Introduction: Contemporary African and Black Diasporic Spaces in Europe

Anna Rastas,Kaarina Nikunen

doi:10.1515/culture-2019-0019

Abstract

Abstract This special issue explores spaces where identifications with the African diaspora become articulated, (re)negotiated and, as demonstrated by many articles in this issue, established as a field of the collective agency with transformative power in European societies. The African diaspora communities and cultures in Europe are constructed not only by individuals’ engagements in Africa and its global diaspora but also through the collective agency, aiming at promoting change in European societies shadowed by the normative whiteness, nationalist discourses and policies, human rights violations and overt racism. In this introduction, we discuss the empirical studies presented in this special issue as examples of academic, political and artistic spaces of African and black diasporic agency. Together, the articles make visible the diversity of African and black diasporic spaces in Europe. They also challenge methodological nationalism as well as essentialising discourses of race and ethnicity by acknowledging the global circulation of African and black diaspora cultures and the meanings of the transnational connections for diaspora communities.

Highlights

The African diaspora communities and cultures in Europe are constructed by individuals’ engagements in Africa and its global diaspora and through the collective agency, aiming at promoting change in European societies shadowed by the normative whiteness, nationalist discourses and policies, human rights violations and overt racism
Instead of the notion of culture, the idea of space or spaces of cultures allows us to avoid pregiven categorisations and strict distinctions among different African and/or black communities and cultures. We argue that this is important if we want to promote research on both the diversity of and the transformations within the African and black diaspora(s). 1
The fact that the guest editors of this special issue are two researchers categorised as white follows from our roles as organisers of the Sixth Afroeuropeans Conference in Tampere, which in turn derives from our own research interests, networks and activism, but it indicates the whiteness of European universities

Summary

Introduction

Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins. “Young African Norwegian Women and Diaspora: Negotiating Identity and Community through Digital Social. Relating Worlds of Racism: Dehumanization, Belonging and the Normativity of Whiteness, edited by Philomena Essed et al, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. “Music as a Site for Africaness and Diaspora Cultures: African Musicians in the White Landscape of Finland.”. Black Europe and the African Diaspora, edited by Darlene Clark Hine, et al, University of Illinois Press, 2009, pp. The New African Diaspora, edited by Isidore Okpewho and N. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, vol 3, no.

Conclusions

Findings