Afterthoughts: Romanticism, the Black Atlantic, and Self-Mapping

JOEL PACE Afterthoughts: Romanticism, the Black Atlantic, and SelfMapping True navigation begins in the human heart. It’s the most important map of all. —Elizabeth Kapu’uwailani Lindsey1 “Be a cartographer, a map maker, Be able to find Afro-American land, Search thoroughly, it may be close to black land. Be amended: j/jths . . —Lonnie Lynn2 They came with ships and guns Enlightenment That is why today Enlightenment They call us third world Enlightenment We are no third world Enlightenment We have always been first Enlightenment All I need to say is set your minds to Africa Check your world map and see Zero degrees down and across —Fela Kuti, “Africa Center of the World”3 1. Elizabeth Kapu’uwailani Lindsey, “Curating Humanity’s Heritage,” Ted Talk, 24 Feb­ ruary 2011, http://awakentopeaceandlove.blogspot.com/20i1/02/elizabeth-lindsey-curatinghumanitys .html, accessed 16 December 2016. 2. Lonnie Lynn AKA Pops (Common’s father), featured on Common’s “It’s Your World,” Be (Sony, 2005). 3. Fela Kuti and Roy Ayers, Music of Many Colors (M. I. L. Multimedia, 1996). SiR, 56 (Spring 2017) 113 114 JOEL PACE S AINT PAUL LIES COVERED IN BLANKETS OF WHITE. SO MUCH SNOW FALLS that rapper Slug of Atmosphere has referred to the state as “Minnesnowta,” and it remains on the ground so long that Prince’s title, “Sometimes It Snows in April,” is not hyperbole but a factual reflection on the weather in his beloved Twin Cities.4 Just two winters ago, Prince’s brief appearance on the Grammys reminded the world that, in his words, “like books and Black lives, albums still matter.”5 Spoken a year and a half before the fatal shooting of a black motorist in a suburb of St. Paul, these words continue to ring true in a state that will always remember both Prince and Philando Castile. In the wake of Castile’s death, the continually accruing layers of whiteness that city employees attempt to remove in or­ der to allow for free passage for all take on a symbolic meaning. Mapping a metaphorical connection between winter and slavery has precedent in Lauryn Hill’s lines: “After winter, must come spring / Change, it conies eventually,” as well as in Phillis Wheatley’s “The frozen deeps may break their iron bands.”6 Like Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” Wheatley’s and Hill’s lines chart the changes of the seasons as linked to the inevitability of progress in civil liberties.7 Prince speaks about books, Black lives, and albums in the same breath. All three are also implicitly connected in the Fela Kuti lyrics, quoted above, which remap the racist legacy of the Enlightenment ideologically, underscoring and anticipating the Black Lives Matter Movement’s urgent call for “Curriculums That Critically Examine the Political, Economic, and Social Impacts of Colonialism and Slavery.”8 Kuti’s lyrics reclaim mapping from its colonialist past by charting the places that were left off the map and changing the orientation of the map to expose the lines the colonizers erased, distorted, or never delineated, and this coda suggests applying just such a strategy to Romantic studies to help answer some of the following questions and pose new ones, all provoked, in one way or another, by the preceding essays in this issue of Studies in Romanticism. In what ways does the present-day political climate—with unprece­ dented documentation and protest of police shootings of African Ameri­ cans, the US presidential election, and the Brexit vote—speak to Romanti­ cism and vice versa? What will the field look like if the map zooms out 4. Atmosphere, “Say Shh,” Seven's Travels (Rhymesayers, Epitaph, 2003). 5. Prince Rogers Nelson, Presentation of Album of the Year, 57th Grammy Awards, 8 February 2015; Prince, “Sometimes It Snows in April,” Under the Cherry Moon (Warner Brothers, 1986). 6. Lauryn Hill, “Everything is Everything,” The Miseducation ofLauryn Hill (Columbia and Ruffhouse Records, 1998); Phillis Wheatley, “On Imagination” (line 25). 7. Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind” (final line). 8. Movement for Black Lives, https://m4bl.net, accessed 16 December 2016. AFTERTHOUGHTS 115 from England until the Atlantic is at...