ABSTRACT

Debates about the ‘Black Atlantic’ have alerted us to an experience of modernization that diverges from the dominant Western narratives of globalization and technological progress. This outstanding volume expands the concept of the Black Atlantic by reaching beyond the usual African-American focus of the field, presenting fresh perspectives on postcolonial experiences of technology and modernization. A team of renowned contributors come together in this volume in order to:

  • redefine and expand ideas of Black Atlantic
  • challenge unified concepts of modernization from a postcolonial perspective
  • question fashionable concepts of the transnational by returning to the local and the national
  • offer new approaches to cross-cultural mechanisms of exchange
  • explore utopian uses of technology in the postcolonial sphere.

Exploring a variety of national, diasporan and transnational counternarratives to Western modernization, Beyond the Black Atlantic makes a valuable contribution to the fields of postcolonial, literary and cultural studies.