Black Bodies, White Gold

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Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 1478021373
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Black Bodies, White Gold by : Anna Arabindan-Kesson

Download or read book Black Bodies, White Gold written by Anna Arabindan-Kesson and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-22 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Black Bodies, White Gold Anna Arabindan-Kesson uses cotton, a commodity central to the slave trade and colonialism, as a focus for new interpretations of the way art, commerce, and colonialism were intertwined in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. In doing so, Arabindan-Kesson models an art historical approach that makes the histories of the Black diaspora central to nineteenth-century cultural production. She traces the emergence of a speculative vision that informs perceptions of Blackness in which artistic renderings of cotton—as both commodity and material—became inexorably tied to the monetary value of Black bodies. From the production and representation of “negro cloth”—the textile worn by enslaved plantation workers—to depictions of Black sharecroppers in photographs and paintings, Arabindan-Kesson demonstrates that visuality was the mechanism through which Blackness and cotton became equated as resources for extraction. In addition to interrogating the work of nineteenth-century artists, she engages with contemporary artists such as Hank Willis Thomas, Lubaina Himid, and Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, who contend with the commercial and imperial processes shaping constructions of Blackness and meanings of labor.

African Americans and Africa

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300244916
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis African Americans and Africa by : Nemata Amelia Ibitayo Blyden

Download or read book African Americans and Africa written by Nemata Amelia Ibitayo Blyden and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the complex relationship between African Americans and the African continent What is an “African American” and how does this identity relate to the African continent? Rising immigration levels, globalization, and the United States’ first African American president have all sparked new dialogue around the question. This book provides an introduction to the relationship between African Americans and Africa from the era of slavery to the present, mapping several overlapping diasporas. The diversity of African American identities through relationships with region, ethnicity, slavery, and immigration are all examined to investigate questions fundamental to the study of African American history and culture.

Fearing the Black Body

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Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479831093
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

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Book Synopsis Fearing the Black Body by : Sabrina Strings

Download or read book Fearing the Black Body written by Sabrina Strings and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2020 Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award, given by the American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, 2020 Sociology of Sex and Gender Distinguished Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association How the female body has been racialized for over two hundred years There is an obesity epidemic in this country and poor black women are particularly stigmatized as “diseased” and a burden on the public health care system. This is only the most recent incarnation of the fear of fat black women, which Sabrina Strings shows took root more than two hundred years ago. Strings weaves together an eye-opening historical narrative ranging from the Renaissance to the current moment, analyzing important works of art, newspaper and magazine articles, and scientific literature and medical journals—where fat bodies were once praised—showing that fat phobia, as it relates to black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of “savagery” and racial inferiority. The author argues that the contemporary ideal of slenderness is, at its very core, racialized and racist. Indeed, it was not until the early twentieth century, when racialized attitudes against fatness were already entrenched in the culture, that the medical establishment began its crusade against obesity. An important and original work, Fearing the Black Body argues convincingly that fat phobia isn’t about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.

Refracted Modernity

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Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824830504
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis Refracted Modernity by : Yuko Kikuchi

Download or read book Refracted Modernity written by Yuko Kikuchi and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2007-08-01 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the mid-1990s Taiwanese artists have been responsible for shaping much of the international contemporary art scene, yet studies on modern Taiwanese art published outside of Taiwan are scarce. The nine essays collected here present different perspectives on Taiwanese visual culture and landscape during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945), focusing variously on travel writings, Western and Japanese/Oriental-style paintings, architecture, aboriginal material culture, and crafts. Issues addressed include the imagined Taiwan and the "discovery" of the Taiwanese landscape, which developed into the imperial ideology of nangoku (southern country); the problematic idea of "local color," which was imposed by Japanese, and its relation to the "nativism" that was embraced by Taiwanese; the gendered modernity exemplified in the representation of Chinese/Taiwanese women; and the development of Taiwanese artifacts and crafts from colonial to postcolonial times, from their discovery, estheticization, and industrialization to their commodification by both the colonizers and the colonized. Contributors: Chao-Ching Fu, Chia-yu Hu, Yuko Kikuchi, Kaoru Kojima, Ming-chu Lai, Hsin-tien Liao, Naoko Shimazu, Toshio Watanabe, Chuan-ying Yen.

