Recharting the Black Atlantic: Modern Cultures, Local Communities, Global Connections

438 Pages·2008·3.866 MB·English

by  Annalisa Oboe (editor), Anna Scacchi (editor)

Recharting the Black Atlantic
Routledge Research in Atlantic Studies
William Boelhower, Louisiana State University
Stephen Fender, University of Sussex
William O’Reilly, University of Cambridge
1. Recharting the Black Atlantic
Modern Cultures, Local Communities,
Global Connections
Edited by Annalisa Oboe and
Anna Scacchi
Recharting the Black Atlantic
Modern Cultures, Local Communities,
Global Connections
Edited by
Annalisa Oboe and Anna Scacchi
New York London
First published 2008
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2008 Taylor & Francis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprin ted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trade-
marks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Recharting the Black Atlantic : modern cultures, local communities, global
connections / edited by Annalisa Oboe and Anna Scacchi.
p. cm. — (Routledge research in Atlantic studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-203-92958-2
ISBN-10: 0-415-96111-4
1. Blacks—Atlantic Ocean Region—Civilization. 2. Atlantic Ocean Region—
Civilization—African infl uences. 3. Blacks—Race identity—Atlantic Ocean Region.
4. Blacks—Atlantic Ocean Region—Intellectual life. 5. African diaspora.
6. Hybridity (Social sciences)—Atlantic Ocean Region. I. Oboe, Annalisa.
II. Scacchi, Anna.
CB235.R43 2008
909'.0496075—dc22
2007037751

ISBN 0-203-92958-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-96111-4 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-92958-6 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-96111-0 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-92958-2 (ebk)
for Oyekan Owomoyela
Pípé là ńpé gbón
˙
A kì í pé gò
˙
Assembling is what we do in order to be wise
(Yoruba proverb)

Contents
List of Figures xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Black Bodies, Practices and Discourses
around the Atlantic 1
PART I
Circumatlantic Connections, Local Lives
1 David Hammons’s Sheep Raffl e at Dak’Art 2004: Reading
Black Art through Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Négritude 11
MANTHIA DIAWARA
2 From South Africa to Europe to North America and Back:
Sol Plaatje, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Routes of Romance 20
ANNALISA OBOE
3 Négritude as Performance Practice:
Rio de Janeiro’s Black Experimental Theatre 45
JUDITH M. WILLIAMS
4 The Book of the Dead: Inscribing Torture
into the Black Atlantic 58
NICOLE WALLER
5 The Spirit of Brazil: Football and the Politics
of Afro-Brazilian Cultural Identity 71
RICHARD FOLLETT
viii Contents
6 Black Man and White Ladyship (1931): A Manifesto 93
RENATA MORRESI
7 “What We All Long For”:
Dionne Brand’s Transatlantic Metamorphoses 109
FRANCA BERNABEI
8 Slavery, History, and Satire: The Legacy of
Gilberto Freyre 128
MARCUS WOOD
PART II
Modern Societies, Ancient Routes
9 Return to the Source: Amilcar Cabral and Flora Gomes 147
PATRICK WILLIAMS
10 Ghosts of Memories, Spirits of Ancestors:
Slavery, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic 162
CRISTINA LOMBARDI-DIOP
11 Transatlantic Minstrelsy: Performing Survival Strategies
in Slavery and Hip-Hop 181
VENUS OPAL REESE
12 Transbodied/Transcultured: Moving Spirits
in Katherine Dunham’s and Maya Deren’s Caribbean 197
DOROTHEA FISCHER-HORNUNG
13 Venture Smith and James Baldwin:
Two Strangers in the Village 212
GINEVRA GERACI
14 The Iconic Ship in the Atlantic Dialogue of Black Britain 225
ITALA VIVAN
15 Lost in Transit: Africa in the Trench of the Black Atlantic 238
OYEKAN OWOMOYELA
Contents ix
PART III
Black Bodies, Global Voices
16 I Sing the Black Body Electric: Transnationalism and the
Black Body in Walt Whitman, Alain Locke, and Paul Robeson 259
JEFFREY C. STEWART
17 W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Intellectual Abroad 282
ANNA SCACCHI
18 Re-mapping Caribbean Land(Sea)scapes:
Aquatic Metaphors and Transatlantic Homes
in Caryl Phillips’s The Atlantic Sound 301
ELVIRA PULITANO
19 Strike a Pose: Capitalism’s Black Identity 319
PAULLA A. EBRON
20 “Nothing but a Feeling of Brotherhood”:
The Interracial Question and the Return to Africa
in Pauline Hopkins’s Of One Blood 337
SIMONE FRANCESCATO
21 Marine Origins and Anti-Marine Tropism in the French
Caribbean: André and Simone Schwarz-Bart 350
ANTOINETTE TIDJANI ALOU
22 Narratives of Traversal: Jamaica Kincaid
and the Erasure of the Postcolonial Subject 365
PAUL GILES
Bibliography 379
Contributors 407
Index 413