ABSTRACT
Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic has received considerable international academic acclaim.1 Within cultural studies, literary studies, black studies, Caribbean studies, American studies and anthropology, the book has been hailed as a major and original contribution. Gilroy takes issue with the national boundaries within which these disciplines operate, arguing that, as the book jacket tells us, ‘there is a culture that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but all of these at once; a black Atlantic culture whose themes and techniques transcend ethnicity and nationality to produce something new and, until now, unremarked’. Animating Gilroy’s academic challenge is a political energy. He sets out to expose the dangers as he sees it of contemporary nationalism: whether academic or popular (as in US Afrocentrism), implicit or explicit, black or white in focus, Gilroy sees it as socially and politically undesirable. Gilroy’s concept of a black Atlantic is then offered as a political and cultural corrective, which argues the cross-national, cross-ethnic basis and dynamics of black diasporic identity and culture.
