Even before its release in 2012 Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained was the object of hot tr... more Even before its release in 2012 Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained was the object of hot transatlantic discussions, mostly criticizing the film as one more item to add to the long list of "white savior narratives" produced by Hollywood and questioning the right of white authors to appropriate black stories. Indeed, unlike the Caribbean and other former slave countries, where the public memorialization of the abolition of slavery and the slave trade has recently shifted its focus from benevolent white heroes to black freedom fighters, the US still finds black heroism and the representation of the agency of the enslaved problematic. While challenging the interpretation of Tarantino's film as a white savior narrative, this essay deals with the US failure to represent black rebels fighting for emancipation in the public space. It also explores African American visual and literary counternarratives of black heroism, finally asking whether Jamie Foxx's Django, thou...
List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Black Bodies, Practices, Discourses around the Atla... more List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Black Bodies, Practices, Discourses around the Atlantic 1. Circumatlantic Connections, local lives David Hammons's Sheep Lottery at Dak'Art 2004: Reading Black Art through Leopold Sedar Senghor's Negritude Manthia Diawara From South Africa to Europe to North America and Back: Sol Plaatje, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Routes of Romance Annalisa Oboe Negritude as Performance Practice: Rio de Janeiro's Black Experimental Theatre Judith M. Williams The Book of the Dead: Inscribing Torture into the Black Atlantic Nicole Waller The Spirit of Brazil: Football and the Politics of Afro-Brazilian Cultural Identity Richard Follett Black Man and White Ladyship (1931): A Manifesto Renata Morresi "What We All Long For": Dionne Brand's Transatlantic Metamorphoses Franca Bernabei Slavery, History and Satire: The Legacy of Gilberto Freyre Marcus Wood 2. Modern Societies, Ancient Routes Return to the Source: Amilcar Cabral and Flora Gomes Patrick Williams Ghosts of Memories, Spirits of Ancestors: Slavery, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic Cristina Lombardi-Diop Transatlantic Minstrelsy: Performing Survival Strategies in Slavery and Hip-Hop Venus Opal Reese Transbodied/Transcultured: Moving Spirits in Katherine Dunham's and Maya Deren's Caribbean Dorothea Fischer-Hornung Venture Smith and James Baldwin: Two Strangers in the Village Ginevra Geraci The Iconic Ship in the Atlantic Dialogue of Black Britain Itala Vivan Lost in Transit: Africa in the Trench of the Black Atlantic Oyekan Owomoyela 3. Black Bodies, Global voices I Sing the Black Body Electric: Transnationalism and the Black Body in Walt Whitman, Alain Locke and Paul Robeson Jeffrey C. Stewart W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Intellectual Abroad Anna Scacchi Re-Mapping Caribbean Land(Sea)scapes: Aquatic Metaphors and Transatlantic Homes in Caryl Phillips's The Atlantic Sound Elvira Pulitano Strike a Pose: Capitalism's Black Identity Paulla A. Ebron "Nothing but a feeling of brotherhood": The Interracial Question and the Return to Africa in Pauline Hopkins's Of One Blood Simone Francescato Marine Origins and Anti-Marine Tropism in the French Caribbean: Andre and Simone Schwarz-Bart Antoinette Tidjani Alou Narratives of Traversal: Jamaica Kincaid and the Erasure of the Postcolonial Subject Paul Giles Contributors Bibliography Index
On the use of 'race': notes and queries In 2014 the Italian Institute of Anthropology lau... more On the use of 'race': notes and queries In 2014 the Italian Institute of Anthropology launched an appeal to remove the word 'race' from article 3 of the Italian Constitution, substituting it with 'skin color' and adding an explicit denial of the existence of 'alleged races'. Similar appeals were presented in the same year, on the grounds that since 'race' is a social construct whose existence is denied by genetics, using the word, however critically, gives it legitimacy and reality. The lukewarm debate raised by the proposals has mainly revolved around whether the banning of a word is an effective weapon in the fight against racism. Because of the European reluctance to use the notion of race as an interpretive paradigm and the limited familiarity with Critical Race Theory, it has not dealt with issues that are instead central to the discourse on race in Great Britain and the US, that is to say race as foundational in the making of Western mod...
Uniti degli ultimi due decenni alcuni episodi di interesse locale sono di-ventati argomento di di... more Uniti degli ultimi due decenni alcuni episodi di interesse locale sono di-ventati argomento di discussioni vivaci nella stampa e nelle reti televisive nazio-nali, a causa dei loro legami con i conflitti culturali che dividono la società lungo assi razziali, etnici e di genere. Uno dei casi più interessanti ha riguardato la cosid-detta "controversia su Huck Finn", nella quale lo scontro tra sostenitori di pedago-gie multiculturali e difensori della grandezza della tradizione occidentale ha mes-so in luce quanto la questione non riguardasse tanto la letteratura quanto il rap-porto tra conoscenza e potere. L'attacco a Huck Finn è forse la manifestazione più clamorosa ed estrema della rivendicazione da parte delle minoranze del diritto a mettere in discussione l'universalità del canone letterario insegnato ai giovani ame-ricani dalle elementari all'università. Manifestazione altrettanto estrema della bat-taglia per la salvaguardia della tradizione WASP è la difesa ...
