scholarly journals Fear of a Black planet: Climate apocalypse, Anthropocene futures and Black social thought

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102110679
Author(s):  
Joe P. L. Davidson ◽  
Filipe Carreira da Silva
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Octavia Butler ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World

In recent years, images of climate catastrophe have become commonplace. However, Black visions of the confluence of the Anthropocene and the apocalypse have been largely ignored. As we argue in this article, Black social thought offers crucial resources for drawing out the implicit exclusions of dominant representations of climate breakdown and developing an alternative account of the planet’s future. By reading a range of critical race theorists, from Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois to Octavia Butler and Ta-Nehisi Coates, we propose a rethinking of the climate apocalypse. The African American theoretical and cultural tradition elaborates an image of the end of the world that emphasises the non-revelatory nature of climate catastrophe, warns against associating collapse with rebirth, and articulates a mode of maroon survivalism in which the apocalypse is an event to be endured and escaped rather than fatalistically expected or infinitely delayed.

On Freedom and the Will to Adorn

2019 ◽  
pp. 10-35
Author(s):  
Cheryl A. Wall
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Zora Neale Hurston ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
African American Authors ◽  
The Will ◽  
Artistic Interventions ◽  
American Authors

This chapter discusses how black essayists worked through and around ideas of freedom to produce new variations of the genre of the essay. The author shows how the African American essay serves as the medium through which authors make crucial political, social, and artistic interventions. At the same time the author is attentive to formal changes in the essay. Through a series of representative examples from authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, and Zora Neale Hurston, this chapter charts the way the essay at its best expresses both a determination to be free and the “will to adorn.” Although the emphasis changes, black essayists use three rhetorical strategies to make these crucial interventions: democratic eloquence, troubled eloquence and vernacular process. Frederick Douglass utilizes democratic eloquence to make crucial interventions in anti-slavery discourse. W.E.B. Du Bois’ troubled eloquence marks a historical shift in which freedom becomes aligned as much with individual identity as with a people’s collective freedom. Zora Neale Hurston uses a “vernacular process” to fuse high and low styles in her meditation on freedom and racial identity. It is through the use of these strategies that African American authors make a mark on the genre itself.

Teaching the counter story. An analysis of narration in African American cookbooks using Critical Race Theory

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Jill White
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Institutionalized Racism ◽  
The Right ◽  
Nutrition Educators ◽  
Good Food

As nutrition educators we must promote sensitivity to the historical roots of eating and food patterns.  This analysis of narratives from a sampling of cookbooks written by African Americans, represents an attempt to give voice to an unconventional source of documentation regarding the historical experiences of a people oppressed by enslavement and institutionalized racism as told through recipe sharing.  The themes that emerged from an examination of the missions and motivations of the authors included; history, work, cultural tradition, and empowerment in the struggle to survive. Critical Race Theory provided a lens to examine the counter story told by these authors. The counter story documented the unrecognized contributions of African Americans to the culture of all food practices in America, through their roles as cooks in domestic and industrial settings, as well as their own homes.  We need to develop an appreciation of the celebration of life that is expressed through food in the African American community.  And we must advocate for the right to good food, healthcare and education for all of the communities and people we serve.

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