Global Black Movements

A special issue of Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2019) | Viewed by 35161

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Africana Studies, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY 13323, USA
Interests: the history of the Guyana newspaper press; pan-Africanism; black political & social movements; Caribbean Black Power; race and sport; Carnivals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The function and impact of global black movements have been scrutinized over generations by legions of scholars and activists. Black movements of all forms and intent have risen up to challenge slavery, colonialism, global capitalism and the concurrent system of racial oppression. How, why and when these movements arose and the contours of their individual and collective impact(s) are of critical importance in present scholarship.

This special issue on global black movements attempts to explain and assess the global social and political movements in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Americas through a 200+ year period – from the revolutions of the end of the 18th century (including the Haitian revolution) to modern 20th and 21st century political, social and cultural movements in the black diaspora.

What constitutes a “black social movement”? How do we address the complexity of the resistance activity of these movements? What is the legacy of earlier black movements for current black movements?

This special issue will also address not only the forms these movements assumed, but their theoretical and programmatic bases, racial and ethnic social formations, variations in type and consequences or outcomes, and the contexts in which they arose.

Most importantly, given the rise of new variations of the old racism in the USA and Europe and elsewhere, it is more imperative for scholars to examine and assess the world system as it is presently unfolding under the hegemonic control of global capitalism and white supremacy.

Given the upsurge of new and old breeds of racism and systemic oppression arising around the world and symbolized by the open racism emerging from the current occupant of the White House, it is a prime time for scholars of all disciplines to assess the contests and experience(s) faced by global black movements, old and new.

In accepting new submissions for this special issue we urge interdisciplinary scholarly approaches that can advance the discussion, connect past and present, candidly assess the weaknesses and strengths of the public record and the silences in and omissions from it. For example, there has been the emergence of new research and writing on black women’s movements, an issue which has been largely omitted from the scholarship. Keisha Blain’s Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (2018) is one such text, looking as it does at how “black nationalist women…vigorously fought to challenge global white supremacy during the twentieth century.”

Of earlier vintage in seeking “to reclaim and advance an old but largely unheralded, story of black struggles worldwide” was Michael West and William Martin’s From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of Revolution (2009). These interventions, old and new are imperative, as the challenges and outcomes faced by these movements are potentially relevant for the study of modern black movements, inclusive of the call for reparations and (social) class and gender in black movements.

The journal Genealogy creates a space for the examination of black movements, past and present, and we invite submissions that interrogate topics including but not limited to the following broad subject areas:

  • The pan-Africanist movement
  • The Garvey movement (UNIA)
  • Black feminist internationalists
  • The anti-apartheid movement
  • Black Marxism
  • The Caribbean black power movement;
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Afro-Latincultural movements in South America and the Caribbean
  • Black nationalism
  • Black movements and individual protest in Sport
  • Black separatism
  • The civil rights movement
  • The ‘Black is Beautiful’ Campaign & movement
  • The Black Arts Movement
  • Negritude
  • The Black evangelical movement
  • The Haitian revolution
  • The reparations movement
  • Rastafarianism
  • Black Panthers
  • Black Consciousness movement
  • Combahee River Collective

Dr. Nigel Westmaas
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • pan-Africanism
  • black diaspora
  • white supremacy
  • resistance
  • racism