The Commerce of Peoples

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 073916743X
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The Commerce of Peoples by : Biman Basu

Download or read book The Commerce of Peoples written by Biman Basu and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representations and coverage of S&M have become quite common nowadays, whether we see them in the fashion industry, commercials, the news, on television, film, the internet, and so on. But in the population at large and in the academic community, too, it is still persistently stigmatized. This marginalization, along with its ambivalently persecuted status, is a result, significantly, of a nineteenth century legacy. This legacy begins with Kraftt-Ebing's designation of sadomasochism, along with gay and lesbian desire, as a perversion, and continues in the popular and expert (mis)understandings which prevail. More generally, most people today will recognize that all human relations are power relations. Yet most people will also deny this and mask these power relations by invoking all sorts of things, like romantic love, sentimental attachment, companionate marriage, friendship, peace, non-violence, harmony, and the list goes on, ad nauseam. Not that these do not exist in a sadomasochistic relation, but sadomasochists are unflinching in their recognition that all of these are also permeated by power relations. It is not only impossible to purge these relations of power but for sadomasochists it is also undesirable to do so. It is not only more honest to acknowledge the power that saturates these relations but also more instructive in the sense that S&M provides a context in which one learns to exercise power and to submit to it in a responsible way. Even in scholarly critical and theoretical discussions of S&M, the prevailing opinion is that the power exercised in sadomasochism is not "real." It is of course not real in the sense that slavery and violence no longer has a legal status. But reality cannot of course be gauged or even approximated by its legal status alone. For most practitioners, it is hard to deny the reality of pain, of humiliation, of degradation, in the moment of its enactment. One can hardly deny the reality of bringing the whip down on someone's back or of having it sear across one's buttocks.

Between the World and Me

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Publisher : One World
ISBN 13 : 0679645985
Total Pages : 163 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (796 download)

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Book Synopsis Between the World and Me by : Ta-Nehisi Coates

Download or read book Between the World and Me written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by One World. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Images and Empires

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520229495
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (294 download)

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Book Synopsis Images and Empires by : Paul S. Landau

Download or read book Images and Empires written by Paul S. Landau and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-10-28 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume considers the meaning and power of images in African history and culture. It assembles a wide-ranging collection of essays dealing with specific visual forms, including monuments cinema, cartoons, domestic and professional photography, body art, world fairs, and museum exhibits.

Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies

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Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472117254
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (721 download)

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Book Synopsis Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies by : James F. Wilson

Download or read book Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies written by James F. Wilson and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-06-16 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gay and lesbians in Harlem nightclubs, speakeasies, rent parties, and on Broadway stages

Victorian Jamaica

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Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822374625
Total Pages : 768 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis Victorian Jamaica by : Tim Barringer

Download or read book Victorian Jamaica written by Tim Barringer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-10 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victorian Jamaica explores the extraordinary surviving archive of visual representation and material objects to provide a comprehensive account of Jamaican society during Queen Victoria's reign over the British Empire, from 1837 to 1901. In their analyses of material ranging from photographs of plantation laborers and landscape paintings to cricket team photographs, furniture, and architecture, as well as a wide range of texts, the contributors trace the relationship between black Jamaicans and colonial institutions; contextualize race within ritual and performance; and outline how material and visual culture helped shape the complex politics of colonial society. By narrating Victorian history from a Caribbean perspective, this richly illustrated volume—featuring 270 full-color images—offers a complex and nuanced portrait of Jamaica that expands our understanding of the wider history of the British Empire and Atlantic world during this period. Contributors. Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Tim Barringer, Anthony Bogues, David Boxer, Patrick Bryan, Steeve O. Buckridge, Julian Cresser, John M. Cross, Petrina Dacres, Belinda Edmondson, Nadia Ellis, Gillian Forrester, Catherine Hall, Gad Heuman, Rivke Jaffe, O'Neil Lawrence, Erica Moiah James, Jan Marsh, Wayne Modest, Daniel T. Neely, Mark Nesbitt, Diana Paton, Elizabeth Pigou-Dennis, Veerle Poupeye, Jennifer Raab, James Robertson, Shani Roper, Faith Smith, Nicole Smythe-Johnson, Dianne M. Stewart, Krista A. Thompson

The Economic Consequences of the Atlantic Slave Trade

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Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739192477
Total Pages : 159 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The Economic Consequences of the Atlantic Slave Trade by : Barbara L. Solow

Download or read book The Economic Consequences of the Atlantic Slave Trade written by Barbara L. Solow and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Economic Consequences of the Atlantic Slave Trade shows how the West Indian slave/sugar/plantation complex, organized on capitalist principles of private property and profit-seeking, joined the western hemisphere to the international trading system encompassing Europe, Africa, North America, and the Caribbean, and was an important determinant of the timing and pattern of the Industrial Revolution in England. The new industrial economy was no longer dependent on slavery for development, but rested instead on investment and innovation. Solow argues that abolition of the slave trade and emancipation should be understood in this context.

