E. Kofi Agorsah
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780197264782
- eISBN:
- 9780191754012
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264782.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History
This chapter examines imbalances in approaches to the archaeological study of the history of slavery in Africa and the African Diaspora. It argues that the main causes of interpretive problems are a ...
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This chapter examines imbalances in approaches to the archaeological study of the history of slavery in Africa and the African Diaspora. It argues that the main causes of interpretive problems are a lack of coordination between disciplines and regional specialisms. A ‘Kormantse’ case study, bridging Africa and the Caribbean, is used to demonstrate how archaeological endeavours may attempt to address such imbalances in understanding African cultures. Yet, despite recent gains, most archaeological researchers and projects continue to maintain their guarded interests, even where it is clear that they need to reach out and connect the two sides of the Atlantic.Less
This chapter examines imbalances in approaches to the archaeological study of the history of slavery in Africa and the African Diaspora. It argues that the main causes of interpretive problems are a lack of coordination between disciplines and regional specialisms. A ‘Kormantse’ case study, bridging Africa and the Caribbean, is used to demonstrate how archaeological endeavours may attempt to address such imbalances in understanding African cultures. Yet, despite recent gains, most archaeological researchers and projects continue to maintain their guarded interests, even where it is clear that they need to reach out and connect the two sides of the Atlantic.
Yvonne Daniel
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036538
- eISBN:
- 9780252093579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036538.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This chapter examines the foundation of Diaspora dance and its relationship to African dance and music. It first considers the importance of dance in the African Diaspora and its relation to ...
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This chapter examines the foundation of Diaspora dance and its relationship to African dance and music. It first considers the importance of dance in the African Diaspora and its relation to Caribbean dance before discussing the emergence of several types of African movement styles that echo across the Diaspora today, along with the introduction of African-derived dance practices to the mainstream European, Asian, and American dance worlds. It then takes a look at some of the performers who have brought Caribbean dance into global view and goes on to analyze particular ways of moving and preferences for certain dance formations. It also reviews some important assumptions that accompany Diaspora dance and its performance and concludes with an assessment of the consequences of Diaspora performance, noting how the efforts of Diaspora performers reinforce dance practices across the Diaspora as resilient and joyful body communication.Less
This chapter examines the foundation of Diaspora dance and its relationship to African dance and music. It first considers the importance of dance in the African Diaspora and its relation to Caribbean dance before discussing the emergence of several types of African movement styles that echo across the Diaspora today, along with the introduction of African-derived dance practices to the mainstream European, Asian, and American dance worlds. It then takes a look at some of the performers who have brought Caribbean dance into global view and goes on to analyze particular ways of moving and preferences for certain dance formations. It also reviews some important assumptions that accompany Diaspora dance and its performance and concludes with an assessment of the consequences of Diaspora performance, noting how the efforts of Diaspora performers reinforce dance practices across the Diaspora as resilient and joyful body communication.
Yvonne Daniel
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036538
- eISBN:
- 9780252093579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036538.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This chapter examines the histories and connections between Afro-Latin America and the Caribbean by focusing on sacred Caribbean dance rituals. It begins with a discussion of African-derived rituals ...
