Paul gilroy

PAUL GILROY’s

The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double ConsciousnessQuinn T. Chipley HUM 672-02 Spring, 2014

Paul Gilroy

PAUL GILROY CURRICULUM VITAE

Born: London, 16.2.56. Nationality: British. Addresses: Sociology Department, London School of Economics, Houghton Street London WC2A 2AE Current occupation: Anthony Giddens Professor of Social Theory, Sociology Department, London School of Economics and Political Science.

EDUCATION1978-1981 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), Birmingham University. My Ph.D. thesis: 'Racism, Class and The Contemporary Cultural Politics of 'Race' and Nation' was examined in Summer 1986. 1975-1978 Sussex University B.A. (Hons) 2.1 in American Studies. This degree involved final dissertations on the Sociology of Afro-American music and modes of masculinity in the radical novelists of the 30s. 1966-1973 University College School London

(Source:http://www.uu.nl/SiteCollectionDocuments/GW/GW_Centre_Humanities/Vrede%20van%20Utrecht%20Leerstoel/CV%20Paul%20Gilroy.pdf )

And how Gilroy presents himself in a less formal position:https://twitter.com/bungatuffie

Paul Gilroy @bungatuffie

A metaphysician in the dark, twanging. Soul rebel, dilettante, tele-ologist, Londoner, utopian, dreamer-

tribe affiliate.The well of Zohassadar [A1201]

Awards

1994 American Book Award

Before Columbus Foundation

The Chapter One Title Says It:He positions Himself and his Thesis as Counterculture and not Subculture Why? “Any shift towards a postmodern condition

should not, however, mean that the conspicuous power of these modern [i.e. – 18th and 19th Century revolutionary transformations that included plantation slavery] subjectivities and the movements they articulated has been left behind. Their power has, if anything, grown, and their ubiquity as a means to make political sense of the world is currently unparalleled by the languages of class and socialism by which they once appeared to have been surpassed.” p. 2

Which, by Chipley’s interpretation, means that Gilroy had given up on classical Marxist materialism as articulated in the 19th and 20th century “class/ nation” forms.

Why in 1993 Give Up on a Classical Materialistic Dialectic to Refute Capitalism?

Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, 1979-1990, Conservative Party

Prime Minister, John Major, 1990-1997, Conservative Party

Falkland Island/ Malvinas War 1983: Britain wins and retains her colony.

Operation Desert Storm, 1990-199. the U.S. wins and reinstates Kuwait as its trading partner.

The USSR formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991.

China was in full-throttle capitalist market reform by 1993

Continental Radical Left (i.e.- French) attempts to defend Stalin and Mao had utterly failed by this time.

Other Contexts of this Text:

Toni Morrison’s Beloved wins the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 after a campaign of letter writing following the book’s failure to win the National Book Award in 1987

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. defends 2 Live Crew in the obscenity trail of 1990

Sailing Ships as the Metaphor Crossing the Atlantic (and remember that

Gilroy had done so often. His undergraduate training is as an Americanist. He visited New Haven, CT, a black town, as he calls it; where he was dismayed to see that the Black American music he was seeking was dead.)

This metaphor embraces the Middle Passage This metaphor embraces the leading African

American mentors Delaney and Dubois This metaphor embraces Black British music

Three Artifacts Essential to Chapter 1: The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity

J.M.W. Turner’s Oil Painting, "Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon coming on“ or “The Slave Ship” (pp. 13-15, 16)

North London bands; e.g. Soul II Soul and Funki Dreds (pp. 15-16)

Martin Robison Delaney, Blake; or, The Huts of America (pp. 19-40)

Turner’s painting: Slave Ship

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoCW80MEGXY

Soul II Soul: “Keep On Moving” (Funki Dreds Mix)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peY5niPjZvg

Martin Delaney Robison: Blake

The text is available here:http://web.archive.org/web/20080708224553/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DelBlak.html

Chapter 6: “Living Memory and the Slave Sublime” Opposes Africentric Views(Chipley’s summary:

Place will not be a place.) Opposes Linear time model for Modernity

(Chipley’s summary: Time will not be a point on a line)

Advances a hope of merged Musical/ sexual healing for both political and private pain (Gilroy turns to Percy Mayfield lyrics)

Returns to the Jewish Diaspora experience as instructive, but not determinative, for Black Diaspora experiences

Which ends up in a rather strong Polemic of

VS.

