Africa in Twentieth-Century Black Atlantic Discourse
Author: Babacar M'Baye
Date Of Publication: 2008-11-01
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-0003-7
Isbn: 1-4438-0003-1
Twentieth-century Black literary and political figures of the United States and the Caribbean related to Africa in complex and ambivalent ways that did not prevent them from denouncing the social, economic, and political oppressions of the West against Blacks of Africa and the Diaspora during slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism. In their discourse about these subjugations, Black Atlantic intellectuals and political figures such as Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., reflect paradoxes in their representation of Africa. Yet they identify with Africa by vehemently criticizing the impact of Western imperialism on the conditions of Blacks of Africa and the West. These Black Diasporan intellectuals have participated in a long Pan-Africanist intellectual discourse about the predicament of people of African descent that deserves more attention than it has received. While the works of these intellectuals reveal intrinsic contradictions about race, class, and gender, they reflect strong resistance against White domination and promote Black cultural, economic, and political ideologies of development that should not be misinterpreted as separatist, reactionary, essentialist, or ethnocentric. Black Atlantic intellectuals denounce racism, imperialism, classism, and sexism while developing a fluid, cosmopolitan, yet persistent Pan-Africanist consciousness.

Dr. Babacar M’Baye received his Ph.D. in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University, his M.A. in American Studies from Pennsylvania State University, and his B.A. in English from Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis. Babacar is currently teaching African American and Pan-African literature at Kent State University. He has published articles and book chapters on the relations between Phyllis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and Africa. His teaching and research areas include late eighteenth-and-early-twentieth century Pan-African literature; twentieth-century African American literature, twentieth century African literature, and Black Atlantic Studies.

"Babacar M'Baye's ambitious and broad-ranging book reconsiders the many links between writers of the African diaspora – both American (Baldwin, Hughes, Wright, and Gates) and Caribbean (Garvey, Fanon, and James) – and Africa itself. Charting a course between what he argues are misguided essentialisms and postmodernities, M'Baye discusses both canonical and little-known texts and engages an impressive range of scholars. Importantly, this book advocates a principled, rooted cosmopolitanism: a tonic direction for scholarship in our globalizing age."

David Chioni Moore, PhD, Associate Professor & Chair, International Studies, Associate Professor of English, Director of African Studies, Macalester College, Saint Paul, MN 55105 USA

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