ABSTRACT
The 1990s witnessed the rise of Black Atlantic studies, inaugurated by Paul Gilroy’s landmark text The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness.2
Whereas Gilroy is interested in theorizing the black diaspora as a ‘counterculture of modernity’, my interest here is in the way this diaspora is elevated into the apex of black modernity by prominent scholars of Africana studies. Black diasporans are currently being positioned as a global vanguard, an elite, thus moving from the countercultural margins into the centre of modernity. Strikingly, expatriate African scholars are among the most enthusiastic advocates of this new diasporic vanguardism, seeing modern black America as a vital source of African modernization. Such scholars as Ntongela Masilela and Manthia Diawara argue that progressive African culture and consciousness derive from the uncritical emulation of black America. This argument is not simply prescriptive; it also claims to be historically explanatory.
