Blackness and Modernity: The Colour of Humanity and the Quest for Freedom (review)

Blackness and Modernity is an "enquiry into Black, Blackness, and multiculturalism and into a specific site or location that is physically and imaginatively Canada. It takes as its point of departure the position that Black and Blackness are two different consciousnesses [sic], even though in a common sense [sic] way, they are often conflated into one" (xiv). Cecil Foster raises the question of what Black and Blackness entail, and spends the bulk of his writing in providing answers. The objective is to provide an opening for the understanding and recognition of Blackness in Canada.

Foster, in his exploration of what it means to be Black, uses a rigorous interdisciplinary analysis to challenge existing notions of Black and Blackness and argues for the viability of a multicultural world. Specifically, Foster posits that "meanings for Black and Blackness always have to be placed in a context and within a specific social system; must be contained within their own individual boundaries and limits; must be always placed, within a time and space, and within a dominant ideology or mythology that determines the very meaning that, as reasonable people, we seek" (xv). Foster finds gaps in previous analyses and epistemologies, as well as in the limited philosophical debates on Blackness in Canada, which he sees as a part of the somatic Black diaspora in the Americas. These gaps he classifies as philosophical, sociological, anthropological, and cultural studies of Blackness which he adopts in his analysis of Black and Blackness.

Foster presents four categories for understanding blackness and whiteness: the somatic, cultural, status differential, and the idealistic views. He identifies the somatic view (the colour of skin) as merely one category that is perhaps the least meaningful, yet is often used as a determinant of the inferior status of racialized and ethnicized black bodies in a Canada that is historically positioned as idealistically white (xxxiii). Modernity, often posited as an ontological whiteness, attempts to make rational idealism the only category that matters. However, Foster, in analyzing blackness and whiteness, shows that modernity is a failed quest for whiteness.

As part of a "world history," Canada became the first country to officially reject epistemological and ontological assumptions of modernity by adopting multiculturalism. Foster cautions that in an attempt to create a multicultural Canada, "we must theorize identity as constituted not outside but within representation... not as a second-order mirror held up to reflect what already exists but as the form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects, and thereby enable us to discover places from which to speak" (Stuart Hall as cited in Foster, xxxviii). He calls for the adoption of a methodological Blackness that combines rationalism and empiricism, as either approach on its own is limited in providing content and form.

Blackness and Modernity is a thought-provoking and genuinely contemplative work that represents the culmination of a long and undoubtedly challenging and difficult process of intellectual inquiry. It departs radically from the kind of linear argumentative development we normally associate with sociological thought. It is a must read book for those who are interested in analyzing and understanding Black identity in a multicultural society. Its interdisciplinary approach makes it a suitable text for academic research, senior undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies, as well as a useful handbook for policy makers in race relations.