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5 - Memory and representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Ron Eyerman
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

I was theirs and they were mine. I sang the race memory, and we were united in centuries of belonging.

Maya Angelou

The historical context which set the parameters for a reworking of the discursive grounds for black American collective identity was bounded by the Great Depression and the Second World War. These events were significant in that they helped structure the formation of a generational awareness amongst black intellectuals, writers, and artists, and thus condition their attempts to reconfigure the process of identity-formation and collective memory. The new generation revisioned collective identity through a dialectic of remembering and forgetting within the process of cultural trauma begun earlier, and was structured by the two narrative frameworks set in place by the previous generation. Even as the younger generation struggled to define itself in opposition to the ideas and beliefs of their direct elders, they were bounded by inherited interpretative frames. The mass media, especially film and radio, would play a central role in the contemporary process of collective identity-formation, as would a range of social movements and their organizations.

The two artists mentioned at the end of Chapter 4, Aaron Douglas and Sargent Johnson, had something else in common other than their links to the Harlem Renaissance and a vision of the collective past. During the 1930s they benefited from the American government's active intervention to aid in the preservation and representation of American culture.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cultural Trauma
Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity
, pp. 130 - 173
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

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  • Memory and representation
  • Ron Eyerman, Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
  • Book: Cultural Trauma
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511488788.005
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  • Memory and representation
  • Ron Eyerman, Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
  • Book: Cultural Trauma
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511488788.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Memory and representation
  • Ron Eyerman, Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
  • Book: Cultural Trauma
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511488788.005
Available formats
×