. The brtal e
cesses of the slave plantaton supplied a st of moral and politcal respnse
to ech of thee attempts. Te history and utity of black music discussed
in Chapter 3 enable us to tace something of the means through which
the unity of etic ad politcs has been reprouced a form of folk
knowledge. T subultur ofen appears to be the intuitve expression of
some racial essence but 5 Hfact an elementa historcal acquisiton pro
duced fom the viscera of an alternatve body of cultural and plitcal e
pression that consider the world crcally fom te pint of view of it
emancipatory transformaton. I the fture, it wbecome a place which
is capable of satsfing the (redefined) needs of human bings that w
emere once the volence-pistemic and concrete-of racal typology is
at a end. Rason is thus reunited with the happiness and fedom of md
viduals and the reign of justice WU the collectvit
I hae alrady iplied that ther is a degee of convergence her wt
4 T Bll nt mACntrcutre o Moit
other projects towards a critcal theory of siety, parcularly Marxsm.
However, wher lived crsis ad systemic crsis come together, Marxsm
allocates prorty to the latter while the memory of slavery insists on the
priorty of the former. Their convergence i als undercut by the simple
fact tat in te critca thought of blacks in the West, social self-creton
through labour unot mccente-piece of emancipatory hopes. For the de
scendants of slaves, work sige only sertude, msr, and subordna
ton. Ac expression, expanded byond recogniton fom the gudgng
gs ofered by the masters as a token substitute for feedom fom bond
age, therefore become the mens towards bt individual slf-fashionng
and communal liberaton. Poiesis and petcs begn to co u novel
forms-autobiogaphica writng, special and uniquely crative Wy of
manipulatng spoken language, and, above the music. D three have
overowed fom the contaners that te modern naton state provides for
tem.
Note
. Te BUckAuca a Cmtccmofmocq
1 . Weer or, B Ethnuit (New Yok and LU. Oxord Unerity
Wc 1986).
2. "A wof analysis fr stUdyng ten according to the rato and natur of te
tempor and spt ctegores rprnted Te chronotope is an optc for
rading te as x-ry of the fores at work in te CUsystm fom which they
sprg." M. M. Bakhtn, Te D/u Imagnat ed. U. Michael Hol
qust (Astn: Unity ofTexas Prs, 1981 ), Q. 426.
3. Te concept of racalisaton is devloped by Fr Fanon in m e a "On
Natonal Culture" m 1Wed ofte Eut (Harmondsworh: Pengn, 1967),
@. 170-171. See Rbet Miles, Bmm(New York and Lnon: Routledge,
1989), pp. 73-77.
4. Mar Lu WuImp.s (Lndon ad New York: Ruteg, 1992).
5. Nancy Stepan, The Ida t in Science: Gat Brin, 1M1P0(Bas
ingtoke, mzQsm, ad Lndon: Mac , 1982 ); Michael Banton, Bmiu
T(Cbridge: Cambridge Unveity P 1987).
6. Geore Mas, NRnalm and Se: Mid le-ClsMmlt tnd Sal
Nors in Mod Eurpe (Madson and Lndon: Univerit of WIonsin ,
1985). Rhold Grm and Jot Hermand, eds., Blc and n Culur
(Mn and London: Unversit ofWJonsin Wc 1986).
7. Sae Ga, LBlmewitout (Boton: G. K Ha, 1982).
8. Se Henry Luis Ges, Jr., "Te Histr and Tery of Ao-American lter
HCrcism, 1773-1831 : Te Ar, Athetic Teory and the Natue of the A
c" (doctorl theis, Clare College, Cambridge Univerity, 1978); Davd Brion
Das, Te Prblm ofS!Ter in Wee LWWn (Itaca, N.Y.: Corell Univerit
Ps, 1970) and The Prblem ofS in the 4e t Rlto (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor
nell Universit P , 1975); ad Eva Beatce Dyke, The Nero in Enli Ran
r Toug mA Sdy t SypR fr te Op st (Washington, D.C.: Asoi
ated Publishe, 1942).
9. Leon Poliakov, A4n My(IndoM: oUniversity Pr , 197 4 ), ch.
8, M "Rcism fom te Enlghtenment to te Age of Imperialism," m Rber
m ed., om Cwli: Esty o Idolg and Socitl Structure (Te
Hage: N Nijhof, 1982); Richar Popkn, " Philoophical Basis of
Eigteenth Century Rci" m Stdies in Eihtet Centur Culur, vol. 3:
in mEe Cntur (Oevland and Lndon: Case Wester Reserve
226 Nus t Paes ~I4
Univerity 1c 1973); HBracken, Phoxphyand Racism," Philshia 8,
nos. 2-3, November 1978. Dsome repeci Upioneerg work foreshadows te
debates abut Heidegger's fascism.
