The Britishness of Black Britain

2020 ◽  
pp. 26-54
Author(s):  
Joseph H. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
British Literature ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
National Character ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
National Project ◽  
Black British ◽  
Black Britain ◽  
Black British Literature

Chapter 1 argues that articulations of Black Britain, in general and specifically in literary terms, have been imbricated with state-led attempts to redefine Britain and the Union in the light of a new racially-defined diversity: ‘elaborated Britishness’. The chapter traces a shift in Black politics towards inclusion in the British national project, symbolised by Stuart Hall’s urging to ‘put the Black in the Union Jack’, and matched by government efforts to naturalise a new narrative of Britishness premised on inclusivity. This has a pronounced correlation in the institutional and disciplinary formation of Black British literature, and the chapter reads a number of prominent works in the field for their ‘British nationalist’ character. The chapter culminates in an examination of one of the most significant recent works of Black scholarship, Paul Gilroy’s Postcolonial Melancholia. Reflecting on its unconscious British national character from a Scottish critical perspective, the chapter argues for an approach to Blackness informed by sub-national formations in Britain.

Writing Black Scotland

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph H. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Critical Fields ◽  
Scottish Literature ◽  
National Space ◽  
Black British ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
British State ◽  
Black Britain

Writing Black Scotland: Race, Nation and the Devolution of Black Britain examines Blackness in devolutionary Scottish writing, bringing together two established contemporary literary-critical fields – Black British and Scottish literature – with significant implications for both. The book focuses on key literary works from the 1970s to the early 2000s, which emerge from and shape a period of history defined by post-imperial adjustment: a new British state politics of race centred on multiculturalism, the changing status of the Union, and the expanding racial diversity of Scotland itself. The book suggests that the larger world context of Black politics shaped the priorities of Scottish writers in the 1980s and 1990s, at the same time that Black writers were rising to prominence in Scottish letters. Following the referendum on devolved government in 1997, race and racism became even more important negotiations in the national space, evidenced by case studies of three texts directly addressing Blackness in Scotland. This ‘devolving’ of Black Britain parallels the shifting constitutional arrangements in contemporary Britain, implicating not only Scotland but Black British literary studies, which have largely left the integrity of the Union undisturbed. Writing Black Scotland critiques that unifying Britishness, recognisable in a confident state multiculturalism, with reference to the constitutional challenge from Scotland.

scholarly journals Subjektien tilallinen paikantuminen Zadie Smithin romaanissa White Teeth

2016 ◽  
pp. 54-68
Author(s):  
Salla Rahikkala
Keyword(s):  
British Literature ◽  
Empty Space ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Black British ◽  
Cultural Image ◽  
Spatial Positioning ◽  
Question Form ◽  
Black British Literature ◽  
White Teeth

Spatial Positioning of Subjects in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth The aim of this article is to scrutinize how space a ects and shapes construction of gender and ethnicity in Zadie Smith’s (b.1975) novel White Teeth (2000). Smith’s debut novel has been highly acclaimed not only for its portrayal of contemporary British multicultural society but also for its deep and multileveled narration. Today the novel is an important part of Black British Literature and it has gained a lot of academic attention – especially from postcolonial critics – since its publication. This article is built around three di erent kinds of ”you know” expressions found in the novel. All these expressions concern knowledge of intersectional categories of gender and ethnicity. e intersectional identity categories are always constructed in a space, thus positioning subjects and constructing an identity is always a spatial phenomenon. Space is not an empty container or a simple background but a socially produced entity. Thematic meanings of ”you know” expressions vary. First reveals racialized and gendered subject positions into which subjects are discursively positioned. However, it also denotes a break in such kind of thinking. Second expression of knowledge is linked to nationality and Englishness. e relation of ethnicity and nationality are analysed by using Michel Foucault’s concepts of utopia and heterotopia. e idea of homogenous and unitary nation is questioned by a metaphor of a mirror but also by revealing the image of an ”English Rose” to be nothing but an often enough repeated illusion, a cultural image without a real reference point. Third and last knowledge phrase analysed in the article is presented in a form of a question. Question form allows de nitions considering subjectivity and identity to be left open. Even though occupying empty space i.e. to be wholly disconnected from various kind of discursive positionings is not possible, White Teeth nevertheless illustra­ tes that subject positions are always only partial. e question mark suggests that there truly are spaces for questioning xed, normative constructions of gender and ethnicity.

Stories Without Plots

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aarthi Vadde
Keyword(s):  
British Literature ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Caribbean Literature ◽  
George Lamming ◽  
Claude Mckay ◽  
Black British ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Program ◽  
The Common ◽  
Black British Literature

The third chapter brings together Caribbean-born migrant writers Claude McKay and George Lamming, and forms a bridge across the divides of period and national literature that usually assign McKay to the Harlem Renaissance and Lamming either to the category of postwar black British literature or Caribbean literature. In allowing these two writers to converge, I argue that a paranational account of modernist internationalism emerges in their mutual formal and theoretical engagement with plotlessness. A lack of a plot, understood in the polysemic terms of a planned-out heteronormative life, a collective political program, and a patch of land to call home, becomes the common ground from which McKay’s Banjo: A Story without a Plot (1929) and Lamming’s The Emigrants (1954) explore the fugitive life and fantasies of colonial black subjects within a securitized Europe. In deforming plot and finding an alternative idiom, rhythm, and structure for the mobility of stigmatized populations, McKay and Lamming’s novels anticipate contemporary theories of cosmopolitics and international law (namely, those of Etienne Balibar, Seyla Benhabib, and Nicolae Gheorghe), which have argued for the accommodation of transience within territorialized models of belonging and citizenship.

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