[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
glamour and vital prestige . Given the ease with which fascism can be
forgotten by generations for whom education has become enmeshed
with entertainment, there is all the more reason to uncover and discuss
the experiences, for example, of black soldiers during the Nazi period,
the experience of black people under the Nazis. Not only does this
extended discussion develop further the earlier commentaries on the
Jewish and black diasporas, it also seeks to lace them together by tracing
the centrality of racial science to fascist thinking. Gilroy sees connections
within the machinery of Nazi propaganda and the technologies of con-
temporary consumer culture, most notably the centrality of visual
imagery as a way of giving life to the nation . The body iconography
perfected in Leni Riefenstahl s 1930s film Triumph of the Will, a visual
culture of race , finds itself uncritically replayed not only in the work of
commercial fashion photographers like Bruce Weber, but also in that of
the much praised gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Being vigi-
lant of these consequences of forgetfulness is as important as subjecting
contemporary black commercial culture to scrutiny, particularly for its
abandonment of communality, for forward thinking, for creating a
wonderful culture of dissidence in favour of conservatism, misogyny
and sex . These black arts no longer question the social; instead they
seek intimate satisfactions in lifestyle and racial recreation , the bed-
room and the four wheel drive .
There is a narrative line in Between Camps which sees the destruction
of the dynamics of freedom and dissidence which were encapsulated
in black expressive culture. Sex and the culture of the gym replace
love and a politics and what Bhabha might call a political imaginary of
the beyond . Even death no longer resonates as a modality of politi-
cal effectivity, something which historically registered in the memory
of those who chose not to give in to death as a legitimate expression of
black pain. Instead death in the ghetto, either through drugs, HIV or
drive-by killings is almost unremarkable. The successes of neo-liber-
alism with the growth of its distinctive leisure culture make other
forms of social organisation all the more difficult to envisage; thus
there seems to be a more intense investment in the pleasures and
thrills which capitalism has to offer. Black people are now permitted,
through the license accorded to them by advertising imagery, to
Uses Cultural Studies 10/3/05 11:52 am Page 59
Gilroy s Critique of Racialised Modernity 59
demonstrate what Gilroy calls corporeal vitality . But while it is just
this which Fanon beautifully described as exactly what was denied
the black male ( I dream I am jumping, swimming, running, climbing ,
quoted in Gilroy, 2000: 255) it is now a mark of the limits of what can
be achieved. No wonder, then, that Gilroy s voice becomes melan-
cholic, but as it does so also is his writing more forceful, more
emphatic in its expression of the existence of other possibilities of a
resolutely nonracial humanism .
Notes
1 The three books (Gilroy 1987, 1993 and 2000) could be seen as a tril-
ogy, so coherent is the development of an argument about the
dangers of ethnic absolutism, the proximity of fascistic sensibilities
and the political desire for moving beyond race.
2 The precise contours of how ethnic absolutisms operate within
racially subjugated communities requires more extensive analysis, in
the UK as well as in the USA, for instance in the Today programme
(BBC Radio 4, September 2001) it was reported that a handful of
members of the Bradford Sikh community met with the neo-fascist
British National Party on the basis of shared ideas about racial sep-
aration. However, this was immediately condemned by other
members of the Asian community.
3 Tony Blair spoke in praise of Enoch Powell at his funeral on 18th
February 2002.
4 In the aftermath of September 11th 2001 there have been a range of
political interventions aimed at securing the inclusion of British [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl wyciskamy.pev.pl
glamour and vital prestige . Given the ease with which fascism can be
forgotten by generations for whom education has become enmeshed
with entertainment, there is all the more reason to uncover and discuss
the experiences, for example, of black soldiers during the Nazi period,
the experience of black people under the Nazis. Not only does this
extended discussion develop further the earlier commentaries on the
Jewish and black diasporas, it also seeks to lace them together by tracing
the centrality of racial science to fascist thinking. Gilroy sees connections
within the machinery of Nazi propaganda and the technologies of con-
temporary consumer culture, most notably the centrality of visual
imagery as a way of giving life to the nation . The body iconography
perfected in Leni Riefenstahl s 1930s film Triumph of the Will, a visual
culture of race , finds itself uncritically replayed not only in the work of
commercial fashion photographers like Bruce Weber, but also in that of
the much praised gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Being vigi-
lant of these consequences of forgetfulness is as important as subjecting
contemporary black commercial culture to scrutiny, particularly for its
abandonment of communality, for forward thinking, for creating a
wonderful culture of dissidence in favour of conservatism, misogyny
and sex . These black arts no longer question the social; instead they
seek intimate satisfactions in lifestyle and racial recreation , the bed-
room and the four wheel drive .
There is a narrative line in Between Camps which sees the destruction
of the dynamics of freedom and dissidence which were encapsulated
in black expressive culture. Sex and the culture of the gym replace
love and a politics and what Bhabha might call a political imaginary of
the beyond . Even death no longer resonates as a modality of politi-
cal effectivity, something which historically registered in the memory
of those who chose not to give in to death as a legitimate expression of
black pain. Instead death in the ghetto, either through drugs, HIV or
drive-by killings is almost unremarkable. The successes of neo-liber-
alism with the growth of its distinctive leisure culture make other
forms of social organisation all the more difficult to envisage; thus
there seems to be a more intense investment in the pleasures and
thrills which capitalism has to offer. Black people are now permitted,
through the license accorded to them by advertising imagery, to
Uses Cultural Studies 10/3/05 11:52 am Page 59
Gilroy s Critique of Racialised Modernity 59
demonstrate what Gilroy calls corporeal vitality . But while it is just
this which Fanon beautifully described as exactly what was denied
the black male ( I dream I am jumping, swimming, running, climbing ,
quoted in Gilroy, 2000: 255) it is now a mark of the limits of what can
be achieved. No wonder, then, that Gilroy s voice becomes melan-
cholic, but as it does so also is his writing more forceful, more
emphatic in its expression of the existence of other possibilities of a
resolutely nonracial humanism .
Notes
1 The three books (Gilroy 1987, 1993 and 2000) could be seen as a tril-
ogy, so coherent is the development of an argument about the
dangers of ethnic absolutism, the proximity of fascistic sensibilities
and the political desire for moving beyond race.
2 The precise contours of how ethnic absolutisms operate within
racially subjugated communities requires more extensive analysis, in
the UK as well as in the USA, for instance in the Today programme
(BBC Radio 4, September 2001) it was reported that a handful of
members of the Bradford Sikh community met with the neo-fascist
British National Party on the basis of shared ideas about racial sep-
aration. However, this was immediately condemned by other
members of the Asian community.
3 Tony Blair spoke in praise of Enoch Powell at his funeral on 18th
February 2002.
4 In the aftermath of September 11th 2001 there have been a range of
political interventions aimed at securing the inclusion of British [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]