Black Atlantic

Coined by British sociologist Paul Gilroy in his 1993 book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, the term Black Atlantic refers to a culture formed by the dispersion of [Page 67]Africans to the Americas and the Caribbean, primarily through the European-fueled extraction of slaves. The Black Atlantic is not African or American or Caribbean or European; rather, it is a unique fusion of elements of each. More specifically, the Black Atlantic is a system of hybridity, ambiguity, and tension, where those of African descent who cannot be classified as White must confront an as-yet unrealized politics of fulfillment of promises to create a truly just society and a politics of transfiguration to create some new type of reality that transforms existing societal structures. On the one hand, Black Atlantic music, literature, dance, and other artistic expressions hold hope that the political, economic, and social practices and processes that once legally segregated African peoples in the Americas and Caribbean to second-class citizenship will eventually truly emancipate them; on the other hand, these structures are the very means of continued inequality and must be replaced with new constructions that undermine the foundations of the modern world. Artists and theorists in the Black Atlantic ask: Instead of moving toward a colorblind society where race does not matter, perhaps race is an essential cultural construction that can never be universally explained to everyone's satisfaction. According to the Black Atlantic concept, African-descended people in the Americas, Caribbean, and Europe do not possess a stabile fixed racial identity—for example, as Americans versus African Americans or as British instead of Black Britons—they must continually confront questions about who they are in a world where they have never been completely accepted. Such a condition, furthermore, is not necessarily only a negative existence; powerful community can be created when one identifies as a member of a group that is resilient and has thrived in the face of hundreds of years of adversity.