Preface

The collection of essays for this special issue came from an international conference organized jointly by this journal and the Center for Black Diaspora on Remapping the Black Atlantic: (Re)Writing Race and Space held at DePaul University on 12–13 April 2013.¹

The conference was held on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Paul Gilroy's seminal book The Black Atlantic (1993) which marked a pivotal moment and a major shift in our understanding of the international experiences of transatlantic Black modernity while at the same time providing an elaborate critique of cultural nationalism, against which Gilroy posits black diasporic cultural and intellectual production. In the richly transoceanic cartography, Gilroy circumnavigates the Black Atlantic as, ‘a counterculture of modernity’ and refers to the varied ways in which people of African descent have responded to and confronted racial terror and slavery while maintaining a sense of subject hood, cultural integrity and forged common cultural memories. More than simply understanding Black experiences in the context of the circum-Atlantic slave trade as being marginal to or derived from the culture of modernity, Gilroy argued that for over a century and half, Black intellectuals have traveled and worked in a transnational framework that precludes anything but a superficial association with their countries of origin. Expanding on DuBois's crucial notion of ‘double consciousness,’ Gilroy argued for modernity broad in scope not simply including the marginal positions of slaves, but also posting the ‘ungenteel’ aspects of slavery and terror as fundamentally crucial to understanding modernity itself. Since the publication of Gilroy's book, there has been a lively and sustained engagement in rethinking the Black Atlantic and indeed the history of modernity itself.

The Conference Remapping the Black Atlantic: (Re)Writing Race and Space was organized to provide a critical space to remap the Black Atlantic beyond Paul Gilroy's original framework anchored in the Anglophone Atlantic or the American branch of the African Diaspora in light of changing discourses of African Diaspora studies and related fields, taking into account history, contemporary contexts, location, movement, displacement, globalization, migration, and the circulation of Black bodies and their experiences across time and space in a transnational framework. In addition, the conference also sought to broaden and deepen comparative discussions on the state of current knowledge production in the African Diaspora from around the world and also consider innovative ways of strengthening the field through new historical, theoretical, literary, and performative interventions and taking into account the Black Atlantic's broader emancipatory project that still remains to be more fully mapped in all its complexities and configurations.

The collection of essays in the special issue offers an analysis of the multifaceted dimension of the transnational Black experiences in different spatial and temporal settings. Together they deepen our comparative understanding of the much wider world of the African Diaspora. As readers will note, several of the articles focus on the Black experiences in Europe (UK, Germany, Russia, and France) as well as the USA and Sierra Leone, offering readers a multi-layered and nuanced reading of Black experiences while interrogating notions of empire and nation states that have been intimately connected with the movement, location, and identities of people of the African Diaspora. Indeed, the collection contributes to the ongoing archive of the Black Atlantic project in a Foucauldian sense that the ‘archive animates all knowledge formation and is the structure that makes meaning manifest’ (Arondekar 2005, 10) as well as in shaping and expanding the nature of knowledge production of the African Diaspora.

Acknowledgements

We extend our thanks and appreciation to the of the Center for Black Diaspora, especially Juelle Daley and Farrad DeBerry, as well as students who assisted in different capacities during the conference: Aqueela Clark, Markus Davis, Bayurat Fashina-Jinadu and Rahwa Sehat.

Notes

1. Organizing an international conference such as Remapping the Black Atlantic: (re)Writing Race and Space was from the beginning a communal effort, which required the combined efforts of a range of individuals and institutions over an extended period of time. The Guest Editors wish to thank the sponsors of the conference: Office of the President, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Office of Diversity and Equity and the Departments of History, Geography, Political Science, Religious Studies, Women and Gender Studies as well as African and Black Diaspora Studies, International Studies, History of Art and Architecture, Islamic World Studies, the Center for Intercultural Programs and the Women's Center at DePaul University.