Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies

by Kobena Mercer

Welcome to the Jungle brings a black British perspective to the critical reading of a wide range of cultural texts, events and experiences arising from volatile transformations in the politics of ethnicity, sexuality and "race" during the 1980s. The ten essays collected here examine new forms of cultural expression in black film, photography and visual art exerging with a new generation of black British artists, and interprets this prolific creativity within a sociological framework that reveals fresh perspectives on the bewildering complexity of identity and diversity in an era of postmodernity. Kobena Mercer documents a wealth of insights opened up by the overlapping of Asian, African and Caribbean cultures that constitute Black Britain as a unique domain of diaspora.

Genres: Academic, Cultural, Cultural Studies

350 pages, Paperback

First published July 29, 1994

About the author

Kobena Mercer is a writer and critic living in London. He is the editor of Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures, Cosmopolitan Modernisms, and Discrepant Abstraction (all published by The MIT Press and inIVA), author of Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, and an inaugural recipient of the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, presented by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met Mercer after he gave a lecture at Barnard and was able to have a brief conversation with him. It was like meeting a rock star. An art historian rock star. I got all weak in the knees, my heart was pounding, and I couldn't stop grinning. I'm such a dork. Contemporary art theory about the African diaspora is apparently what turns me on.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (Paperback)
by Kobena Mercer

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from the WorldCat computer:
Welcome to the Jungle brings a black British perspective to the critical reading of a wide range of cultural texts, events and experiences arising from volatile transformations in the politics of ethnicity, sexuality and "race" during the 1980s. The ten essays collected here examine forms of cultural expression in black film, photography and visual art exerging with a new generation of black British artists, and interprets this prolific creativity within a sociological framework that reveals fresh perspectives on the bewildering complexity of identity and diversity in an era of postmodernity. Kobena Mercer documents a wealth of insights opened up by the overlapping of Asian, African and Caribbean cultures that constitute Black Britain as a unique domain of diaspora. As a result of the turbulent displacements of the 1980s, new forms of hybrid identity came out of the margins while others were progressively de-centered. Looking at the United States and Britain as societies of the black diaspora, ambiguous manifestations of this dynamic are critically examined across a variety of surfaces from Michael Jackson's ethnic androgyny to the cut and mix profusion of post-essentialist sensibility expressed in the medium of black hairstyles.


Contents: Introduction: Black Britain and the Cultural Politics of Diaspora -- 1. Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson's Thriller -- 2. Diaspora Culture and the Dialogic Imagination: The Aesthetics of Black Independent Film in Britain -- 3. Recoding Narratives of Race and Nation -- 4. Black Hair/Style Politics -- 5. Black Masculinity and the Sexual Politics of Race. True Confessions / Kobena Mercer and Isaac Julien. Racism and the Politics of Masculinity. AIDS, Racism and Homophobia. Engendered Species -- 6. Reading Racial Fetishism: The Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe. Imaging The Black Man's Sex (1986). Skin Head Sex Thing: Racial Difference and the Homoerotic Imaginary (1989) -- 7. Dark & Lovely: Black Gay Image-Making -- 8. Black Art and the Burden of Representation -- 9. Welcome to the Jungle: Identity and Diversity in Postmodern Politics -- 10. "1968": Periodizing Politics and Identity