Page 64 - Culture Society and Economy

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GILROY: NEITHER BLACK NOR ATLANTIC

This [the politics of transfiguration] emphasizes the emergence of qualitatively
new desires, social relations, and modes of association within the racial
community of interpretation and resistance and [sic] between the group
and its erstwhile oppressors. It points specifically to the formation of a
community of needs and solidarity which is magically made audible in
the music [of black people] itself and palpable in the social relations of is
cultural utility and reproduction. 45

This notion of ‘erstwhile oppressors’ begs all the questions. What is ‘erst-
while’ about contemporary racism or the current immiseration of Africa –
an entire continent? What is ‘erstwhile’ about the regimes imposed on
the developing world by the International Monetary Fund, the World
Trade Organization and the entire apparatus of globalization? This is an
extraordinary formulation on the part of Gilroy which brings out dramat-
ically the difference between his viewpoint and that of Stuart Hall
referred to earlier. By declaring oppression ‘erstwhile’, Gilroy arrives at
a politics of solidarity between the oppressed and oppressor groups without
qualification. And this consigning of the material basis of racism to slavery
and to the colonial past – the assumption that racism has no contemporary
material basis – plays a major role here in the formulation of such a polit-
ical approach. This politics of transfiguration is conceived of as superior
and elevated in comparison to the less lofty nationalistic struggles of par-
ticular groups of people. Since oppression is now erstwhile, ‘transfigura-
tion’ – an appropriately mystical term – supersedes the need for a politics
of national struggle. But the need for national (and class) struggles to rise
above the purely local and national is not a metaphysical quality deriving
from a ‘politics of transfiguration’. It arises from the global nature of
the system of finance capital and of imperialism. Far from requiring the
dissolution of a national struggle into an international one, imperialism
requires that the national (and class struggle) be internationalist in their
strategy. Both the national and class struggle have to be conducted in a
strategic framework in which they make common cause with other, similar,
national struggles as well as with the class and other struggles of those strata
of the ‘erstwhile oppressors’ to the extent that these strata oppose the oppres-
sive activities of their own group over other peoples. But none of this means
that nationalist struggles have lost any of their vital importance.
It is vital to appreciate that ‘transfiguration’ is not presented in this
manner by Gilroy – as a politics of solidarity between differing class and
national groups. In fact, ‘transfiguration’ in any meaningful sense poses
the biggest challenge for progressive members of the oppressing group
who are often called upon to oppose the policies of the government
of their nation. Gilroy does not, however, pose the issue in this manner.

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