Looking Modern

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Author :
Publisher : Art Media Resources
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (318 download)

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Book Synopsis Looking Modern by : Jennifer Purtle

Download or read book Looking Modern written by Jennifer Purtle and published by Art Media Resources. This book was released on 2009 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Looking Modern: East Asian Visual Culture from Treaty Ports to World War II examines multiple dimensions of visual modernity in East Asia from the nineteenth century through the early decades of the twentieth. The papers were drawn from two symposia held at the Center for the Art of East Asia in the Department of Art History, the University of Chicago, which brought out important themes in East Asian Art and visual culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including photography, cinema, and fashion, changing roles of women, commercialization of art, and the impact of Western cultures. They undertook a broad interpretation of visual modernity to include visual dimensions of human endeavor traditionally seen as outside of artistic production in order to encourage exploration of new and understudied materials across disciplinary boundaries. This volume not only provides important background in the growth of modern visual culture in East Asia, but also is a collection of seminal research on specific topics that have a broad impact upon present-day visual arts of China and Japan." -- Publisher's description

Visual Culture in Shanghai 1850s-1930s

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Publisher : New Academia Publishing/ The Spring
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 380 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Visual Culture in Shanghai 1850s-1930s by : Jason C. Kuo

Download or read book Visual Culture in Shanghai 1850s-1930s written by Jason C. Kuo and published by New Academia Publishing/ The Spring. This book was released on 2007 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visual Culture in Shanghai, 1850s-1930s is a study of formal and informal meanings of Haipai ("Shanghai School" or "Shanghai Style"), as seen through the paintings of the Shanghai school as well as other media of visual representation. The book provides us a point of entry into the nexus of relationships that structured the encounter between China and the West as experienced by the treaty-port Chinese in their everyday life. Exploring such relationships gives us a better sense of the ultimate significance of Shanghai's rise as China's dominant metropolitan center. This book will appeal not only to art historians, but also to students of history, gender studies, women's studies, and culture studies who are interested in modern China as well as questions of art patronage, nationalism, colonialism, visual culture, and representation of women. "This book constitutes a significant contribution to the literature about a period and a city that were pivotal to the emergence of modern China." -Richard K. Kent, Franklin & Marshall College. "This book navigates the complexity of Chinese modernity.. It bridges, conceptually and visually, the China of the past to present-day Shanghai, the symbol of the urban economy of 21st-century China." -Chao-Hui Jenny Liu, New York University. "Shanghai was the rising and dynamic metropolis, where many aspects of modernity were embraced with enthusiasm. Pictorial art was no longer the domain of the elite, but professionalization, commercialization, popularization, and Westernization contributed to the dissemination of images to a larger and diverse audience." -Minna Törmä, University of Helsinki.

Passing and the Fictions of Identity

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Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822317647
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (176 download)

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Book Synopsis Passing and the Fictions of Identity by : Elaine K. Ginsberg

Download or read book Passing and the Fictions of Identity written by Elaine K. Ginsberg and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1996-04-29 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Passing refers to the process whereby a person of one race, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation adopts the guise of another. Historically, this has often involved black slaves passing as white in order to gain their freedom. More generally, it has served as a way for women and people of color to access male or white privilege. In their examination of this practice of crossing boundaries, the contributors to this volume offer a unique perspective for studying the construction and meaning of personal and cultural identities. These essays consider a wide range of texts and moments from colonial times to the present that raise significant questions about the political motivations inherent in the origins and maintenance of identity categories and boundaries. Through discussions of such literary works as Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, The Autobiography of an Ex–Coloured Man, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Hidden Hand, Black Like Me, and Giovanni’s Room, the authors examine issues of power and privilege and ways in which passing might challenge the often rigid structures of identity politics. Their interrogation of the semiotics of behavior, dress, language, and the body itself contributes significantly to an understanding of national, racial, gender, and sexual identity in American literature and culture. Contextualizing and building on the theoretical work of such scholars as Judith Butler, Diana Fuss, Marjorie Garber, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., Passing and the Fictions of Identity will be of value to students and scholars working in the areas of race, gender, and identity theory, as well as U.S. history and literature. Contributors. Martha Cutter, Katharine Nicholson Ings, Samira Kawash, Adrian Piper, Valerie Rohy, Marion Rust, Julia Stern, Gayle Wald, Ellen M. Weinauer, Elizabeth Young

The Double Screen

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Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1861898428
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (618 download)

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Book Synopsis The Double Screen by : Wu Hung

