Black British Culture Research Articles

The Black Gay Male Image under Siege

This essay discusses Isaac Julien's film Looking for Langston alongside 1980s Black British political culture, in which visual culture played a significant part. Focusing on the role of the image in that time and place, the article reads the embodied performances of waiting, use of the montage, and constructed scenes of Black queer lifeworlds, past and present, as challenging the linear modes of temporality that have confined Black politics to a perpetual state of deferment and the modern notion of vision under which the Black gay male image remains under siege.

« Atmospherics » : Mise en scène de Stormzy et de la pensée non binaire

Taking the UK Grime artist Stormzy’s performance at Glastonbury 2019 as a case study, this article investigates the tactics, technologies and processes revealed through the act of staging atmospheres. Process-based philosophies of experience, such as pluriversal design and worlding, are adopted to examine the ontologically ‘nonbinary’ perspectives that an atmosphere-led stage aesthetics invite. Methodologically, Stormzy’s headlining act produced by TAXBOX and collaborators is analyzed through the geographer Derek McCormack’s approach to speculative devices (such as balloons or stage sets) as ‘doing atmospheric things’. This includes an analysis of stage atmospheres as indeterminate ‘worlding envelopes’ and the role of atmospherics in enacting, projecting, or affirming possible worlds for Black British culture. McCormack’s proposal of atmospheric envelopment is extended into the study of theatre and performance by positioning ‘scenographics’ as a type of atmospherics. Put simply, this article offers an initial argument for considering the tactical affects of scenographics within the production of atmospherics. The article concludes with a challenge to category-based (binary) stage ontologies and argues the benefits of atmospherics as a process-based (nonbinary) approach to stage aesthetics.

Africana Cultural Memory in the Afroeuropean Context

With the publication of Black Cultural Mythology (2020), the discipline of Africology and African American Studies has a better resource that answers the call for methodological and theoretical tools to institutionalize Africana cultural memory studies as a robust subfield. This content analysis tests the applicability of the critical framework of Black cultural mythology—which emerges from a study of the African American Diaspora of the United States—with the Afroeuropean Diaspora, namely the Black British experience. A feature of this study’s methodology is evaluating the efficacy of the genre of anthology—in this case Kwesi Owusu’s Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader (2000)—as a comprehensive source suitable for content analysis and from which to infer a sense of the region’s approaches to cultural memory and memory-adjacent worldviews.

Creative futures of Black (British) feminism in austerity and Brexit times

This paper will suggest that the cultural production made by Black (British) feminist millennial creative collectives during this period of austerity and Brexit is informed by the Black British archive(s) but seeks to move beyond those borders. The forms of Black cultural content emerging from these collectives offer clues as to what the future of creative Black British culture may become.

Songs and Verses of New Ethnicities: Resistance and Representation in Black British Culture

The essay stems from an analysis of Handsworth Songs, a ‘documentary’ directed by Black audio Film Collective in 1986 inspired by the riots that inflamed Birmingham in 1985. Mixing History, stories and archival material, it tries to show a new perspective on what official media defined as ‘looting’, without investigating (often denying) its political and social causes. Presenting itself as a consideration on the present of the black communities’ revolts in Britain and at the same time as a stylistic and aesthetic research, Handsworth Songs represents a seminal moment for the beginning of a critical tradition finally black British.Its screening unleashes a series of controversial reactions, in particular the publication on The Guardian of comments by Salman Rushdie and Stuart Hall. The polemic highlights an attempt to identify a different way to represent the riots, as a form of resistance and affirmation, as well as the black Briton, as a British subject and not anymore as the ‘other’, alien to the geographical and cultural national borders.Rushdie’s and Hall’s opposed positions question the ‘official’ discourses and regimes of representation, in order to find new autonomous practices of representation, far from marginalisation or ‘mythical criminalisation’ (Paul Gilroy).Not by chance, after this polemic and debates, two texts, central to the black British cultural history, are published: Stuart Hall’s “New Ethnicities” (1988) and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988). The considerations generated by the vision of Handsworth Songs flow into them, bringing to a fundamental re-definition and re-vision of blackness.

If… Bernardine Evaristo’s (Gendered) Reconstructions of Black European History

Bernardine Evaristo is one of the young black British writers, who entered the literary scene in the mid-nineties. By now she has published five novels. Already in her first work Lara, a novel in verse, she was concerned with history, but her interest was limited to her family saga, i.e. the stories of both her British and Nigerian ancestors. After this strongly autobiographical text Evaristo turned her interest to the wider topic of black history in Britain and Europe. She wrote revisionist historical novels, in which the resilience and creative power of blacks are celebrated. Her approach falls in with a recent general tendency in black British culture, most marked in art, to break away from the image of blacks as victims and instead to highlight their resistance and creativity. In The Emperor’s Babe (also in verse), Soul Tourists (in prose mixed with verse) and Blonde Roots (pure prose) Evaristo experimented with three different approaches to history, yet all are marked by exuberant fantasy, empathy, humour and a bold mixture of language registers. The article investigates and compares her treatment of black history in all three texts and finally discusses the question whether and, if so, in what ways her approaches seem gendered

