Page 137 - Introducing Cultural Studies
P. 137
he Black Atlantic
Gilroy suggests the idea of the "Black Atlantic" as a new
analytical category. The Atlantic should be taken as a single,
complex unit and used to produce an explicitly transnational and
intercultural perspective. This would involve rethinking the ways
in which black American cultural and political histories have
been conceived and presented.
The intellectual legacy claimed by African-American intellectuals
will be shown to be only partly their "absolute ethnic property".
Other claims to it could be used to build a new structure of the
African diaspora in the West.
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