Tradition and the Black Atlantic / Critical Theory in the African Diaspora
by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Basic Civitas Books. 2010. Hardcover. FINE in FINE dust jacket. 205pp.
Gates traces the field's development from the unlikely anti-colonialist figure Edmund Burke to complicated and controversial figures like Richart Wright, Frantz Fanon and Spike Lee. For Gates, Hall's formulation that "Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories" is the guiding principle of cultural studies: in an age when indeterminancy is vilified as a vacuous core of postmodern life, we also acknowledge that we are who we are and where we are because of historical facts and determinations.