“Original London style”: London Posse and the birth of British Hip Hop

Hip Hop culture arrived in Britain in the late 1970s from New York. However, by the middle of the 1980s it had established itself as a hugely popular youth cultural form in Britain in the shape of graffiti, break dancing and music. Although largely seen as an African American form, a number of artists began to produce music that drew specifically upon established black British styles, within a Hip Hop framework of beats and rhymes, in order to develop a highly unique version of Hip Hop, one that communicated both the differences and similarities within the US and the UK. This dialogue placed black British music and culture as an equal partner in the black Atlantic triangle, as artists and cultural practitioners drew upon the Caribbean and America while specifically being influenced by and reflecting upon their very unique position in Britain. London Posse, as one of the first groups to specifically draw upon the traditions of black British music and Sound System culture, and combine it with Hip Hop culture, sought to utilize Hip Hop as a form for expressing a particular position as young black Londoners with cultural resources of their own. In so doing, they were drawing upon the music's origins as a hybrid and malleable form rather than as an essentially black American one. This period of intense creativity and innovation has rarely been documented, yet is significant in the continuing ability of black British cultures to position themselves at the centre of black Atlantic debates and creativity, as opposed to simply mimicking or drawing upon American and Caribbean influences. My essay explores this period through a close reading of London Posse's music and lyrics and an examination of their position as a Hip Hop act drawing upon a black British tradition with roots in the Caribbean and US, but which spoke from, and for, a British perspective.

Tracing black America in black British culture

America's dominance was especially strong among black Britons because our numbers were so few and our own reference points so hidden. From the turntable to the fashion store, black America became o...

A Black British Canon? (review)

Reviewed by: A Black British Canon? R. Victoria Arana Gail LowMarion Wynne-Davies, eds. A Black British Canon? New York: Palgrave, 2006. xiv + 213pp. As the punctuation mark in its title implies, A Black British Canon? raises fundamental questions for scholars and critics of British literature and the arts—principally, how to respond to the burgeoning rate and prestige of creative works by Britain’s blacks. Do their productions constitute a new and separate canon? If so, which of their works are to be included, on what grounds, and according to whom? The book is valuable not so much for giving definitive answers to such questions as for debating these and related issues from several significant and contending perspectives. The editors make it clear that their book “sets out, not to trace a history or highlight areas of productivity, but to challenge the way in which black British writers and practitioners are being seamlessly incorporated into the academic canon, and to problematize the consequent disciplinary institutionalization” (5). A Black British Canon? features an introduction by its editors, a foreword by Mike Phillips, nine chapters under three section heads—”Interrogating the Canon,” “New Languages of Criticism,” and “Genealogies and Interventions”—and an afterword by Alison Donnell. Only three of the eleven contributors are black (novelist and journalist Phillips, Scottish Arts Council administrator Femi Folorunso, and playwright and cultural critic Michael McMillan). All three are writer-activists prominent in the UK for their cultural advocacy. Except for one doctoral candidate, the rest of the volume’s contributors are seasoned and distinguished university professors whose scholarship has increasingly centered on the work of black British writers and artists. All of the book’s contributors live and work in England or Scotland. In their encyclopedic introduction, Gail Low and Marion Wynne- Davies emphasize their interest in “examining the institutional, funding[,] and publishing networks that support black British culture” and that have had and will continue to have a major say in “the politics and the processes of canon formation” (5); they call for “greater self-reflexivity with regard to the choices [that faculties] make as [they] select, read and recommend texts within, what Gayatri Spivak has called, the ‘Teaching Machine’“ (6). Low and Wynne-Davies extensively list and briefly discuss important anthologies, films, art galleries, serial publications, bibliographies, critical works, authors and artists, and book titles emerging from the 1980s through the early 2000s. They emphasize that “a canon is what we produce as we make those choices about what we read or write about” (10). Low and Wynne-Davies insist that “the issues and problems surrounding canonicity are not simply academic” but “involve, of necessity, a series [End Page 909] of wide-ranging and constantly shifting cultural dialogues that have a significant impact upon contemporary society” (10). The essays they have assembled do an admirable job of mapping these current debates and their rich complexities. Phillips’s “Foreword: Migration, Modernity and English Writing— Reflections on Migrant Identity and Canon Formation” argues cogently for re-describing English literature in the light of its newly altered “landscape,” where writers like himself have sought “constructive engagement” with a whole range of lifestyles, languages, and cultural traditions they know (19). He warns against the glib use, and misuse, of labels (such as diversity or multiculturalism) that lead to “a benign cultural apartheid” and to the view that “you [migrants] have a culture which we [old locals] will support and praise”—a view that also “crudely” implies that “we don’t have to make room in our culture for you” (21–22). Phillips affirms the need for state institutions to recognize and incorporate outstanding works by black citizens into the general canons of the arts and literature because the latest wave of creative works by black Britons, when understood historically, does indeed reflect the most remarkable transformations occurring during the past three centuries in the culture and polity of the British Isles. Phillips “signals the emergence of a new consciousness”—not merely among the migrants, but more generally—and explains the consequent “reconfiguration of selfhood, which is a necessary precondition” of the decisive process of social change occurring in England, Scotland, and Wales (29). In short, he makes...