10. Hugh Honour's contributon to the DeMenil Foundton Project, Te Rip
mentation ofte Blck in Wes A (Lndon and Cambridge, Mas .: Harard
University Pres, 1989), is a welcome ecepton to this ameia.
11. W Piet, "The Problem of the Fetsh, 1," Ris, 9 (Sprng 1985).
12. Robin Blackbu, Te Orhrow ofClonial Slaver, I0+ (Lndon
and New York: Ver, 1988).
13. Wintrop D. Jordan, Wite 0fBlck (New York: W.W Noron, 1977).
14. Edmund Buke, A Plosohcl Enquir into te Oin ofOr Ideas ofte
Sublime and mBautfl ed. Jaes T. Boulton (Oxord: Basil Blackwell, 1987).
15. Catherine Hall, Wit, Mal and Middl Cls (Cambridge: Polity Pres,
1992).
16. Jeny She, "Te Unspeakable LU of Rpe: Colonial Volence and
Counter-Insurgency," Gender no. 10 (Spring 1991): 25-46, and "Figure ofCo
lonial Reistance," Mode Fiction Studies 35, no. 1 (Spring 1989).
17. Peter Inebaugh, "Al the Atantc Mounta Shook," Jr/L m
mmur10 (Autm 1982): 87-121.
18. Peter Fryer, Staying Power (Lndon: Pluto Pres, 1980), p. 219.
19. 1 mo Srr and Or W'S b Rober Wederbur, ei.l
McCalman (Edinbuh: Edburgh University Pres, 192).

20. a McCalman, "Ant-slavery and 1u Radicalism in Ey Nineteenth
Centur England: The Case of Robrt Wedderbu," Sver and Abolition 7
(1986).
21. Fryer, Styng Pr p. 216. Public Records O ce, Lndon: PRO Ho 44/
5/202, PRO Ho 42/19.
22. Teir artcle "The May Headed Hydra," Joural o Hitorical Sciolg 3,
no. 3 (September 1990): 225-253, gves a foretaste of thes argument.
23. John Adams quoted byLinebaugh m "Adantc Mountains," p. 1 12.
24. Alfed N. Hunt, Haiti' Infuenc 0 Anteelum Amca (Batn Ruge
and Lndon: Luisiana State Univrity Pes, 1988), p. 1 19.
25. Douglass's 1 account of this is best st out in Freerck Douglass, Lif
and Time o mderick Dougls (Ne Yor: Macmillan, 1962), Q. 199. See mx
Philip M. Haer, "Great Brtain, the United States and the Nego Seamens At"
and "Brtsh Consuls and the Nego Seamens Act, 1850-186," Joural o Sout
e Hisor 1 ( 1935): 3-28, 138-168. Intouced afer Denmark Vesy's rebelion,
thes interetng piocof legslaton required fee black sailor b jae while
their shps wee m dok as a way of minimising the politcal contagon teir pres
ence in the por was bund tansmit.
26. Lnebaug, "Adatc Mountas," p. 1 19.
27. Paul Gilroy, "Pof Darknes, Black A and the Problem of Beloning to
Englad," Tird Te10 ( 1990). A very difernt iterretaton ofTuer's paint
ing is gven mPber Boime 's Te Art ofEluson: Rsenting Blck in the Nine
teenth Cntur(Lndon: Thames and Hudson, 1990).
28. Panck Wrgt, Livin in an Ol Cnt (Lndon: Vers, 1985).
29. Bernard Semmel, Jamaican Blod and the Vctoran Cnscience (Wetrt,
Conn.: Greenwod Prc,1976 ). o als Gillia Wora, "Thoma Carlyle and
the Goveror Eyre Controvery," Vctorian Sudies 18, no. 1 ( 1974): 77-102.
Nu t I4I
227
30. Vol. I sc. 5, ch. 3, sec. 39. W E. B. Du Bois rprted Ucoment
while he was eitor of Te Grs; se V. 1 5 (1918): 239.
31. Erc Hobsbam, "Te Historians' Group of te Communist Party," n
M. Corrth, ed., Ess in Hoour ofA. Moon (Atantc Hig, N.J.:
Huate P 1979).
32. Lebaugh, "'Atantc Mout." 'is uas te sttegy pured m
Rdiker in hs U bok Be t u and the De JSr (Cam
brdge: Cambidge Univrsit Pres, 1987).