Stanley Crouch Toni Morrison

FRACTALS: Gilroy’s Model

“The recursive nature of some patterns is obvious in certain examples—a branch from a tree or a frond from a fern is a miniature replica of the whole: not identical, but similar in nature. Similarly, random fractals have been used to describe/create many highly irregular real-world objects. A limitation of modeling fractals is that resemblance of a fractal model to a natural phenomenon does not prove that the phenomenon being modeled is formed by a process similar to the modeling algorithm.” (emphasis added)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal#Natural_phenomena_with_fractal_features

(Mandelbrodt created the term fractals in 1975. The fractal model became a strong vogue in science and art soon after.)

FRACTALS: SOME FORMATIONS ARE (AND REMAIN) BIGGER THAN OTHERS

BUT!!!!!The “miracle” of fractals is that any view within any “microcosm” of the fractal will look like the view of the “macrocosm.” Any point in position is at the same relative distance from every other point in the surrounding environment.If you are interested, look at this video on a basic fractal called the Koch Snowflake:https://www.khanacademy.org/math/geometry/basic-geometry/koch_snowflake/v/koch-snowflake-fractal

Another Gilroy model: Rhizomorphic: Shaped liked rhizomes (cognate to the word “root”)

The relationship of rhizomorphic and fractal modeling is obvious.

Fractal art example

(source: http://krzysztofmarczak.deviantart.com/art/z7-b-3D-fractal-2-138950342 )

BOOK REVIEWS OF GILROY’S The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness

http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=The+Black+Atlantic%3A+Modernity+and+Double+Consciousness&acc=on&wc=on&fc=off

(This link gets you to a JSTOR general listing of several book reviews, the direct URL links for five of which follow in this PowerPoint.)

Pure summary and description. No real critique.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2076536?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=The&searchText=Black&searchText=Atlantic:&searchText=Modernity&searchText=and&searchText=Double&searchText=Consciousness&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DThe%2BBlack%2BAtlantic%253A%2BModernity%2Band%2BDouble%2BConsciousness%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff

Critical of the way Gilroy slights Baldwin and Morrisonhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/3042577?Sea

rch=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=The&searchText=Black&searchText=Atlantic:&searchText=Modernity&searchText=and&searchText=Double&searchText=Consciousness&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DThe%2BBlack%2BAtlantic%253A%2BModernity%2Band%2BDouble%2BConsciousness%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff

Notes deficits in Gilroy’s lack of treatment of women; Gilroy’s apparent inability to transcend the hyper-masculinities ensconced in the rap he defends

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/4286351?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=The&searchText=Black&searchText=Atlantic:&searchText=Modernity&searchText=and&searchText=Double&searchText=Consciousness&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DThe%2BBlack%2BAtlantic%253A%2BModernity%2Band%2BDouble%2BConsciousness%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff

Critiques absence of Africa; critiques Gilroy’s insufficient follow-thorough on the use of the fractal model (especially in relationship to DuBois); “’ten miles wide and an inch deep” quote from the harsh critics, though this review is less harsh. Picks up well on the centrality of the comparison of the Jewish diaspora and the Black diaspora Notes that the book is obviously unfinished, but still is important for offering a method.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/30041559?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=The&searchText=Black&searchText=Atlantic:&searchText=Modernity&searchText=and&searchText=Double&searchText=Consciousness&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DThe%2BBlack%2BAtlantic%253A%2BModernity%2Band%2BDouble%2BConsciousness%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff

Homes in on the inversion that Gilroy hopes to achieve: double consciousness is not a burden but is a privileged stance from which to watch and participate in the fluid reconstructions of culture and power; and the corollary that the Marx-Engels paradigm of nation-state, means of production, and proletariat are not linear but are problematic in the zig-zaging developments

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/4289480?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=The&searchText=Black&searchText=Atlantic:&searchText=Modernity&searchText=and&searchText=Double&searchText=Consciousness&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DThe%2BBlack%2BAtlantic%253A%2BModernity%2Band%2BDouble%2BConsciousness%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff

THE END