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University Distinguished LectureWhat is Africa to Me?: Africa in the Black Diaspora ImaginationAbstract Despite the historical adversity that the creation of the modern world system, during the Atlantic slave trade, and its subsequent functioning has entailed for Black people, it came to contain, in the emotional and intellectual response of Blacks in the New World to their collective experience, the sense of new beginnings for the African homeland. This theme of African renewal had an inspirational value for movements of emancipation among black people in America and proved to be a powerful formative influence on African nationalist consciousness, paving the way to the elaboration of a project of modernity in Africa. The lecture reviews the origins in the Black Diaspora of this historic relationship in its affective and intellectual dimensions. Professor Irele examines the status of Africa as a focus of consciousness in Black Diaspora discourse, as manifested in the ideological expression and in the imaginative literature that served as channels of black American consciousness. He considers the efforts to construct an intellectual foundation for black collective life and expression in America through the disciplines of History, Philosophy and Literary Theory. Exploring the meanings and resonances of the celebrated poem, "Heritage," by the African American poet Countee Cullen, Professor Irele offers a re-assessment of the career and work of such prominent figures as W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, and a reinterpretation of the African theme in African American literature-in the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance and Toni Morrison's Paradise---as well as in Caribbean literature, in particular Derek Walcott's Omeros. |
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