FORECAAST (Forum for European Contributions to African American Studies) – serie

Black Knowledges/Black Struggles: Essays in CriticalEpistemology explores the central but often critically neglected role ofknowledge and epistemic formations within social movements for Black “freedom”and emancipation. The collection examines the structural subjugation andcondemnation of Black African and Afro-mixed descent peoples globallywithin the past 500 years of trans-Atlantic societies of Western modernity,doing so in connection to the population’s dehumanization and/or invisibilizationwithin various epistemic formations of the West. In turn, the collectionforegrounds the extent to which the ending of this imposedsubjugation/condemnation has necessarily entailed critiques of, challenges to,and counter-formulations against and beyond knowledge and epistemicformations that have worked to “naturalize” this condition within the West’svarious socio-human formations. The chapters in the collection engage primarily with knowledgeformations and practices generated from within the discourse of “race,” butalso doing so in relation to other intersectional socio-human discourses ofWestern modernity. They engage as well the critiques, challenges, andcounter-formulations put forth by specific individuals, schools, movements,and/or institutions – historic and contemporary – of the Black world. Throughthese examinations, the contributors either implicitly point towards, orexplicitly take part in, the formation of a new kind of critical – butalso emancipatory – epistemology. What emerges is a novel and morecomprehensive view of what it means to be human, a formulation that canaid in the unlocking and fashioning of species-oriented ways of “knowing”and “being” much-needed within the context of ending the continuedoverall global subjugation/condemnation of Black peoples, as a central part ofending the “global problematique” that confronts humankind as a whole.

Deferred Dreams, Defiant Struggles interrogates Blackness and illustrates how it has been used as a basis to oppress, dismiss and exclude Blacks from societies and institutions in Europe, North America and South America. Employing uncharted analytical categories that tackle intriguing themes about borderless non-racial African ancestry, “traveling” identities and post-blackness, the essays provide new lenses for viewing the “Black” struggle worldwide. This approach directs the contributors’ focus to understudied locations and protagonists. In the volume, Charleston, South Carolina is more prominent than Little Rock Arkansas in the struggle to desegregate schools; Chicago occupies the space usually reserved for Atlanta or other southern city “bulwarks” of the civil rights movement; diverse Africans in France and Afro-descended Chileans illustrate the many facets of negotiating belonging, long articulated by examples from the Greensboro Woolworth counter sit-in or the Montgomery Bus Boycott; unknown men in the British empire, who inverted dying confessions meant to vilify their blackness, demonstrate new dimensions in the story about race and religion, often told by examples of fiery clergy of the Black Church; and the theatres and studios of dramatists and visual artists replace the Mall in Washington DC as the stage for the performance of identities and activism.

Black Intersectionalities: A Critique for the 21st Century explores the complex interrelationships between race, gender, and sex as these are conceptualised within contemporary thought. Markers of identity are too often isolated and presented as definitive, then examined and theorised, a process that further naturalises their absoluteness; thus socially generated constructs become socialising categories that assume coercive power. The resulting set of oppositions isolate and delimit: male or female, black or white, straight or gay. A new kind of intervention is needed, an intervention that recognises the validity of the researcher’s own self-reflexivity. Focusing on the way identity is both constructed and constructive, the collection examines the frameworks and practices that deny transgressive possibilities. It seeks to engage in a consciousness raising exercise that documents the damaging nature of assigned social positions and either/or identity constructions. It seeks to progress beyond the socially prescribed categories of race, gender and sex, recognising the need to combine intellectualization and feeling, rationality and affectivity, abstraction and emotion, consciousness and desire. It seeks to develop new types of transdisciplinary frameworks where subjective and political spaces can be universalized while remaining particular, leaving texts open so that identity remains imagined, plural, and continuously shifting. Such an approach restores the complexity of what it means to be human.

Black Knowledges/Black Struggles: Essays in CriticalEpistemology explores the central but often critically neglected role ofknowledge and epistemic formations within social movements for Black “freedom”and emancipation. The collection examines the structural subjugation andcondemnation of Black African and Afro-mixed descent peoples globallywithin the past 500 years of trans-Atlantic societies of Western modernity,doing so in connection to the population’s dehumanization and/or invisibilizationwithin various epistemic formations of the West. In turn, the collectionforegrounds the extent to which the ending of this imposedsubjugation/condemnation has necessarily entailed critiques of, challenges to,and counter-formulations against and beyond knowledge and epistemicformations that have worked to “naturalize” this condition within the West’svarious socio-human formations. The chapters in the collection engage primarily with knowledgeformations and practices generated from within the discourse of “race,” butalso doing so in relation to other intersectional socio-human discourses ofWestern modernity. They engage as well the critiques, challenges, andcounter-formulations put forth by specific individuals, schools, movements,and/or institutions – historic and contemporary – of the Black world. Throughthese examinations, the contributors either implicitly point towards, orexplicitly take part in, the formation of a new kind of critical – butalso emancipatory – epistemology. What emerges is a novel and morecomprehensive view of what it means to be human, a formulation that canaid in the unlocking and fashioning of species-oriented ways of “knowing”and “being” much-needed within the context of ending the continuedoverall global subjugation/condemnation of Black peoples, as a central part ofending the “global problematique” that confronts humankind as a whole.

Deferred Dreams, Defiant Struggles interrogates Blackness and illustrates how it has been used as a basis to oppress, dismiss and exclude Blacks from societies and institutions in Europe, North America and South America. Employing uncharted analytical categories that tackle intriguing themes about borderless non-racial African ancestry, “traveling” identities and post-blackness, the essays provide new lenses for viewing the “Black” struggle worldwide. This approach directs the contributors’ focus to understudied locations and protagonists. In the volume, Charleston, South Carolina is more prominent than Little Rock Arkansas in the struggle to desegregate schools; Chicago occupies the space usually reserved for Atlanta or other southern city “bulwarks” of the civil rights movement; diverse Africans in France and Afro-descended Chileans illustrate the many facets of negotiating belonging, long articulated by examples from the Greensboro Woolworth counter sit-in or the Montgomery Bus Boycott; unknown men in the British empire, who inverted dying confessions meant to vilify their blackness, demonstrate new dimensions in the story about race and religion, often told by examples of fiery clergy of the Black Church; and the theatres and studios of dramatists and visual artists replace the Mall in Washington DC as the stage for the performance of identities and activism.