Local Color, Global "Color" Langston Hughes, the Black Atlantic, and Soviet Central Asia, 1932
In 1993, Paul Gilroy published a fine book, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, which provided the world of black cultural studies a vivid example of Arthur Koestler's observation that the more original a discovery is, the more obvious it seems afterwards. The obviousness of Gilroy's thesis in short, that there exists and has existed in this century a black culture that is neither African, Caribbean, American, nor European, but is rather all of these at once and more and the lucidity with which Gilroy expresses it, is bespoken by the fact that in the short time since his book appeared, the designation "Black Atlantic" has come rapidly to be a key analytic term in African and Afro diasporic cultural studies. Gilroy sustains his Black Atlantic thesis by means of a handful of close readings of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and others and frames those readings with rich theoretical discussion. In this fashion he issues a double set of double invitations. First, Gilroy's work invites us to look more closely at our books: that is, to pursue more close readings in, and further nuanced theories of, the texts that constitute the Black Atlantic. Second, Gilroy's work invites us to reassess our maps: how we subdivide the world, and do what I call geo/graphy. Gilroy argues that static maps or fixed geographical distinctions are of little use for analysis of Black Atlantic cultures, since what animates them is not only what takes place "inside" their borders, and not only what has come "originally" from Africa, but also what has taken place among them: the several centuries of their noncentric criss crossings, returns, networks, paths, interactions, links, and, importantly, their interplays with Europe. Thus from a Black Atlantic perspective one is compelled to think more deeply about Senghor in France (his Europhilia is surely more than just a "defect" Alex Haley in The Gambia, the Caribbean all over, and more. Gilroy's thesis is admittedly large, and despite its range of reference, his writing of it leaves out some major pieces, including the Lusoand HispanoAfrodiaspora an omission he admits (Lott 77 78) and Africa "itself," about which he seems unfortunately less concerned. With all that in mind, within the confines of this essay I will not pretend to comprehensively assess his book. Rather, in the pages that follow, I will pursue the challenge offered to the notion of the Black