In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Preface The appearance of the late Kwame Ture’s autobiographical Ready for Revolution (Carmichael 2003) might have been a pivotal moment for Black Studies, Black intellectualism, Black politics, Black activism—and that other Black formulation at the bottom of it all: Who could have thought it? I mean, two simple, clear, very commonly used English words. One an adjective, the other a noun. Basic. Nothing the least obscure or academically pretentious about them. Nothing mysterious or even slightly ambiguous either. Just two ordinary, unthreatening, everyday words in common usage. . . . But in combination? He’p us Jesus! (Carmichael 2003, 523–24) The combination was explosive. The words, of course, were “Black Power.” Today may represent a low point for this dream, its nadir for now, its destabilization and disappointment. But this is no cause for pessimism as far as Ture is concerned: “That is why I say, despite its apparent power, and precisely because of its excesses, American capitalism is weaker today than it has ever been. As sure as Africa is my mother, and she is my mother, revolution will come to America” (781). So concluded this student of history from Harlem, New York, and Conakry, Guinea, via Port of Spain, Trinidad. The last re®ections on Black Power by this All-African People’s Revolutionary Party organizer should not be overlooked: “Suddenly rendered menacing, sinister, and subversive of public order and stability, the two words would, in short order, have me denied entry into France and Britain, declared persona non grata, and banned in thirty territories of the former British Empire, including the country of my birth”(524). They reveal the depth and ferocity of something even bigger. For if this concept was and is “beyond the cognitive reach of the white national [and international] media and public” (524), it must be because “white power” continues to rule with an iron (if largely unnamed) ¤st. This is the power of white colonial rule, politically, economically, culturally, etc., past and present. Yet, as neo-colonialism and imperialism are replaced by the language of post-coloniality and multi-culturalism (not to mention post-modernism), for example, this other power dynamic goes largely unchecked, especially in U.S. academia. And, certainly, the critical rhetoric of “race, gender, class, and sexuality ” has done virtually no damage to Western empire in its North American– dominated phase. This is not because there is anything necessarily tame about the topics named “gender” and “sexuality” themselves, not at all. It is because the framework in which they have been addressed has been inadequate, increasingly so since the emergence of Black Studies as a project and paradigm. Indeed, many articulations of race, gender, class, and sexuality take no account of a global historical context of domination or hegemony; and, what’s more, Black radical traditions are ironically seen as anathema, even pathological, as if they were a social menace or scourge. This view is clearly in keeping with the logic of white colonial power itself. But there can and must be a sexual analysis of the colonial and neo-colonial power complex of white racist imperialism. The contemporary scholarship of Occidentalism makes this kind of analysis appear unthinkable for the academic and non-academic status quo as well as many of those who claim to challenge it, whether in Western or non-Western fashion. This study is undertaken in the spirit of Pan-African traditions out of vogue in a conservative, counter-revolutionary age; and it seeks to improve upon those studies to which it is seriously indebted. Chapter 1 examines the concept and categories of a history of sexuality current in Europe and North America from the vantage point of Africa and African Diaspora. It outlines the serious limitations of Michel Foucault’s historicization by interrogating the cultural politics of its notion of history and juxtaposing it with that of Martin Bernal, Cheikh Anta Diop, and I¤ Amadiume. No modern category of sexual identity or manner of thinking escapes the consequences of this treatment of Aryan models of historiography. Chapter 2 continues this line of inquiry with regard to gender. It analyzes the racial politics of the Victorian cult of domesticity in the context of U.S. chattel slavery, along with recent writings on the social construction of identity. It illustrates how white colonial womanhood is strangely reinscribed by even the most challenging academic work on slavery (e.g., that of Hazel V. Carby, Deborah Gray White, and Angela Y. Davis), and how current theories of social...

Share