The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity Reflection

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.

By Angela Gabriel