ABSTRACT
In a critique of a social science perspective that renders African American artistic genres as politically benign cultural expressions – for example soul and blues as mere black urban cultural artifacts – Robin D. G. Kelley points to the onto-political significance of various historically situated black aesthetics. For example, he shows how soul, as a trans-genre aesthetic in the 1960s and 1970s, reflected a notable “transformation” – a “shedding of the old ‘Negro’ ways and a embracing of ‘black’ power and pride.” 1 As Kelley illustrates, the typical social science interpretation of black culture has “collapsed a wide range of historically specific cultural practices and forms,” as it searched for a singular aggregating concept. As a result, it has been unable to comprehend “soul not as a thing but as a discourse through which African-Americans, at a particular historical moment, claimed ownership of the symbols and practices of their own imagined community.” 2