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 367 KiB  
Article
Ubuntu: Revisiting an Endangered African Philosophy in Quest of a Pan-Africanist Revolutionary Ideology
by Temitope Fagunwa
Genealogy 2019, 3(3), 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3030045 - 3 Aug 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 9838
Abstract
In the final analysis, Kwame Nkrumah advanced that pan-Africanism must be about the unity of African masses under socialist governments. However, the concept of pan-Africanism in recent times has been misconstrued in the most treacherous manner. On one hand, the concept has been [...] Read more.
In the final analysis, Kwame Nkrumah advanced that pan-Africanism must be about the unity of African masses under socialist governments. However, the concept of pan-Africanism in recent times has been misconstrued in the most treacherous manner. On one hand, the concept has been reduced to a “dansiki-wearing” competition by a layer of cultural nationalists; and on the other hand, it has been reduced to a “Black capitalism” bourgeois agenda. In spite of the apparent failures of capitalism, bourgeois economists like Nigeria’s Tony Elumelu, have been peddling a purported refined capitalist system under the ambiance of “Africapitalism”, as a stimulant for economic growth and development in Africa. Under the pretense of a “pan-African” agenda, bourgeois economists have been touting this neoliberal agenda across the continent and beyond, for self-serving purposes. The danger this portends is the detachment of pan-Africanism from its socialist agenda. Indeed, existing works on African personality have showed the nexus between a pre-colonial communal relationship and socialism. The Sotho epistemology, Ubuntu, is undoubtedly a product of this ancient communal relationship. Ubuntu expresses the humanistic tendencies that are fast going into extinction in today’s individualistic society. Ultimately, the withering of Ubuntu is not unconnected to the dominance of capitalism. The economic system through alienation has not just distorted the relationship among humans, but also between humans and nature. This study thus argues that Ubuntu as a value system is a material product of pre-feudal African society; and that because of this trajectory, Ubuntu must be reassessed as a potential social force for resistance that can pave the way for the emergence of a scientific socialist African society. Ubuntu is not scientific socialism and vice-versa, but the value system if properly understood can lay the foundation towards the birth of the former. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Black Movements)
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11 pages, 208 KiB  
Article
Black Religion and Black Power: The Nation of Islam’s Internationalism
by Bayyinah S. Jeffries
Genealogy 2019, 3(3), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3030034 - 29 Jun 2019
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 11575
Abstract
The Nation of Islam’s influence has extended beyond the United States. This Black American Muslim movement has used the intersection of race and religion to construct a blueprint of liberation that has bonded people of African descent throughout the Diaspora. Their transnational dimensions [...] Read more.
The Nation of Islam’s influence has extended beyond the United States. This Black American Muslim movement has used the intersection of race and religion to construct a blueprint of liberation that has bonded people of African descent throughout the Diaspora. Their transnational dimensions and ideas of freedom, justice and equality have worked to challenge global white imperialism and white supremacy throughout the 20th century and beyond. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Black Movements)
9 pages, 205 KiB  
Article
Modernity, Representation of Violence, and Women’s Rebellion in Dangaremba’s Nervous Conditions
by Meyre Ivone Da Silva
Genealogy 2019, 3(2), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3020022 - 19 Apr 2019
Viewed by 5510
Abstract
In 1980, after decades of violent war, the apartheid regime came to an end, Zimbabwe was declared an independent state, and Robert Mugabe’s party the Zimbabwean African Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) ascended to power. While black leaders concentrated on the struggle against the tyranny [...] Read more.
In 1980, after decades of violent war, the apartheid regime came to an end, Zimbabwe was declared an independent state, and Robert Mugabe’s party the Zimbabwean African Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) ascended to power. While black leaders concentrated on the struggle against the tyranny of racial segregation, independence did not challenge gender hierarchies or minimize patriarchal privilege. Women soldiers who participated in the guerrillas were excluded from the spheres of power and relegated to poverty and invisibility. Here, I analyze how Dangaremba’s novel Nervous Conditions unveils women’s response to multiple forms of violence that target their bodies and minds. Although Dangaremba does not refer explicitly to the Chimurenga, also known as the bush war, in the novel, the sadness, bitterness, and sentiment of betrayal subsume women’s feeling about their absence in the construction of a new nation. For women writers, the representation of violence, through a feminine and postcolonial perspective, opens up creative ways to pursue textual liberation, thus defying literary genre and literary forms often very connected to systems of power. In this sense, her narrative instills in the reader the sentiment which evolves from women’s condition in the novel. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Black Movements)
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14 pages, 284 KiB  
Article
Black Lives Matter! Nigerian Lives Matter!: Language and Why Black Performance Matters
by Abimbola A. Adelakun
Genealogy 2019, 3(2), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3020019 - 14 Apr 2019
Viewed by 7242
Abstract
This essay explores performance as a language by looking at its appropriation by other cultures, and the associated history of the crafted phrases that are borrowed along. I start by noting that to create awareness of the massacres that have recently occurred in [...] Read more.
This essay explores performance as a language by looking at its appropriation by other cultures, and the associated history of the crafted phrases that are borrowed along. I start by noting that to create awareness of the massacres that have recently occurred in some parts of Nigeria, commentators, both in and out of the country, and activist-cum-protesters created the term “Nigerian Lives Matter.” They appropriated from “Black Lives Matter,” the American-originated advocacy movement that campaigns against violence and brutality against black people. I show that these forms of lexical interchange are possible because of non-Americans’ familiarity with America’s racial history, and black performance liberation expressivity, which they have been acculturated into as a result of their long exposure to American culture. Beyond phrases however, I argue that black performance itself is a language that has a global resonance among minorities. To illustrate this further, I do a close reading of This is Nigeria, a recent music video released by Nigerian lawyer turned artist, Folarin Falana (Falz), alongside a version of the original production, This is America, also recently released by Donald Glover (Childish Gambino). Both songs continue in the older tradition of African and African American transatlantic political relations through music, the shared understanding of the similarities of anti-black oppression, and the formation of aesthetics that mediate the advocacy of black liberation. The songs are also a pointer to how black advocacy might continue to unfold in contemporary era. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Black Movements)
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