Romantic Shakespeare: From Stage to Page by Younglim Han (review)

Reviews Reviews tricky service, as websites tend to change within short periods of time -and succeeded by a well-orderedindex. Cross-referencing,too, is decisivefor the success of a companion, and here more care should have been taken:the overview sections refer the reader to individual entries, but not the other way round: there is no indication, for instance, in the section on Andrea Levy, that one of her novels is discussed extensively in the 'Bildungsroman' entry. Sometimes separate entries seem unnecessaryand repetitive,such as the ones on Salman Rushdie himself and a separateone on the Rushdie affair.Goodness Gracious Me!is neither mentioned nor cross-referencedin the entryon 'radiocomedy', but there is a referencein the entry on 'Asian radio comedy'. With a project as ambitious as this, disagreementsas to selection and inclusion are unavoidable.A major problem, however, is Donnell's promise in the introduction that the companion covers the last thirtyyears up to 2001. The book was only published in early 2002, so it is hardly surprisingthat she cannot always come up to her own strict expectations, especially in a field as productive as Black British culture. But while the failure to include Shyama Perera's second novel (Bittersweet Symphonyof 2000 her third one was only published in 2002) seems a slight mishap, it is inexcusable not to mention Nana Wilson-Tagoe as the co-editor of David Dabydeen's seminal A Reader's Guideto WestIndianandBlackBritishLiterature, and to cite the firstedition of I988, ratherthan the revisedand extended edition of 1997.A majorshortcomingis the omission of any blackpirate radio stations-one wonders whether this is the result of careful strategicconsiderationor just neglect. Especiallyin the I98os, these stations,among them Horizon Radio,Solar,and Kissioo, were influentialin spreadingreggae and soul music and eventuallyforcingthe main stationsto include more of this music in theirprogramme.Surprisingly,this is a fact that not even the entry on reggae mentions. Other, maybe minor, omissions are Bangla-TV, the comedian Ali G (he is mentioned, but not in a separate entry), KelpRa, which promotes black writing, Bittersweet, a volume of poetry by black women that was succeeded by successfulpoetry readingsthroughoutthe UK, actors Thomas Baptiste (the first black actor in Coronation Street) and Mona Hammond, and writerssuch as Bidisha,Ray Anthony, Simi Bedford,AbdullahHussein, Atima Srivastava,and Alex Wheatle. There are a few obvious errors,such as two contradictorydates for Sonia Boyce'sfirstsolo exhibition, and a confusionof the Adebayo brothersin the 'X Press'entry. Despite these gaps and inconsistencies, this remarkable companion is packed with information and revelations, and will surely become an indispensable guide to anyone researchingblackBritishculturalproduction.Because of the dynamicsof the field, a revisedand enlargededition is something to look forwardto in the near future. UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA SUSANNE REICHL Romantic Shakespeare: FromStagetoPage.By YOUNGLIM HAN.Cranbury,NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press;London: Associated University Presses. 2001. 252 pp. ?34. ISBN:0-8386-3873-2. This book begins by tracingthrough the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the divergenceof studiesof Shakespeareon the page and on the stage, and it closes tricky service, as websites tend to change within short periods of time -and succeeded by a well-orderedindex. Cross-referencing,too, is decisivefor the success of a companion, and here more care should have been taken:the overview sections refer the reader to individual entries, but not the other way round: there is no indication, for instance, in the section on Andrea Levy, that one of her novels is discussed extensively in the 'Bildungsroman' entry. Sometimes separate entries seem unnecessaryand repetitive,such as the ones on Salman Rushdie himself and a separateone on the Rushdie affair.Goodness Gracious Me!is neither mentioned nor cross-referencedin the entryon 'radiocomedy', but there is a referencein the entry on 'Asian radio comedy'. With a project as ambitious as this, disagreementsas to selection and inclusion are unavoidable.A major problem, however, is Donnell's promise in the introduction that the companion covers the last thirtyyears up to 2001. The book was only published in early 2002, so it is hardly surprisingthat she cannot always come up to her own strict expectations, especially in a field as productive as Black British culture. But while the failure to include Shyama Perera's second...

Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture

Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture

Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture by Alison Donnell (review)

Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture by Alison Donnell (review)

Companion to contemporary black British culture

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Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture

Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture

Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture

Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture