Paul Gilroy

Essays by Owen E. Brady, Kelly C. Connelly, Juan F. Elices, Keith Hughes, Derek C. Maus, Jerrilyn McGregory, Laura Quinn, Francesca Canadé Sautman, Daniel Stein, Lisa B. Thompson, Terrence Tucker, and Albert U. Turner, Jr. In Finding a Way Home, thirteen essays by scholars from four countries trace Walter Mosley's distinctive approach to representing African American responses to the feeling of homelessness in an inhospitable America. Mosley (b. 1952) writes frequently of characters trying to construct an idea of home and wrest a sense of dignity, belonging, and hope from cultural and communal resources. These essays examine Mosley's queries about the meaning of "home" in various social and historical contexts. Essayists consider the concept--whether it be material, social, cultural, or virtual--in all three of Mosley's detective/crime fiction series ( Easy Rawlins, Socrates Fortlow, and Fearless Jones), his three books of speculative fiction, two of his "literary" novels ( RL's Dream, The Man in My Basement), and in his recent social and political nonfiction. Essays here explore Mosley's modes of expression, his testing of the limitations of genre, his political engagement in prose, his utopian/dystopian analyses, and his uses of parody and vernacular culture. Finding a Way Homeprovides rich discussions, explaining the development of Mosley's work.

Described as one of the most intellectually formidable cultural and social theorists of our time, Paul Gilroy has reshaped debates on racism, nationalism and multiculturalism. In April 2018, Prof. Paul Gilroy returned to Norway for the first time in over a decade for a series of public and academic events in Oslo and Bergen. Gilroy appeared at events held at the Houses of Literature in Oslo and Bergen, and the Universities of Oslo and Bergen, which took place between the 17th and 20th of April 2018 and marked the 25th anniversary of the publication of Gilroy’s seminal work for which he is arguably best known, his 1993 classic The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness [Harvard University Press]. This article is a transcript of a conversation held at the House of Literature in Oslo on the 17th of April 2018 between Professor Paul Gilroy (King's College London, UK) and Associate Researcher Sindre Bangstad (KIFO, Norway). It has been annotated for clarifications and contextualization in an effort to bring this conversation in line with Professor Gilroy’s work, legacy and thoughts on the current historical moment, in light of his own intellectual labour. As such this interview illuminates some of the ways in which Paul Gilroy offers a diagnosis of the contemporary political climate while also accounting for this moment in relationship to his own work throughout the years on the interconnectedness of race, racism, and nationalism.

The present essay by Erik Davis, written in 1996, is of extraordinary importance for our series of books and for the rhizosphere thought in general. Despite its 22 years of age, the essay still displays its keenness and foresight. If it is true that it maintains the captivating vibration of the 90s, the essay of the Californian writer has great merit according to the metamatic perspective of the Strong of the Future: it enriches the Deleuzian thought with the “polyrhythmic splendour” of the Afro-diasporic cultures of the last part of the ‘90s and of the new century. (Read more)

Erik Davis' Bio
Erik Davis was born during the Summer of Love within a stone’s throw of San Francisco. He grew up in North County, Southern California, and spent a decade on the East Coast, where he studied literature and philosophy at Yale and spent six years in the freelance trenches of Brooklyn and Manhattan before moving to San Francisco, where he currently resides. He is the author of four books: Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica(Yeti, 2010), The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape (Chronicle, 2006), with photographs by Michael Rauner, and the 33 1/3 volume Led Zep- pelin IV (Continuum, 2005). His first and best-known book remains TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (Crown, 1998), a cult classic of visionary media studies that has been translated into  five languages and recently republished by North Atlantic Press. He has contributed chapters on art, music, technoculture, and contemporary spirituality to over a dozen books, including Suzanne Treister’s HFT: The Gardener (Black Dog), Future Matters: the Persistence of Philip K. Dick (Palgrave), Sound Unbound: Writings on Contemporary Multimedia and Music Culture (MIT, 2008), AfterBurn: Re ections on Burning Man (University of New Mexico, 2005), Rave Ascension (Routledge, 2003), and Zig Zag Zen (Chronicle, 2002). In addition to his many forewords and introductions, Davis has contributed articles and essays to a variety of periodicals, including Bookforum, Arthur, Artforum, Slate, Salon, Gnosis, Rolling Stone, the LA Weekly, Spin, Wired and the Village Voice.

This article examines conceptual obstacles to emancipation which have emerged historically within Left theory on both sides of the Atlantic, concerned primarily with “class versus race” debates spanning from the post-war Hegelian moment to the post-structural present. While the “cultural turn” promised to give voice against structuralist silencing, the critical subject of emancipation has been defaced, eradicated such that we currently have no theoretical place from where to build an emancipatory project. We must clear an analytical space through which a renewed subject of liberation can be founded. In drawing out theoretical continuity and change across varied temporal and spatial locations—Fanon/Sartre and the French-Algerian encounter; Gilroy/Miles and British urban unrest—the article explores how the Left imaginary has lost its theoretical integrity, especially in its Foucauldian gaze, and is currently unable to provide a robust vision, beyond self-other interplay, of emancipatory change.

Apresentamos o Sopapo Poético, sarau de poesia negra que acontece em Porto Alegre desde 2012. Entendemos que nesse evento ocorre um encontro de duas tendências: a recente difusão dos saraus periféricos em São Paulo e outras cidades do Brasil com a tradição da poesia negra brasileira, especialmente a produzida desde a década de 1970. Esse encontro ocorre em um contexto específico que condiciona a atuação do movimento negro gaúcho: Porto Alegre, significativa “cidade letrada” e capital do Rio Grande do Sul, estado marcado por uma identidade regional racializada no mito do gaúcho europeizado. Descrevemos o funcionamento do sarau, desenvolvido em três momentos: a roda de poesia, com participação espontânea da audiência; a apresentação do Sopapinho, onde as crianças são levadas ao centro da roda; e o homenageado da noite, que combina o relato de trajetória com a performance artística. Entre os homenageados, destacamos duas figuras relevantes para a estética do sarau: o poeta Oliveira Silveira e o sopapeiro Giba Giba. Analisando as intervenções poéticas nas suas dimensões textual e performática, somos levados a pensar na íntima ligação entre o estético e o político que se constrói no sarau. As ideias de Paul Gilroy sobre a política cultural diaspórica no Atlântico negro servem para compreender o contexto de conflito e as formas de elaboração da identidade cultural afro-gaúcha.