33. "A sace mUwhen one tae into consideraton vers of directon, velo
te, ad tme vaale. Thus space is compoed of interecton of mobile ele
ment. It u m a sn articted by the ensmble of movement dployd W
it." Mchl de Ceteau, 1be JofEvday Lf(Berkeley and London: Univer
st of Caifora Pss, 1984 )p. 1 17.
34. See Michael Cohn ad Michael bPlatr, Black Me ofmSa (New York:
Mead, 1978). I hav been healy rliant on George Francs Dow's antol
Q SIn Sipr and Sing, puliaton no. 15 of the Marne Rh Soiety
( 1927; rt. Cambridge, Md. : CorneD Maritme Pres, 1968), which includes ex
uact fom valuable eighteenth- and nineteenth-century materal. On England, I
hav fund te anonymously published study Livo l and S ( Lverol: A.
Bowker and Sons, 1884) to be very valuable. Memoir prouced b blac sa cap
tains as poit to a number of new intercltal and cata research prob
lems. Captain Har y Dean's 1e Pedr Gorno: Te Antn o a NegSa Cap
tain in A. and te Sn Sea in Hi atmpts M Found an Ehioi1n Empr
(Boton and New Yok: Houghton M n, 1929) contams munmgmateral on
the prctcal politcs of Pan-Africa.ism ta g unecorded elsewhere. Ca
Hugh Mulac's autobiogaphy, A Stu to m=By (New York: Interatona Pub
lishers, 1963), icue valuable obvatons on te rle of sh.ip in the Gavey
moveent. Some pinters towards what a bla Atlatc rerading of the history
oRastaf mght involve to be found in Robt A. Hil's imprnt cwhich
accentates complex post-slaver relatons betwen Jamaica and Afca: "Dread
History: Lonar Hoell and M eaa Visio1 in Edy Rastafar Religons m
Jamaica," Epoehe: Joural ofthe HitfofRetonsat UCLA 9 (198 1): 30-71.
35. Stephen Greenblatt, %m Po esm (Oord: Oxord Univrsi
P 1992). Se as Prat, Impal Es.
36. Jame T. Clifr, "TraveUing Cultures," m Cuitum Studies ed. Lawrence
Grsr et al. (New York and Lndn: Routledge, 192), and "Notes on Ter
and Tr," Inscptns 5 ( 1989).
37. Mancesr Weekly Hwq July 21, 186; Pumh, July 28, 1860;
Min Star July 18, 1860; and F. A. RoDin, Lie and Publc oOofMartin
R. Dlny (Le and Shepard: Boston, 1868), p. 102.
o. Peter Winzn, "Trhke's Infuece on the Rise of Imrialist ad At
Brsh Natonalism mGermany," in I Kenedy and A. Nicholls, es., Nttali
and 1Oummmuin Britain and Gfny beor 1V19(Baingtoke: Mac
millan, 1981 ).
39. Ida B. Wells quoted mVron War, Bod the Pal: Wt Wo, Rci,
and Hior(London and New York: Ver, 1992), p. 177
40. Carolyn Ahbaug, Luc Parsons Amermn Revlutioar (Chicg:
Charle H. Ker, 1976). I must thank Tommy Lot fr this rference.
41. Frank Hoker, Blck Revlutionar: GeOe Padmmt Pat f Commu
228 Nots t I
nis M Pan-A.nim (London: Pal NLb of PC 1967).
42. William S. McFely, 4O D {New York: WW Norton, 191)
p. 329.
43. Mchel Fabre, Bk Amer.n Wter in Fnc 11W(Urbana ad
Chicago: Univer of mW, 1991 ).
+. Ursua Bro Das, lrw&,t (Iowa Cit: Univerit mO
, 1986 ), p. 102
45 . I challeng ts view in Chapter 5.
46. Sme of the problem a ated wth tis sttey hae ben disus d b
Corel Wet m "Minorit Discour and the Pitl s of Cnon Frmaton," 1k
Jourl rCrtics 1, no. 1 (Fall l987): 193-201.
47. Molef Kte Ant, Kemet Afcentit and Knowle (Trenton, N.J.:
Ac Word Ps, 190), p. 1 12.
48. Man Delny, Pncipi u Eolo: T R.s and Colr nn A
cc al Compndium ofEtn and Fian Cimaon fm Tar ofCsr
fl Emination Rnd Enqir (Phladelphia: Harer and Brothe, 1879), p. 95.
49. See Delany's opposion to the prosl t nominate a black vice-pri
ducanddate, TwkTrune, Augut 6, 1867, p. 1.
50. B Blacket, "In Sarh of Inteatonal Support fr AC LkmUm,
N b Delany's VIit to England, 1860" Cana Jour u Hi10, .
. (1975). -
.
51. A tste of Delay in t mode is provided b h "Comet," Anl-Acn
Mgze 1 , no. 2 (Feb 1859): 59-0.
52. Toma Szasz, "The Sane Slave: An Hitoricl Note on the Us of Medic
Diagois a Justcatory Rhetric, Amer.n ]ourl ofPsotep 25 ( 1971 }:
228-239; J. D. Gul or, "Te Po-sla Ament ofS. A. Cagt,"
ans H9 ( 1968): 20-227.
53. Dally, W0 und te Kni {Lndon: Rdius, 1991 ).
>.Doothy Sterling, Te Mating ofan Af-Amn: Marn Robison Deln7
1812-1885 (New Yor: Doubleday, 1971), p. 1.9.
55. Nell U Painter, "Marn R Delany," i L. Ltwak and A. Meer, ed.,
rkoft Nineent Centr(Ur and Lndon: Unei of
W 1983).
56. Y Montgue Cobb, "Mn Robison Delny," Jour u Nsta
Medicl A tion (May 1952).
57. See the matal on Delany at the Counta Lbrry of te Hara Medica
Shool. Rcord of the Medial Facult of Ha Une vol. 2, mnute of
meet on Novmber 4 and 23, 1850. Student submitted pettons ag m
prnce of U blac student on Dcmbr 10 and ll. Delany' eperences at
Harvad contast W unfaourably W te pleasnt situaton of te coloured
young men obsered by Wm Wells bnW during m 1851 visit to the Medical
Shool i Ebur. See mPces and Peol Abrsd (New York: Sheldon, Lm
gad Blake, 1855), p. 265.
58. Te Cdit, Eton, Emit and Desny ofte Clor Peop t te
Unitd 8mt Poltl y L4 (Philadelphia: Pubed by the Author,
1852), pp. 12-13.
59. "Central and Sout America, d evidently the mdestnaton and m
Uhome o t colod race on this contnent," ibid. , ch. 21 and 22 ps .
0 t Pas ZJ
22V
60. Ibid., pp. 16-169.
61. C. Peter Rpley ed., Te Blck Aboltoni Papers, vol. 2: CnRd, IJJ
b(Chapel 1and Lndon: Univerity ofNon Carolna Pes , 1986).
62. O ciRl &port ofthe Nir VIle Eloring PRr, rpublished as Sarch f
lPlace: Bck SpRmtm and Ac, 0J,into. by Howard H. BU [AAr:
Jniverity of Mchgan Pres, 1969).
63. 1bd.p. 6.
6. Ibid., pp. 101-106.
65. Dew, Te Condition, p. 215.
.Ibid., p. 196.
67. Delany, Repot ofthe Nitr VRl Elong Par, QQ. 110-111.
68. Wiliam W. Austn, -suSnna, 'eanie" and 'he Ol Folks Rt Home": Te
Sngs ofSthen LFoster fom Hi Time to Or (Urbana ad Chicago: Univrity
of Ilinois Prs, 1987).
69. Giles Deleuze ad Fel Guattar, "Rome," Ideolog and Cciuss 8
(1980), ad A Touand Plteaus (Lndon: Athlone W, 1988), pp. 3-25.
70. Ma Delany, Bke; or Te Huts o Amerca, pt. ,ch. 61 (Boston: Beacon
P1970).
71. Tis phrase is taken fom Wrght's novel Te Out (New York: Harper
and Rw, 1953), p. 129. U hs b k of essys, Wite Man Lml(Gaden City,
N.Y.: Anchor Boks, 196), he employs te phrase "dual eistence" to map the
sme ter. Se Chapter 5 blow.
72. Eouad Glissnt, dicour antlis (Pas: Editons du Su, 1981 ) .
73. Sta Ha, "New Ethncites," mIMercer, ed., Blck Fim: Brit Cinema
(Lndon: ICA Dument 7, 1988), p. 28.
74. Se Te. 8 2, no. 3 ( 1992), isue enttled The Critici Decade.
75. Etenne Baliba and Immauel Wallerstein, RRce, Naton, Cls (Lndon
and New York: Vers, 1991).
76. Nelson Geore, Te DeM ofR and Blue (Lndon: Omnibus, 1988).
77. I should emphaie that it is the assimaton of tes cutur frms to a
UtDg noton of natonality which is the object of my critque here. Of course,
certain cutural fors become artcuated wUsets of scial and poltical forces over
long prios of tme. Te forms may b played W and lived wt a though
te wer natural emblems of racal and ethnic parcuaty Ts may CD b an
esntal defensive attrbute of te interretve communites involved. However,
the noton of natonality cannot b borrowed a ready-made means to msnse
of the scial dynamics of this proes.
