Spectacular Blackness
eBook - PDF

Spectacular Blackness

The Cultural Politics of the Black Power Movement and the Search for a Black Aesthetic

  1. 240 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Spectacular Blackness

The Cultural Politics of the Black Power Movement and the Search for a Black Aesthetic

About this book

Exploring the interface between the cultural politics of the Black Power and the Black Arts movements and the production of postwar African American popular culture, Amy Ongiri shows how the reliance of Black politics on an oppositional image of African Americans was the formative moment in the construction of "authentic blackness" as a cultural identity. While other books have adopted either a literary approach to the language, poetry, and arts of these movements or a historical analysis of them, Ongiri's captures the cultural and political interconnections of the postwar period by using an interdisciplinary methodology drawn from cinema studies and music theory. She traces the emergence of this Black aesthetic from its origin in the Black Power movement's emphasis on the creation of visual icons and the Black Arts movement's celebration of urban vernacular culture.

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Yes, you can access Spectacular Blackness by Amy Abugo Ongiri in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & North American Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
1
“Black 
Is 
Beautiful!”
BLACK 
POWER 
CULTURE, 
VISUAL 
CULTURE, 
AND 
THE 
BLACK 
PANTHER 
PARTY
One 
does 
not 
necessarily 
have 
to 
wait 
for 
a 
revolutionary 
situation 
to 
arise; 
it 
can 
be 
created.
—Ernesto 
“Che” 
Guevara, 
Guerilla 
Warfare
LITTLE 
JOHNNY 
IN 
SCHOOL
Little 
Johnny 
says, 
“My 
brother 
was 
in 
Vietnam 
and 
got 
shot 
in 
the 
ass.”
The 
teacher 
says, 
“Hey 
freeze, 
freeze. 
Don’t 
say 
‘ass,’ 
say 
‘rectum.’ 
”
Little 
Johnny 
says, 
“ 
‘Rect 
’um?’ 
Shit, 
it 
killed 
’um!”
—Richard 
Pryor, 
Bicentennial 
Nigger
Guerilla 
Warfare 
Che 
Guevara’s 
Armed 
Struggle 
and 
the 
Black 
Panther 
Party
Ernesto 
“Che” 
Guevara’s 
simple 
formulation 
of 
the 
factors 
that 
enabled 
the 
1965 
revolution 
in 
Cuba 
and 
that 
could 
potentially 
enable 
revolution 
throughout 
the 
world 
were 
widely 
read 
and 
highly 
influential 
among 
all 
who 
considered 
themselves 
dispossessed 
and 
revolutionary 
during 
the 
so-
cial 
and 
cultural 
upheaval 
of 
the 
mid-1960s 
to 
late 
1970s. 
In 
a 
1968 
film, 
Black 
Panther,
created 
by 
the 
Third 
World 
Newsreel 
Collective 
and 
the 
Black 
Panther 
Party 
to 
highlight 
their 
cause 
and 
the 
situation 
of 
their 
im-
prisoned 
leader, 
Huey 
P. 
Newton, 
the 
camera 
pauses 
didactically 
on 
a 
copy 
of 
Venceremos,
a 
1969 
collection 
of 
Guevara’s 
speeches 
and 
essays, 
as 
New-
ton 
describes 
from 
his 
jail 
cell 
the 
goals 
of 
the 
party 
and 
its 
possible 
sphere 

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Contents
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. Cotton Comes to Harlem An Introduction
  5. 1. “Black Is Beautiful!” Black Power Culture, Visual Culture, and the Black Panther Party
  6. 2. Radical Chic Affiliation, Identification, and the Black Panther Party
  7. 3. “We Waitin’ on You” Black Power, Black Intellectuals, and the Search to Define a Black Aesthetic
  8. 4. “People Get Ready!” Music, Revolutionary Nationalism, and the Black Arts Movement
  9. 5. “You Better Watch This Good Shit!” Black Spectatorship, Black Masculinity, and Blaxploitation Film
  10. Conclusion Dick Gregory at the Playboy Club
  11. Notes
  12. Bibliography
  13. Index