Herman Melville’s novella “Benito Cereno”, as many readers have pointed out, makes explicit refer... more Herman Melville’s novella “Benito Cereno”, as many readers have pointed out, makes explicit reference to the Haitian Revolution, showing its centrality to the history and cultural imaginary of the United States. Based on the events narrated by Amasa Delano in his 1817 memoir, “Benito Cereno” changes the original text in ways that reframe it as a revisionist history of the Haitian Revolution where the United States sea captain successfully crushes the rebellious slaves’ fight for freedom. Not only does Melville’s work highlight the United States’ complex relationship with the other American Revolution; in its protagonist’s refusal to see the rebellion as a claiming of the right to liberty on the part of the enslaved Africans, it also exemplifies the tropes of erasure and trivialization through which, as Michel-Rolph Trouillot argued in Silencing the Past, Western modernity has turned the Haitian Revolution into an unthinkable event.
Even before its release in 2012 Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained was the object of hot tr... more Even before its release in 2012 Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained was the object of hot transatlantic discussions, mostly criticizing the film as one more item to add to the long list of "white savior narratives" produced by Hollywood and questioning the right of white authors to appropriate black stories. Indeed, unlike the Caribbean and other former slave countries, where the public memorialization of the abolition of slavery and the slave trade has recently shifted its focus from benevolent white heroes to black freedom fighters, the US still finds black heroism and the representation of the agency of the enslaved problematic. While challenging the interpretation of Tarantino's film as a white savior narrative, this essay deals with the US failure to represent black rebels fighting for emancipation in the public space. It also explores African American visual and literary counternarratives of black heroism, finally asking whether Jamie Foxx's Django, thou...
List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Black Bodies, Practices, Discourses around the Atla... more List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Black Bodies, Practices, Discourses around the Atlantic 1. Circumatlantic Connections, local lives David Hammons's Sheep Lottery at Dak'Art 2004: Reading Black Art through Leopold Sedar Senghor's Negritude Manthia Diawara From South Africa to Europe to North America and Back: Sol Plaatje, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Routes of Romance Annalisa Oboe Negritude as Performance Practice: Rio de Janeiro's Black Experimental Theatre Judith M. Williams The Book of the Dead: Inscribing Torture into the Black Atlantic Nicole Waller The Spirit of Brazil: Football and the Politics of Afro-Brazilian Cultural Identity Richard Follett Black Man and White Ladyship (1931): A Manifesto Renata Morresi "What We All Long For": Dionne Brand's Transatlantic Metamorphoses Franca Bernabei Slavery, History and Satire: The Legacy of Gilberto Freyre Marcus Wood 2. Modern Societies, Ancient Routes Return to the Source: Amilcar Cabral and Flora Gomes Patrick Williams Ghosts of Memories, Spirits of Ancestors: Slavery, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic Cristina Lombardi-Diop Transatlantic Minstrelsy: Performing Survival Strategies in Slavery and Hip-Hop Venus Opal Reese Transbodied/Transcultured: Moving Spirits in Katherine Dunham's and Maya Deren's Caribbean Dorothea Fischer-Hornung Venture Smith and James Baldwin: Two Strangers in the Village Ginevra Geraci The Iconic Ship in the Atlantic Dialogue of Black Britain Itala Vivan Lost in Transit: Africa in the Trench of the Black Atlantic Oyekan Owomoyela 3. Black Bodies, Global voices I Sing the Black Body Electric: Transnationalism and the Black Body in Walt Whitman, Alain Locke and Paul Robeson Jeffrey C. Stewart W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Intellectual Abroad Anna Scacchi Re-Mapping Caribbean Land(Sea)scapes: Aquatic Metaphors and Transatlantic Homes in Caryl Phillips's The Atlantic Sound Elvira Pulitano Strike a Pose: Capitalism's Black Identity Paulla A. Ebron "Nothing but a feeling of brotherhood": The Interracial Question and the Return to Africa in Pauline Hopkins's Of One Blood Simone Francescato Marine Origins and Anti-Marine Tropism in the French Caribbean: Andre and Simone Schwarz-Bart Antoinette Tidjani Alou Narratives of Traversal: Jamaica Kincaid and the Erasure of the Postcolonial Subject Paul Giles Contributors Bibliography Index
On the use of 'race': notes and queries In 2014 the Italian Institute of Anthropology lau... more On the use of 'race': notes and queries In 2014 the Italian Institute of Anthropology launched an appeal to remove the word 'race' from article 3 of the Italian Constitution, substituting it with 'skin color' and adding an explicit denial of the existence of 'alleged races'. Similar appeals were presented in the same year, on the grounds that since 'race' is a social construct whose existence is denied by genetics, using the word, however critically, gives it legitimacy and reality. The lukewarm debate raised by the proposals has mainly revolved around whether the banning of a word is an effective weapon in the fight against racism. Because of the European reluctance to use the notion of race as an interpretive paradigm and the limited familiarity with Critical Race Theory, it has not dealt with issues that are instead central to the discourse on race in Great Britain and the US, that is to say race as foundational in the making of Western mod...