Download or read book The Double Screen written by Wu Hung and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 1996-11-22 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first exploration of Chinese paintings as both material products and pictorial representations, The Double Screen shows how the collaboration and tension between material form and image gives life to a painting. A Chinese painting is often reduced to the image it bears; its material form is dismissed; its intimate connection with social activities and cultural conventions neglected. A screen occupies a space and divides it, supplies an ideal surface for painting, and has been a favorite pictorial image in Chinese art since antiquity. Wu Hung undertakes a comprehensive analysis of the screen, which can be an object, an art medium, a pictorial motif, or all three at once. With its diverse roles, the screen has provided Chinese painters with endless opportunities to reinvent their art. The Double Screen provides a powerful non-Western perspective on issues from portraiture and pictorial narrative to voyeurism, masquerade, and political rhetoric. It will be invaluable to anyone interested in the history of art and Asian studies.

Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism

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Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 1478012897
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism by : Samantha A. Noël

Download or read book Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism written by Samantha A. Noël and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-11 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Tropical Aesthetics of Black Modernism, Samantha A. Noël investigates how Black Caribbean and American artists of the early twentieth century responded to and challenged colonial and other white-dominant regimes through tropicalist representation. With depictions of tropical scenery and landscapes situated throughout the African diaspora, performances staged in tropical settings, and bodily expressions of tropicality during Carnival, artists such as Aaron Douglas, Wifredo Lam, Josephine Baker, and Maya Angelou developed what Noël calls “tropical aesthetics”—using art to name and reclaim spaces of Black sovereignty. As a unifying element in the Caribbean modern art movement and the Harlem Renaissance, tropical aesthetics became a way for visual artists and performers to express their sense of belonging to and rootedness in a place. Tropical aesthetics, Noël contends, became central to these artists’ identities and creative processes while enabling them to craft alternative Black diasporic histories. In outlining the centrality of tropical aesthetics in the artistic and cultural practices of Black modernist art, Noël recasts understandings of African diasporic art.

Black Skin, White Masks

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780745399546
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis Black Skin, White Masks by : Frantz Fanon

Download or read book Black Skin, White Masks written by Frantz Fanon and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Skin, White Masks is a classic, devastating account of the dehumanising effects of colonisation experienced by black subjects living in a white world. First published in English in 1967, this book provides an unsurpassed study of the psychology of racism using scientific analysis and poetic grace.Franz Fanon identifies a devastating pathology at the heart of Western culture, a denial of difference, that persists to this day. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, his writings speak to all who continue the struggle for political and cultural liberation.With an introduction by Paul Gilroy, author of There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack.

Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

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Author :
Publisher : Liveright Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1631495836
Total Pages : 444 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (314 download)

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Book Synopsis Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War by : Howard W. French

Download or read book Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War written by Howard W. French and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revealing the central yet intentionally obliterated role of Africa in the creation of modernity, Born in Blackness vitally reframes our understanding of world history. Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history. Some credit the fifteenth-century Age of Discovery and the maritime connection it established between West and East; others the accidental unearthing of the “New World.” Still others point to the development of the scientific method, or the spread of Judeo-Christian beliefs; and so on, ad infinitum. The history of Africa, by contrast, has long been relegated to the remote outskirts of our global story. What if, instead, we put Africa and Africans at the very center of our thinking about the origins of modernity? In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Howard W. French does just that, for Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the “dark” continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe’s yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies sequestered away in the heart of West Africa. Creating a historical narrative that begins with the commencement of commercial relations between Portugal and Africa in the fifteenth century and ends with the onset of World War II, Born in Blackness interweaves precise historical detail with poignant, personal reportage. In so doing, it dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures, from the unimaginably rich medieval emperors who traded with the Near East and beyond, to the Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers, to the ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage and profoundly altered the course of American history. While French cogently demonstrates the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world, Born in Blackness becomes, at the same time, a far more significant narrative, one that reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, elision in depictions of African history throughout the last five hundred years. As French shows, the achievements of sovereign African nations and their now-far-flung peoples have time and again been etiolated and deliberately erased from modern history. As the West ascended, their stories—siloed and piecemeal—were swept into secluded corners, thus setting the stage for the hagiographic “rise of the West” theories that have endured to this day. “Capacious and compelling” (Laurent Dubois), Born in Blackness is epic history on the grand scale. In the lofty tradition of bold, revisionist narratives, it reframes the story of gold and tobacco, sugar and cotton—and of the greatest “commodity” of them all, the twelve million people who were brought in chains from Africa to the “New World,” whose reclaimed lives shed a harsh light on our present world.