78. W. E. B. Du Bois, Dsk oDt, in Dois Wrtings (NewYork: Lbru of
America, 1986}, p. 577.
. Zygunt Bauan, "Te Lf A the Counterculture of MoeCty," Telos
70 {mter 1986-87): 81-93.
80. Anthony Jackns dazling exiton of Jaes Jamerson's bass style is, in
my vew, mdcUof te type of detailed <ra work wCneeds to b done on
the for and dynamics of black musical creat. 1 remars on Jamerns O
of harmonic and rhytmic abiguity ad slectve employment of dsonace wer
ecially helpf. To sy that te b k fom which it is taken has been gered to
the needs of the performing musician rater tha the cultural hstoran is to idc
the C t stte of cutural hstory rather UMthe work ofJadon ad his colab-
230 Nots t PRges d0J
rator Dr. Licks. S"A Appreciaton of the Style," in Dr. Licks, ed., Stnding in
the Shams ofMotw (Detoit: Hal Leonad, 1989).
81. I am thinking here bth of Wright's tantalising disusion of the Dozens in
the essay on the "Literary Tradton of the Nego in the United States" in Wite
MRn Lisen! and also of Lvinas's remaks on useles su erng in aother contet:
"usles and unjustable suferng [are] exposed ad displayed without any
shadow of a consoling theoic" Se "Usles Sufering," in R Bernasoni and D.
Wood, eds., Te Povocation ofLvinas (London: Routledge, 1988). Jon Michael
Spencer's thougtl but ferently Christa dsusion of what he calls the Teod
icy of te Blues is als rlevant here. See Te Teowgy ofAmercan Populr Music,
a spcial issue of BIck Sacrd Muic 3, no. 2 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Pres, Fall 1989) . I do not have space to develop my critque of Spencer here.
82. Ter Ain't No Blck in the Union jack: The Cultuml Politics ofRRce and
Nation (London: Hutchinson, 1987), ch. 5.
83. Cedc Robinsn, Blck Marxsm (London: Zed Pres, 1982).
84. Tis concept and it pairing with the politcs of tnsfguraton have been
adapted fom their deployment mSeyla Benhabib's inspiring bok Critique, Norm
and Utopia (New York: Clumbia University Pres, 1987).
85. T. W. Adoro, Aesetic Theor (London: Routledge, 1984), p. 196.
86. Salman Rushde, Is Nothing Scred? The Herber Rad Memorial Lecture
1990 ( Cambridge: Granta, 1990), p. 16.
_ '
^
2. Mm c baVm ad te Atome of Moeoiq
l . Edwad Said, "Repreentng te Colonised," Crtical Inquir 15, no. 2 (Wm
ter 1989): 222.
2. Jean-Franois Lyotard, "Defg the Postoer," in L. Appignanesi, ed.,
Posodim ( Lndon: ICA doument 4, 1986 ).
3. There are other psibiles sigalled in Edward Said's pathbreaking work
Orienta/ism ( Harondsworth: Penguin, 1985) and mthe work of other critcs and
cultral historans who have followed the Foucauldian path in other dectons. Se
Peter Hulme, Cownial Encounters (Lndon: Methuen, 1986), and N Y. Mu
db, The Invention ofAfca (Blomington and Indanapolis: Indiana University
Pres, 1988).
4. Jurgen Habras, "Moerty: A Incomplete Project," in Hal Foster, ed.,
Postmoder Culture (London: Pluto Press, 1983).
5. Marshall Berman, All That Solid Melts int Air (Lndon: Vero, 1983);
Peter Dews, ed., Haberas: Autonomy and Solidarit (London: Vers, 1986);
Zygmunt Bauman, Lgisltors and Interrets (Cambridge: Polity Pres, 1987);
Andreas Huyssn, Afer te Gat Divide (Blomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1986 ); David Wite, 1Reent Work of]uren &beras: Rea
son, Justice and Modit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1988 ); David
Ingram, Habera and te Dialectic o Reasn (New Haven and London: Yale U ni
verity Pes, 1987); Corel West, "Fredric Jamesons Marxist Hereneutc," in
Jonathan Arac, ed., Posmodism and Politic (Mancheter: Manchester Univer
sity Pres, 1986 ); Alice AJardne, Gsis: Cnfgurations ofWome and Modit
(Ithaca and London: Corell Univerity Press, 1985); David Kolb, The Critique
ofPure Moderit (Chicago and London: Chicago Univerity Press, 1986 ); John