Uniti degli ultimi due decenni alcuni episodi di interesse locale sono di-ventati argomento di di... more Uniti degli ultimi due decenni alcuni episodi di interesse locale sono di-ventati argomento di discussioni vivaci nella stampa e nelle reti televisive nazio-nali, a causa dei loro legami con i conflitti culturali che dividono la società lungo assi razziali, etnici e di genere. Uno dei casi più interessanti ha riguardato la cosid-detta "controversia su Huck Finn", nella quale lo scontro tra sostenitori di pedago-gie multiculturali e difensori della grandezza della tradizione occidentale ha mes-so in luce quanto la questione non riguardasse tanto la letteratura quanto il rap-porto tra conoscenza e potere. L'attacco a Huck Finn è forse la manifestazione più clamorosa ed estrema della rivendicazione da parte delle minoranze del diritto a mettere in discussione l'universalità del canone letterario insegnato ai giovani ame-ricani dalle elementari all'università. Manifestazione altrettanto estrema della bat-taglia per la salvaguardia della tradizione WASP è la difesa ...
Herman Melville’s novella “Benito Cereno”, as many readers have pointed out, makes explicit refer... more Herman Melville’s novella “Benito Cereno”, as many readers have pointed out, makes explicit reference to the Haitian Revolution, showing its centrality to the history and cultural imaginary of the United States. Based on the events narrated by Amasa Delano in his 1817 memoir, “Benito Cereno” changes the original text in ways that reframe it as a revisionist history of the Haitian Revolution where the United States sea captain successfully crushes the rebellious slaves’ fight for freedom. Not only does Melville’s work highlight the United States’ complex relationship with the other American Revolution; in its protagonist’s refusal to see the rebellion as a claiming of the right to liberty on the part of the enslaved Africans, it also exemplifies the tropes of erasure and trivialization through which, as Michel-Rolph Trouillot argued in Silencing the Past, Western modernity has turned the Haitian Revolution into an unthinkable event.
A quasi un anno dalla sua pubblicazione, il volume Parlare di razza. La lingua del colore tra Ita... more A quasi un anno dalla sua pubblicazione, il volume Parlare di razza. La lingua del colore tra Italia e Stati Uniti si rivela in perfetta sintonia con gli eventi accaduti in Italia in questi ultimi mesi. Chi scrive lo fa nella settimana [17 luglio 2013] in cui il neoeletto Ministro per l'Integrazione Cécile Kyenge è stata oggetto degli ennesimi attacchi verbali a sfondo razzista (questa volta da parte del vicepresidente del Senato Roberto Calderoli, non nuovo a tali uscite), e in cui l'ex consigliera leghista Dolores Valandro è stata condannata in tribunale per aver attaccato lo stesso ministro in un post su Facebook con parole altrettanto ingiuriose. Ecco quindi tornare prepotentemente alla ribalta il dibattito sul problema della razza, sul cosa voglia dire essere razzisti, oggi, in Italia, sul problematico rapporto fra un linguaggio e una cultura del razzismo, e sull'occultamento di un discorso pubblico più ampio, in nome di un invito a 'non strumentalizzare' ch...
Pubblicato nel 1855 sulla rivista Putnam's "Benito Cereno" è stato spesso interpretato come un ra... more Pubblicato nel 1855 sulla rivista Putnam's "Benito Cereno" è stato spesso interpretato come un racconto sul problema del male. Solo negli ultimi decenni il suo drammatico contesto storico, una nazione impegnata in un acceso dibattito sulla legittimità della schiavitù, a pochi anni dallo scoppio dellla Guerra Civile, è diventato una prospettiva obbligata per la lettura dell'opera. Questo saggio intreccia alla storia delle interpretazioni di "Benito Cereno" un continuo dialogo con il testo, nel quale la lettura del mondo e la ricostruzione del passato sono problemi centrali, per mostrare come tema di Melville sia non l'illeggibilità del reale ma, piuttosto, la questione della validità di una narrazione storica nella quale la verità è una funzione del potere.
Al seminario, organizzato da Anna Scacchi nell'ambito delle attività del gruppo di ricerca Postco... more Al seminario, organizzato da Anna Scacchi nell'ambito delle attività del gruppo di ricerca Postcolonialitalia, parteciperanno studiosi nordamericani, inglesi e italiani che si occupano di culture della visualità da diversi campi disciplinari (letteratura, storia, cinema, media, arti visive, etc.)
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