Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic (Liverpool Studies in International Slavery, 3) - Hardcover

Rice, Alan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846314712 ISBN 13: 9781846314711

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2010

Synopsis

The book is not restricted by geographical strictures like many studies but includes work on European, Caribbean, African and North American examples of memorialisation.

The book ranges across chronologies including case studies on all centuries from the 18th to the 21st and often mixing chronologies within the case studies themselves.

The book is determinedly interdisciplinary ranging across music, visual arts, literature, museum and film studies allowing for a dynamic range of examples to be brought forward and juxtaposed making it a more interesting study than many heretofore discussions of memorialisation.

It uses the latest theories in the study of memory by black Atlantic and French philosophers and melds them with the authors' own development of a theory of "guerrilla memorialisation" which is followed through a number of the case studies.

It follows on from the work of Marcus Wood and Paul Gilroy to discuss the complex issue of representation and the black body in the wake of the horrors of the Transatlantic slave trade using the work of contemporary artists to analyse the limits and potentialities of representation in the wake of catastrophe.

About this title

About the Author

Alan Rice is Professor of English and American Studies, University of Central Lancashire. He is author of Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic (Continuum, 2003), and co-editor with Martin Crawford of Liberating Sojourn: Frederick Douglas and Transatlantic Reform (University of Georgia Press, 1999).

Review

"What Rice manages to do is join the dots between yesterday and today to show how the impact of the genocide has seeped into contemporary culture by the tools, skills and crafts of the artistic world. He takes the reader on a journey through music and the visual arts to remind the reader that we, the people of the African continent and Diaspora are strong survivors not merely victims-decedents of the blood of history."-- SuAndi, National Black Arts Alliance

"Rice 's book is of immense value, both in terms of its content and method."-- Journal of African Political Economy

"One of the most impressive aspects of the book is the rare balance it achieves between the author's personal rage at the subject he confronts, and the need for its analytical, intellectual dissection based upon scrupulous historical research. It is itself a testament to the author 's own political commitment, and thus again aligns itself with a distinguished tradition of radical British history.'"--Journal of American Studies Roundtable

"Well written, in an accessible style on an important topic that deserves wider readership than an academic audience."--Journal of American Studies Roundtable

"Rice's Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic is a fine study of the complications involved in memorialising slavery in the black Atlantic is a discourse which touches upon Africa, the Caribbean, the United States and the United Kingdom."--Wasafiri #71

"With his new book on memorialization and the formation of transnational identities, Alan Rice makes an important contribution to the burgeoning field of Black Studies in Europe."--New West Indian Guide

Edition details

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1846314712
• ISBN 13: 9781846314711
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 244