jenna0010's review against another edition
4.0
This work is a true shift in thinking, placing the Middle Passage and its ongoing forms of slavery as the pivotal framework of modernity. There is so much here about movements across, about nation-building and cultural texts, about sound and the body, about forms of kinship and togetherness.
gabsalott13's review against another edition
2.0
Gabriella Lott
Reading Response 2: The Black Atlantic
September 13, 2021
GEOG 814: Black Geographies
In The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy illustrates how the identities of African-descended people in the Americas, Caribbean, and Europe are never just fixed categories, but “always unfinished, always being remade.” Gilroy posits that no identities are as separate from one another as we may think—for instance, he discusses how the cultural products of “the Black Atlantic” are influenced, and not always unwillingly, by the other cultures in our nation-states as well as the Diaspora.
In Chapters 2 and 3, Gilroy explores how Black musical exports have origins throughout the Diaspora. He assumes this makes it impossible for any single ethnic group to lay “claim” to a particular genre (such as rap music.) However, I can think of at least a few recent critiques about how the dilution of Black cultural origins in both media and politics makes it easier for elites to commodify the cultural products of more oppressed Black people. , To me, it seems unwise to overlook the specific “roots” of cultural elements, even as we notice the impossibility of trying to isolate each inspiration. I also think Gilroy 1) forgets his initial arguments about the limitations of a commercialized art form that is supposed to be representative, and 2) underestimates the extent to which our disillusion with much of today’s art can be tied to commercial artists losing the “grounding of the aesthetic with other dimensions of social life.” After the Drake release last weekend, people on my timeline were complaining about how artists ignore the countless world crises, while others were saying they never expect major rappers to have anything to say in the first place, because of their disconnection from the cultures their music allegedly represents.
On page 99, Gilroy intends to trouble the binary construction of authenticity (“my point here is that the unashamedly hybrid character of these Black Atlantic cultures continually confounds any simplistic…understanding of the relationship between racial identity and racial non-identity, between folk cultural authenticity and pop cultural betrayal.” ) This makes me think back to a recent piece of Black musical criticism, which explains how part of what made Little Richard’s work so good was the way his musical identities and influences were always in flux:
Since Richard's death, I have been attempting to think about the relationship between religious spaces and their secular rivals, between churches and gay dance clubs for example, or sacred music and what was and is still sometimes called "the devil's music." And what is underscored is that the binary is an imprecision…Because although he transformed his lyrics, the energetic drive and bounce of the church world that he loved was carried into his performance practices…The practice of Blackpentecostal praise informed his stage persona even as he sang songs with the sex scrubbed out of them.
In this telling, Little Richard’s blurring of the lines between sacred and secular exposed the imprecision of these binaries of Black musical production. Despite my skepticism, I think this is an argument for Gilroy’s point that we can’t overprescribe singular authorship of hybrid cultures—it ignores the many composite parts of Black Atlantic art.
Finally, I was interested in the importance of the ship in theorizing the Black Atlantic. Gilroy studies Black Atlantic ships as literal transportation modes—of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, or after World War II, of Caribbean families in the Windrush generation to England. In each time period, he also highlights the symbolic meanings of the modes by which our people migrate. I thought of Cynthia Greenlee’s ruminations on the culinary and communal traditions her family lost when they began taking the interstate to visit family, instead of the older state highways that were flanked by local vendors. As Greenlee and her parents’ transportation mode changed, they became “one of those New South families that took the road more traveled”, and lost their curbside access to boiled peanuts. In recent decades, transportation upgrades (such as greater flight access) increased the capacity of Black Atlantic residents to be what Gilroy calls a travelling culture—we often migrate further and further in search of economic and social opportunities. However, as Greenlee notes, many upgrades leave people behind. I wonder how the changing transportation modes of the Black Atlantic cause us to lose certain recipes.
Bibliography
Cooper, Bertrand. “Who Actually Gets to Create Black Pop Culture?” Current Affairs, July 25, 2021. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/who-actually-gets-to-create-black-pop-culture.
Crawley, Ashon. “He Was An Architect: Little Richard And Blackqueer Grief.” NPR, December 22, 2020, sec. Music Features. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/22/948963753/little-richard-black-queer-grief-he-was-an-architect.
Gilroy, Paul, 1956-. The Black Atlantic : Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1993., 1993. https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog/UNCb2509059.
Greenlee, Cynthia. “Highway 220 Daddy Lessons: Boiled Peanuts and Peaches by the Carolina Roadside.” Southern Foodways Alliance, December 15, 2017. https://www.southernfoodways.org/highway-220-daddy-lessons/.
Lauren, Genie. Twitter Post. September 4, 2021. https://twitter.com/MoreAndAgain/status/1434259972381200391
Táíwò, Olúfẹ́mi. “Identity Politics and Elite Capture.” Boston Review, May 7, 2020. https://bostonreview.net/race/olufemi-o-taiwo-identity-politics-and-elite-capture.
Reading Response 2: The Black Atlantic
September 13, 2021
GEOG 814: Black Geographies
In The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy illustrates how the identities of African-descended people in the Americas, Caribbean, and Europe are never just fixed categories, but “always unfinished, always being remade.” Gilroy posits that no identities are as separate from one another as we may think—for instance, he discusses how the cultural products of “the Black Atlantic” are influenced, and not always unwillingly, by the other cultures in our nation-states as well as the Diaspora.
In Chapters 2 and 3, Gilroy explores how Black musical exports have origins throughout the Diaspora. He assumes this makes it impossible for any single ethnic group to lay “claim” to a particular genre (such as rap music.) However, I can think of at least a few recent critiques about how the dilution of Black cultural origins in both media and politics makes it easier for elites to commodify the cultural products of more oppressed Black people. , To me, it seems unwise to overlook the specific “roots” of cultural elements, even as we notice the impossibility of trying to isolate each inspiration. I also think Gilroy 1) forgets his initial arguments about the limitations of a commercialized art form that is supposed to be representative, and 2) underestimates the extent to which our disillusion with much of today’s art can be tied to commercial artists losing the “grounding of the aesthetic with other dimensions of social life.” After the Drake release last weekend, people on my timeline were complaining about how artists ignore the countless world crises, while others were saying they never expect major rappers to have anything to say in the first place, because of their disconnection from the cultures their music allegedly represents.
On page 99, Gilroy intends to trouble the binary construction of authenticity (“my point here is that the unashamedly hybrid character of these Black Atlantic cultures continually confounds any simplistic…understanding of the relationship between racial identity and racial non-identity, between folk cultural authenticity and pop cultural betrayal.” ) This makes me think back to a recent piece of Black musical criticism, which explains how part of what made Little Richard’s work so good was the way his musical identities and influences were always in flux:
Since Richard's death, I have been attempting to think about the relationship between religious spaces and their secular rivals, between churches and gay dance clubs for example, or sacred music and what was and is still sometimes called "the devil's music." And what is underscored is that the binary is an imprecision…Because although he transformed his lyrics, the energetic drive and bounce of the church world that he loved was carried into his performance practices…The practice of Blackpentecostal praise informed his stage persona even as he sang songs with the sex scrubbed out of them.
In this telling, Little Richard’s blurring of the lines between sacred and secular exposed the imprecision of these binaries of Black musical production. Despite my skepticism, I think this is an argument for Gilroy’s point that we can’t overprescribe singular authorship of hybrid cultures—it ignores the many composite parts of Black Atlantic art.
Finally, I was interested in the importance of the ship in theorizing the Black Atlantic. Gilroy studies Black Atlantic ships as literal transportation modes—of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, or after World War II, of Caribbean families in the Windrush generation to England. In each time period, he also highlights the symbolic meanings of the modes by which our people migrate. I thought of Cynthia Greenlee’s ruminations on the culinary and communal traditions her family lost when they began taking the interstate to visit family, instead of the older state highways that were flanked by local vendors. As Greenlee and her parents’ transportation mode changed, they became “one of those New South families that took the road more traveled”, and lost their curbside access to boiled peanuts. In recent decades, transportation upgrades (such as greater flight access) increased the capacity of Black Atlantic residents to be what Gilroy calls a travelling culture—we often migrate further and further in search of economic and social opportunities. However, as Greenlee notes, many upgrades leave people behind. I wonder how the changing transportation modes of the Black Atlantic cause us to lose certain recipes.
Bibliography
Cooper, Bertrand. “Who Actually Gets to Create Black Pop Culture?” Current Affairs, July 25, 2021. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/who-actually-gets-to-create-black-pop-culture.
Crawley, Ashon. “He Was An Architect: Little Richard And Blackqueer Grief.” NPR, December 22, 2020, sec. Music Features. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/22/948963753/little-richard-black-queer-grief-he-was-an-architect.
Gilroy, Paul, 1956-. The Black Atlantic : Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1993., 1993. https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog/UNCb2509059.
Greenlee, Cynthia. “Highway 220 Daddy Lessons: Boiled Peanuts and Peaches by the Carolina Roadside.” Southern Foodways Alliance, December 15, 2017. https://www.southernfoodways.org/highway-220-daddy-lessons/.
Lauren, Genie. Twitter Post. September 4, 2021. https://twitter.com/MoreAndAgain/status/1434259972381200391
Táíwò, Olúfẹ́mi. “Identity Politics and Elite Capture.” Boston Review, May 7, 2020. https://bostonreview.net/race/olufemi-o-taiwo-identity-politics-and-elite-capture.
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