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

by Amy Abugo Ongiri

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813929606
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	12/16/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Amy Abugo Ongiri is Assistant Professor in the English Department and Film and Media Studies Program at the University of Florida.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Cotton Comes to Harlem: An Introduction 1

1 "Black Is Beautiful!": Black Power Culture, Visual Culture, and the Black Panther Party 29

2 Radical Chic: Affiliation, Identification, and the Black Panther Party 58

3 "We Waitin' on You": Black Power, Black Intellectuals, and the Search to Define a Black Aesthetic 88

4 "People Get Ready!": Music, Revolutionary Nationalism, and the Black Arts Movement 124

5 "You Better Watch This Good Shit!": Black Spectatorship, Black Masculinity, and Blaxploitation Film 156

Conclusion: Dick Gregory at the Playboy Club 187

Notes 195

Bibliography 205

Index 219

Editorial Reviews

Spectacular Blackness is one of the sharpest discussions of the Black Arts Movement, Black Power, and popular culture that I have encountered. It is the best account of the cultural impact of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense that I have read.

James Smethurst

Spectacular Blackness is a most important contribution to discussions in progress of the Black Arts Movement and the Black Power era in general. From readings of Chester Himes and Richard Wright to explications of Amiri Baraka and Melvin van Peebles, this book will reward readers with a succession of carefully constructed critiques. Spectacular Blackness is a model of what good interdisciplinary study should look like.

Aldon L. Nielsen

" Spectacular Blackness is one of the sharpest discussions of the Black Arts Movement, Black Power, and popular culture that I have encountered. It is the best account of the cultural impact of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense that I have read. "—James Smethurst, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, author of author of The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s

" Spectacular Blackness is a most important contribution to discussions in progress of the Black Arts Movement and the Black Power era in general. From readings of Chester Himes and Richard Wright to explications of Amiri Baraka and Melvin van Peebles, this book will reward readers with a succession of carefully constructed critiques. Spectacular Blackness is a model of what good interdisciplinary study should look like. "—Aldon L. Nielsen, Pennsylvania State University, author of author of Black Chant

From the Publisher