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  • Being and Blackness in Latin America: Uprootedness and Improvisation
  • Maria José Somerlate Barbosa
Fox, Patricia D. Being and Blackness in Latin America: Uprootedness and Improvisation. Gainesville: Florida UP, 2006. 207 pp.

As the first part of the title suggests, this book is concerned with defining Black aesthetics and Blackness as a "cultural agent." At the very core of Patricia D. Fox's study is the examination of Black culture in Latin America and the relationship between the experiences of peoples of African descent (sometimes she also extends those discussions, connecting them to African-American culture). Fox considers that, similar to culture, Blackness is a dynamic process that has been "accented in Spanish, Portuguese, and English." It is "a journey propelled by uprootedness and expressed with improvisation, responsively shaping life strategies as much as world views and behaviors" (4). She considers "uprootedness" to be based on "displacement and dispossession" and to be "the connective experience of Blackness in the Americas" (24). Fox also explores the [End Page 214] concept of "territoriality" which she borrows from Edward T. Hall who, in turn, found his source of inspiration in ethnology, a field of study in which the term is used to describe "the taking possession, use, and defense of a territory on the part of a living organism," and which he combines with the conceptualization of culture (Fox 25).

The book is composed of two long chapters, each subdivided in four parts. The first section of the study, "Coming to Terms," includes discussions about "uprootedness" as a form of deculturation. She discusses the concepts of "uprootedness" and "territoriality," and ties them to the questions of "becoming places" and "telling times." The author introduces and discusses terms and categories (which also continue to be defined in the second part of the book) and which are used to explain various forms of texts (films, plays and other literary forms, songs, performances, religious ceremonies such as Santería and Candomblé, and festivals such as carnaval). There is not a deep analysis of any of the texts mentioned; they are used mostly to illustrate the concepts that form the foundation of her study.

The second division of the book, "Coming to (Cultural) Consciousness," applies the concepts to more specific readings and offers a critique of some classic studies in the field of the African Diaspora. Fox is still concerned about defining "uprootedness" in different geographical contexts and questioning diasporic stability and allegiances. In this part, she offers an insightful criticism of Antonio Benítez-Rojo's The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Post-Modern Perspective for dismissing "uprootedness," and draws attention to his "methodology of rereading" and "mechanical approach" that favors the "colonizers's gaze" ' (p. 14–15.). She also offers a critique of Gilroy's diasporic insights, considering his study to be a "truncated and anglicized vision of the Black Atlantic" (23). This part also offers several examples of "uprootedness," and "territoriality" and mentions examples of films, plays, songs, and popular festivities in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay. The last three chapters of the second part focus on music, language (orality), and religiosity.

Although the book deserves a lot of merit for the discussions, research and topics addressed, structurally, as well as stylistically, this study could have used a better format. Fox chose to introduce the key concepts in the introduction and in the first part of the book, but not to discuss them fully. Throughout the book she returns to those concepts, expanding on them or deepening the analysis. As a consequence, she spends a lot of time and energy revisiting the conceptualization of the terms. At times, the continuous web of definitions and counter definitions overpowers the ideas expressed and overshadows the analysis of the cultural, literary, musical, and religious texts and contexts that she brings to the fore. Fox's very dense and compact writing style sometimes also seems to work against the argument she is presenting. Despite its structural and stylistic shortcomings, in many ways this is an insightful and well researched book that offers new observations and ways of analyzing Blackness in the Americas, as [End Page 215] it foregrounds the artistic production of...

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