Paul gilroy

PAUL GILROY’s
The Black
Atlantic:
Modernity and
Double
Consciousness
Quinn T. Chipley
HUM 672-02 Spring, 2014

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.
EDUCATION
1978-1981 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%20Utrec
ht%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://et
ext.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://krzysztofmarcza
k.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/doBasicSearc
h?Query=The+Black+Atlantic%3A+Moder
nity+and+Double+Consciousness&acc=o
n&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=Bl
ack&searchText=Atlantic:&searchText=Modernity&search
Text=and&searchText=Double&searchText=Consciousness
&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DT
he%2BBlack%2BAtlantic%253A%2BModernity%2Band%2
BDouble%2BConsciousness%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26a
mp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff

Critical of the way Gilroy
slights Baldwin and Morrison

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

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&searc
hText=and&searchText=Double&searchText=Consciousnes
s&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DT

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

Paul gilroy

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