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This chapter examines the histories and connections between Afro-Latin America and the Caribbean by focusing on sacred Caribbean dance rituals. It begins with a discussion of African-derived rituals in sacred dance, paying attention to how dance reveals and forwards sacred potential and how a relationship between the sacred and the secular is forged in African Diaspora contexts. It then considers how similar religious and dance structures have emerged across the Diaspora from common beliefs and social conditions that were shared by thousands of Africans. It also explores African-derived sacred dance practices in the Caribbean islands, namely: French/Kreyol, English/Creole, Spanish Caribbean, and Dutch Caribbean sacred practices. Furthermore, it describes compares Atlantic Afro-Latin sacred practices, including those in Brazil, Suriname, and Uruguay. The chapter concludes with Afrogenic comparisons of ritual Diaspora dance.Less
This chapter examines the histories and connections between Afro-Latin America and the Caribbean by focusing on sacred Caribbean dance rituals. It begins with a discussion of African-derived rituals in sacred dance, paying attention to how dance reveals and forwards sacred potential and how a relationship between the sacred and the secular is forged in African Diaspora contexts. It then considers how similar religious and dance structures have emerged across the Diaspora from common beliefs and social conditions that were shared by thousands of Africans. It also explores African-derived sacred dance practices in the Caribbean islands, namely: French/Kreyol, English/Creole, Spanish Caribbean, and Dutch Caribbean sacred practices. Furthermore, it describes compares Atlantic Afro-Latin sacred practices, including those in Brazil, Suriname, and Uruguay. The chapter concludes with Afrogenic comparisons of ritual Diaspora dance.
Tunde Adeleke
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604732931
- eISBN:
- 9781604732948
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604732931.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The prevailing and dominant images and constructions of Africa, as well as the dynamics of the ever-changing experiences of blacks over historical time and space, are reflected in how it was ...
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The prevailing and dominant images and constructions of Africa, as well as the dynamics of the ever-changing experiences of blacks over historical time and space, are reflected in how it was perceived, conceived, and utilized by blacks in Diaspora. Black Diaspora perceptions of, reactions to, and utilization of Africa were defined and shaped by five paradigms/perspectives: civilization, cultural-nationalism, black nationalism and Pan-Africanism, instrumentalism, and Afrocentricity. This chapter examines the African Diaspora’s conceptual and paradigmatic utilizations and representations of Africa. It first looks at the encounter between Europe and Africa that brought two fundamentally different civilizations together, as well as the link between culture and the civilizational paradigm. It then discusses black nationalism and Pan-Africanism before concluding with an analysis of the Afrocentrism tradition in relation to a monolithic construction of black Diaspora identity.Less
The prevailing and dominant images and constructions of Africa, as well as the dynamics of the ever-changing experiences of blacks over historical time and space, are reflected in how it was perceived, conceived, and utilized by blacks in Diaspora. Black Diaspora perceptions of, reactions to, and utilization of Africa were defined and shaped by five paradigms/perspectives: civilization, cultural-nationalism, black nationalism and Pan-Africanism, instrumentalism, and Afrocentricity. This chapter examines the African Diaspora’s conceptual and paradigmatic utilizations and representations of Africa. It first looks at the encounter between Europe and Africa that brought two fundamentally different civilizations together, as well as the link between culture and the civilizational paradigm. It then discusses black nationalism and Pan-Africanism before concluding with an analysis of the Afrocentrism tradition in relation to a monolithic construction of black Diaspora identity.
Anissa Janine Wardi
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813037455
- eISBN:
- 9780813042343
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813037455.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This book contributes to the fields of African American, ecocritical, and literary studies, as it offers a sustained treatise on watercourses in the African American expressive tradition. It builds ...
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This book contributes to the fields of African American, ecocritical, and literary studies, as it offers a sustained treatise on watercourses in the African American expressive tradition. It builds on the scholarship on the trans-Atlantic voyage, specifically reading the Middle Passage as a trope in African diasporic writing, and expanding studies of the Atlantic by reading this seminal water crossing in relation to other bodies of water. The African American expressive tradition positions bodies of water as haunted by the bodies of those who lost their lives in their currents. Water, then, the course of travel, marks severed paths to home, family, land, and even life, yet this break in the waters inaugurated a transatlantic culture. In this way, water is not merely the site of disconnection, trauma, and loss, but a source of new life. Further, while ecocritical theory is gaining increasing importance, to date there has been very little analysis of the environmental dimension of African American writing. The inclusion of African American literature in this field—and specifically reading water as a site of memory and history—meaningfully expands the ecocritical canon. Beyond proposing a new theoretical map for conceptualizing the African Diaspora and considering the ways in which collective memory is grafted onto waterways, this study offers a series of close readings of major African American literary, filmic, and blues texts.Less
This book contributes to the fields of African American, ecocritical, and literary studies, as it offers a sustained treatise on watercourses in the African American expressive tradition. It builds on the scholarship on the trans-Atlantic voyage, specifically reading the Middle Passage as a trope in African diasporic writing, and expanding studies of the Atlantic by reading this seminal water crossing in relation to other bodies of water. The African American expressive tradition positions bodies of water as haunted by the bodies of those who lost their lives in their currents. Water, then, the course of travel, marks severed paths to home, family, land, and even life, yet this break in the waters inaugurated a transatlantic culture. In this way, water is not merely the site of disconnection, trauma, and loss, but a source of new life. Further, while ecocritical theory is gaining increasing importance, to date there has been very little analysis of the environmental dimension of African American writing. The inclusion of African American literature in this field—and specifically reading water as a site of memory and history—meaningfully expands the ecocritical canon. Beyond proposing a new theoretical map for conceptualizing the African Diaspora and considering the ways in which collective memory is grafted onto waterways, this study offers a series of close readings of major African American literary, filmic, and blues texts.
Sherwin K. Bryant, Ben Vinson, and Rachel Sarah O’Toole
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036637
- eISBN:
- 9780252093715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036637.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, African Studies
This book expands the framework for charting the African Diaspora to Spanish America. Drawing upon a variety of texts from the Spanish American colonies, it explores the connections and disjunctures ...
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This book expands the framework for charting the African Diaspora to Spanish America. Drawing upon a variety of texts from the Spanish American colonies, it explores the connections and disjunctures between colonial Latin America and the African Diaspora in the Spanish empires. It examines what Leo Garofalo calls the “shape of Diaspora,” tracing its early extension into Iberia in the fifteenth century and its reach beyond the Atlantic basin into the Pacific/Andean territories ever since. The book is organized into three sections. Part 1 discusses voluntary and forced migrations across the Atlantic, focusing on three distinct cases of identity construction that intersect with ongoing debates in African Diaspora scholarship regarding the models of continuity and creolization in the Americas. Part 2 considers how enslaved and free people used their rights as Catholics to present themselves as civilized subjects, loyal Christians, and resisters to slavery. Part 3 shifts the discussion to the family and professional lives of free blacks in nineteenth-century Cuba, with particular emphasis on how they claimed categories of inclusion.Less
This book expands the framework for charting the African Diaspora to Spanish America. Drawing upon a variety of texts from the Spanish American colonies, it explores the connections and disjunctures between colonial Latin America and the African Diaspora in the Spanish empires. It examines what Leo Garofalo calls the “shape of Diaspora,” tracing its early extension into Iberia in the fifteenth century and its reach beyond the Atlantic basin into the Pacific/Andean territories ever since. The book is organized into three sections. Part 1 discusses voluntary and forced migrations across the Atlantic, focusing on three distinct cases of identity construction that intersect with ongoing debates in African Diaspora scholarship regarding the models of continuity and creolization in the Americas. Part 2 considers how enslaved and free people used their rights as Catholics to present themselves as civilized subjects, loyal Christians, and resisters to slavery. Part 3 shifts the discussion to the family and professional lives of free blacks in nineteenth-century Cuba, with particular emphasis on how they claimed categories of inclusion.
Tunde Adeleke
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604732931
- eISBN:
- 9781604732948
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604732931.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Postcolonial discourses on African Diaspora history and relations have traditionally focused intensely on highlighting the common experiences and links between black Africans and African Americans. ...
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Postcolonial discourses on African Diaspora history and relations have traditionally focused intensely on highlighting the common experiences and links between black Africans and African Americans. This is especially true of Afrocentric scholars and supporters who use Africa to construct and validate a monolithic, racial, and culturally essentialist worldview. Publications by Afrocentric scholars such as Molefi Asante, Marimba Ani, Maulana Karenga, and the late John Henrik Clarke have emphasized the centrality of Africa to the construction of Afrocentric essentialism. In the last fifteen years, however, countervailing critical scholarship has challenged essentialist interpretations of Diaspora history. Critics such as Stephen Howe, Yaacov Shavit, and Clarence Walker have questioned and refuted the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of Afrocentric essentialist ideology. This book deconstructs Afrocentric essentialism by illuminating and interrogating the problematic situation of Africa as the foundation of a racialized worldwide African Diaspora. It attempts to fill an intellectual gap by analyzing the contradictions in representations of Afrocentrism in Africa. These include multiple, conflicting, and ambivalent portraits of Africa; the use of the continent as a global, unifying identity for all blacks; the de-emphasizing and nullification of New World acculturation; and the ahistoristic construction of a monolithic African Diaspora worldwide.Less
Postcolonial discourses on African Diaspora history and relations have traditionally focused intensely on highlighting the common experiences and links between black Africans and African Americans. This is especially true of Afrocentric scholars and supporters who use Africa to construct and validate a monolithic, racial, and culturally essentialist worldview. Publications by Afrocentric scholars such as Molefi Asante, Marimba Ani, Maulana Karenga, and the late John Henrik Clarke have emphasized the centrality of Africa to the construction of Afrocentric essentialism. In the last fifteen years, however, countervailing critical scholarship has challenged essentialist interpretations of Diaspora history. Critics such as Stephen Howe, Yaacov Shavit, and Clarence Walker have questioned and refuted the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of Afrocentric essentialist ideology. This book deconstructs Afrocentric essentialism by illuminating and interrogating the problematic situation of Africa as the foundation of a racialized worldwide African Diaspora. It attempts to fill an intellectual gap by analyzing the contradictions in representations of Afrocentrism in Africa. These include multiple, conflicting, and ambivalent portraits of Africa; the use of the continent as a global, unifying identity for all blacks; the de-emphasizing and nullification of New World acculturation; and the ahistoristic construction of a monolithic African Diaspora worldwide.
Kendahl Radcliffe, Jennifer Scott, and Anja Werner
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628461558
- eISBN:
- 9781626740839
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461558.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The authors argue, that a focus on Black intellectualism dissolves binary oppositions—as Paul Gilroy, W.E.B. DuBois, and others have attempted to do in their explorations of “double consciousness” ...
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The authors argue, that a focus on Black intellectualism dissolves binary oppositions—as Paul Gilroy, W.E.B. DuBois, and others have attempted to do in their explorations of “double consciousness” and other (intellectual) ways in which people of African descent have proactively negotiated their heritage, past, and present in the face of external conditions of hardship and change. Studies on Black Intellectualism create a space for understanding self-determined, conscious actions and creative choices, without ignoring historical and systemic obstacles of inequality, discrimination, violence, enslavement, misfortune or other circumstances that may victimize. New literature focusing on the intellectualism of the Black Atlantic and beyond can now go further to make more connections across time and space and to show how these inventive connections and collaborations are an inherent part of the process of facing uncertainty, movement and change By moving beyond traditional and formerly limiting geographical, historical, and conceptual categories of the “Black Atlantic,” we expand and liberate this discourse to make possible the study of how movement to “anywhere but here” helped individuals to arrive at where they needed to be spiritually, socially, politically, and culturally.Less
The authors argue, that a focus on Black intellectualism dissolves binary oppositions—as Paul Gilroy, W.E.B. DuBois, and others have attempted to do in their explorations of “double consciousness” and other (intellectual) ways in which people of African descent have proactively negotiated their heritage, past, and present in the face of external conditions of hardship and change. Studies on Black Intellectualism create a space for understanding self-determined, conscious actions and creative choices, without ignoring historical and systemic obstacles of inequality, discrimination, violence, enslavement, misfortune or other circumstances that may victimize. New literature focusing on the intellectualism of the Black Atlantic and beyond can now go further to make more connections across time and space and to show how these inventive connections and collaborations are an inherent part of the process of facing uncertainty, movement and change By moving beyond traditional and formerly limiting geographical, historical, and conceptual categories of the “Black Atlantic,” we expand and liberate this discourse to make possible the study of how movement to “anywhere but here” helped individuals to arrive at where they needed to be spiritually, socially, politically, and culturally.
