The Black Atlantic as
a Counterculture of Modernity by Paul Gilroy begins discussion by questioning
culture, nationality, and modernity. Gilroy begins by describing “the
contemporary black English, like the Anglo-Africans of earlier generations and
perhaps, like all blacks in the west, stand between (at least) two great
cultural assemblages, both of which have mutated through the course of the
modern world that formed them and assumed new configurations” (p.1). This can
be interpreted as the experience of black people in the western world which has
combined the influence of Britain and/or Europe and has created a new identity.
Gilroy uses
the Atlantic Ocean for the source of all cultural exchange and the complex
identify of race and culture. He describes his search for resources to help him
comprehend the doubleness and cultural intermixture that distinguished the
experience of black Britons in contemporary Europe by making an intellectual
journey across the Atlantic (p.4). This journey, as he describes with the image
of a ship, which represents the travel and also the representation of being
able for one to return to the motherland or fatherland.
I feel that
Gilroy’s description of Pan-Africanism illuminates the issues of the view point
of the western world. These views conclude culture and race as an absolute, in
which they are not. Future generations may (most likely based on political,
national, migration, etc.) identify with a new heritage based on experience
thus adding to the fusion of culture.
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