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The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. By Brent Hayes Edwards. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp. viii, 397; 20 illustrations. $55.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.
Though trans-Atlantic connections between Africa, Europe, and the Americas have long been a subject of study, its recent revival in popularity, particularly among younger scholars, must be largely credited to the publication of Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (1993). A sociologist trained in cultural studies, Gilroy's work argued for a diasporic model of cultural connection in order to understand the similarities and differences among black communities around the Atlantic, and, furthermore, the "counter-modernity" such communities have posed against Western humanism and its institutions. Gilroy's argument was both exciting and frustrating: exciting for the promise it held for transcending area studies boundaries and recasting the history of the Atlantic world, frustrating for its lack of empirical engagement. This latter aspect has been particularly resonant among historians familiar with the persistent, hard-won efforts by scholars of the Atlantic slave trade, from Melville Herskovits and Eric Williams to contemporaries such as John Thornton and Joseph Inikori.
The Practice of Diaspora is situated between these two approaches of theory and empiricism. Brent Hayes Edwards is a literary scholar, concerned with contemporary cultural debates, though with a specific historical goal in mind: to recover and analyze the sets of trans-Atlantic relationships-from Paris and Harlem, to Martinique and Ubangui-Shari (contemporary Central African Republic)-that developed among black intellectuals during the interwar period. Edwards's work is consequently more chronologically focused and more empirically based than Gilroy's. His emphasis on...