Black Atlantic Perspective: Critiques and Affirmations within the Western Tradition
The Black Atlantic Perspective offers a unique critique from within the Western tradition, challenging Eurocentric narratives and promoting the ownership of Western civilization by marginalized voices. Rejecting the label of a slave race, this perspective embraces Christian humanism while condemning attempts to monopolize the Western tradition. Rooted in history, Ethiopianism embodies the affirmation of the Western tradition within the Black Atlantic critique.
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REFLECTIONS ON THE WESTERN TRADITION FROM THE BLACK ATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE Andrew Barnes October 21 2022
Just as the West has never been one, the (subaltern) critique of the West has never been univocal -- critiques that presume other intellectual traditions (Islam, Confucianism, etc.) -- critiques that reflect Paul Gilroy s frog eyed perspective. -- critiques premised on the existence of alternative consciousnesses (LGBT, indigeneity, etc.) BLACK ATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE
BLACK ATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE A subaltern critique that is consistently ignored as distinct is the one that comes from inside the Western tradition itself, from those who have been raised in the Western tradition but denied a Western identity by Europeans. The Black Atlantic critique is one great example of this critique
BLACK ATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE What the Black Atlantic critique is not --shaped by the experience of slavery --shaped by a rejection/repudiation of Christian Western bourgeois liberal humanism What the Black Atlantic critique is --Affirmation of Christian Western bourgeois liberal humanism --Condemnation of European efforts to reserve the Western tradition to themselves
Some history of the Black Atlantic critique --Grows out of the eighteenth-century effort by (Protestant) free people of color to claim space for themselves within the Western tradition --Came to formulate and articulate an intellectual stance that rejected all European arguments that the African race was a slave race with no history --Sought to demonstrate their ownership of Western civilization claiming Africa as a field where they could a) be settlers on the Anglo-American model b) embrace the ultimate act of Christian civilizing the evangelization of Africa BLACK ATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE
Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God (Psalms 68:31) BLACK ATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE Ethiopianism as the essence of the Black Atlantic critique Ethiopianism as a lived affirmation of the Western tradition The Marcus Garvey movement and Ethiopianism
BLACK ATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE Projecting it forward: Ethiopianism and the Present-Day Critique of the Western Tradition What is the West Defending the Western Tradition The Post Colonial Critique Is the West closer to being one now than at any time in the past? Reclaiming and Reconstructing the Western Tradition
