The Practice of Diaspora

by Edwards, Brent Hayes

• ISBN13: 9780674011038
• ISBN10: 0674011031
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-07-10
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

A pathbreaking work of scholarship that will reshape our understanding of the Harlem Renaissance, The Practice of Diaspora revisits black transnational culture in the 1920s and 1930s, paying particular attention to links between intellectuals in New York and their Francophone counterparts in Paris. Brent Edwards suggests that diaspora is less a historical condition than a set of practices: the claims, correspondences, and collaborations through which black intellectuals pursue a variety of international alliances. Edwards elucidates the workings of diaspora by tracking the wealth of black transnational print culture between the world wars, exploring the connections and exchanges among New York-based publications (such as Opportunity, The Negro World, and The Crisis) and newspapers in Paris (such as Les Continents, La Voix des Negrave;gres, and L'Etudiant noir). In reading a remarkably diverse archive--the works of writers and editors from Langston Hughes, Reneacute; Maran, and Claude McKay to Paulette Nardal, Alain Locke, W. E. B. Du Bois, George Padmore, and Tiemoko Garan Kouyateacute;--The Practice of Diaspora takes account of the highly divergent ways of imagining race beyond the barriers of nation and language. In doing so, it reveals the importance of translation, arguing that the politics of diaspora are legible above all in efforts at negotiating difference among populations of African descent throughout the world.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Prologue

Variations on a Preface Translating the Word Negre

The Frame of Blackness Race and the Modern Anthology Border Work

A Blues Note

On Reciprocity: Rene Maran and Alain Locke Veritable Roman Negre

A "Black Logic" of the Preface Paris

Heart of the Negro Race Encounter on the Rhine

The Practice of Diaspora

Feminism and L'Internationalisme Noir

Paulette Nardal Gender in Black Paris Feminism and La Depeche Africaine Salons and Cercles d'Amis Black Magic Begin the Beguine

Vagabond Internationalism

Claude McKay's Banjo Legitime Defense

Translating Banjo Vagabond Internationalism Diaspora and the "Passable Word"

The Boys in the Band Black Radicalism and the Politics of Form

Inventing the Black International

George Padmore and Tiemoko Garan Kouyate

The Negro Worker Black Collaboration, Black Deviation Black Marxism in Translation Toward a Francophone Internationalism International African Coda

The Last Anthology

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

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