Associate Professor of Africana Studies Donald Carter presented a paper at the Africans in Europe in the Long 20th-Century: Transnationalism, Translation and Transfer conference, organized by the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies, University of Liverpool, in October. His paper was titled “Blackness Over Europe: Meditations on Culture and Belonging.”
Carter writes, ”Many years ago Stuart Hall in his article "Cultural Identity and Diaspora" alerted us to think of identity as a process crafted in part through emergent cultural practices forged in part through the experience of new subjectivities that we might think of “identity as a 'production,' which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (Hall 1993).
“Blackness Over Europe: Meditations on Culture and Belonging" explores the interplay of the notion of Blackness perhaps not yet Black Europe set against the backdrop of a changing European context. As new communities emerge with incisive notions of their creative and defining roles in shaping an emergent Black Europe the possibility of sounding old forms of connectivity is counterpoised to new modes of living in the present. While encounters with anti-black ideologies, anti-immigrant sentiments and policies present a terrain marked by new challenges to “black humanity,” new potential outcomes of experience and meanings suspend Blackness over Europe suggesting an emergent social ontology.
“Groups of writers, migrants and children born in this new context may hold out the most poignant examples of the direction of cultural practices and belonging for the future. Such meanings and subjective postures have a way as Hall suggested insinuating themselves across borders, cultural boundaries and languages in new and unforeseen ways.”
Carter writes, ”Many years ago Stuart Hall in his article "Cultural Identity and Diaspora" alerted us to think of identity as a process crafted in part through emergent cultural practices forged in part through the experience of new subjectivities that we might think of “identity as a 'production,' which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (Hall 1993).
“Blackness Over Europe: Meditations on Culture and Belonging" explores the interplay of the notion of Blackness perhaps not yet Black Europe set against the backdrop of a changing European context. As new communities emerge with incisive notions of their creative and defining roles in shaping an emergent Black Europe the possibility of sounding old forms of connectivity is counterpoised to new modes of living in the present. While encounters with anti-black ideologies, anti-immigrant sentiments and policies present a terrain marked by new challenges to “black humanity,” new potential outcomes of experience and meanings suspend Blackness over Europe suggesting an emergent social ontology.
“Groups of writers, migrants and children born in this new context may hold out the most poignant examples of the direction of cultural practices and belonging for the future. Such meanings and subjective postures have a way as Hall suggested insinuating themselves across borders, cultural boundaries and languages in new and unforeseen ways.”