Deidre Helen Crumbley
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813039848
- eISBN:
- 9780813043791
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813039848.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
Chapter 1 provides an overview of the book, addressing its focus, methodological approaches, and interpretive frameworks. This chapter introduces the case study church, delineates the book format, ...
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Chapter 1 provides an overview of the book, addressing its focus, methodological approaches, and interpretive frameworks. This chapter introduces the case study church, delineates the book format, and describes the focus of each chapter. In the “call and response” tradition of African American churches, methodology is discussed as “response” to a “call” for ethnography of African American religious life, which transcends stereotypes, goes beyond the study of established Black Independent churches, and incorporates the voices of minoritized people into intellectual discourse that directly reflects and affects their lives. By addressing germane literature, this chapter also positions the study within interpretive frameworks related to: notions of exile; the African Diaspora; African-derived slave religion; the Sanctified Church; the interplay of gender and religion and power in institutionalization; and, the “myth of neutrality” in the ethnographic process.Less
Chapter 1 provides an overview of the book, addressing its focus, methodological approaches, and interpretive frameworks. This chapter introduces the case study church, delineates the book format, and describes the focus of each chapter. In the “call and response” tradition of African American churches, methodology is discussed as “response” to a “call” for ethnography of African American religious life, which transcends stereotypes, goes beyond the study of established Black Independent churches, and incorporates the voices of minoritized people into intellectual discourse that directly reflects and affects their lives. By addressing germane literature, this chapter also positions the study within interpretive frameworks related to: notions of exile; the African Diaspora; African-derived slave religion; the Sanctified Church; the interplay of gender and religion and power in institutionalization; and, the “myth of neutrality” in the ethnographic process.
Tunde Adeleke
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604732931
- eISBN:
- 9781604732948
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604732931.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Blacks in America have used Africa to construct an essentialist ideological worldview on the basis of their historical experiences. This has led to the construction and affirmation of a ...
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Blacks in America have used Africa to construct an essentialist ideological worldview on the basis of their historical experiences. This has led to the construction and affirmation of a countervailing monolithic protest identity that, unfortunately, is one-dimensional and ahistorical and is more reflective of the alienation of black Americans than a true representation of the historical process. The notion that black Americans remain essentially African despite centuries of separation from Africa is historically flawed. In constructing black American relations with Africa within a monolithic, one-dimensional framework that underscores underlying mutuality and shared values, Afrocentric essentialism refuses to confront the complexities and paradoxes of the history and relations of Africans, black Americans, and African Diaspora. The identity debate and crisis among African Americans remain unresolved, in part because African Americans themselves have not passionately and consistently embraced the African identity.Less
Blacks in America have used Africa to construct an essentialist ideological worldview on the basis of their historical experiences. This has led to the construction and affirmation of a countervailing monolithic protest identity that, unfortunately, is one-dimensional and ahistorical and is more reflective of the alienation of black Americans than a true representation of the historical process. The notion that black Americans remain essentially African despite centuries of separation from Africa is historically flawed. In constructing black American relations with Africa within a monolithic, one-dimensional framework that underscores underlying mutuality and shared values, Afrocentric essentialism refuses to confront the complexities and paradoxes of the history and relations of Africans, black Americans, and African Diaspora. The identity debate and crisis among African Americans remain unresolved, in part because African Americans themselves have not passionately and consistently embraced the African identity.
