Guides readers through the complex, interwoven incarnations of
race-thinking from inception in the modern period through overt
climax in the Colonial Era and the rise of Nazism in Europe to a
lingering presence in today's vernacular cultures and ever more
globalized corporate consumer landscape...[Gilroy] clearly outlines
the complex connections between "race" and "place" in the
development of Colonial Era nation-state identities and the
systematic fascism that followed...Gilroy provides useful,
historically fascinating accounts of black experiences in Europe
during the first half of the twentieth century...Anyone interested
in the history of racial politics and, in particular, the history
of fascism will benefit from...the perspectives Gilroy derives from
the voices of the Atlantic diaspora. Gilroy's examples are
wide-ranging; he clearly is as comfortable discussing Nazi racial
hygiene theories as he is discussing current genetic research, and
is as fluent in critiquing jazz scholars
Paul Gilroy, whose "Black Atlantic" broke through the
nation-specific context of race politics, has written a powerful,
albeit minoritarian defense of the position that racial
thinking--not just racism--is a key obstacle to human freedom (an
aspiration, he sadly notes, that has virtually disappeared from
political discourse). In his analysis of the origins and uses of
racial thinking Gilroy spares from his critique neither black pride
nor black separatism, let alone racism's most virulent forms,
fascism and colonialism...The result is that he has offered one of
the most impressive refutations of race as an anthropological
concept since the publication of Ashley Montagu's "Man's Most
Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race" more than fifty years
ago...Gilroy's reach is dazzling, his analysis acute and
insightful, but in the end he recognizes that, lacking a political
constituency for his planetary humanism, his ideas remain not a
program but a utopian hope...At the end of the day, "Against
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