The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness – Paul Gilroy

In this ground-breaking work, Paul Gilroy proposes that the modern black experience cannot be defined solely as African, American, Caribbean or British alone, but can only be understood as a Black Atlantic culture that transcends ethnicity or nationality. This culture is thoroughly modern and, often, overlooked but can deeply enrich our understanding of what it means to be modern. This condition comes out of historical transoceanic experience, established first with the slave trade but later seen in the development of a transatlantic culture. And Gilroy takes us on a tour of the music that, for centuries, has transmitted racial messages and feeling around the world, from the Jubilee Singers in the nineteenth century to Jimi Hendrix to rap. He also explores this internationalism as it is manifested in black writing from the “double consciousness” of W. E. B. Du Bois to the “double vision” of Richard Wright to the compelling voice of Toni Morrison. As a consequence, Black Atlantic charts the formation of a nationalism, if not a nation, within this shared, diasporic culture.