Paul Gilroy
Encyclopedia
Biography
Born in the East End of LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to Guyanese
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
and English parents (his mother was novelist Beryl Gilroy
Beryl Gilroy
Beryl Agatha Gilroy was a novelist...
), he was educated at University College School
University College School
University College School, generally known as UCS, is an Independent school charity situated in Hampstead, north west London, England. The school was founded in 1830 by University College London and inherited many of that institution's progressive and secular views...
and obtained his bachelor's degree at Sussex University in 1978. He moved from there to Birmingham University where he completed his Ph.D. in 1986.
Gilroy is a sociologically inclined scholar of Cultural Studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
and Black Atlantic diasporic culture. He is the author of Ain't no Black in the Union Jack (1987), Small Acts (1993), The Black Atlantic (1993), Between Camps (2000) (also published as "Against Race" in the United States), and "After Empire" (2004) (published as Postcolonial Melancholia in the United States), among other works. Gilroy was also co-author of The Empire Strikes Back: race and racism in 1970s Britain (1982) a path-breaking, collectively produced volume published under the imprint of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was a research centre at the University of Birmingham, England. It was founded in 1964 by Richard Hoggart, its first director...
at Birmingham University where he was a doctoral student working with the Jamaican intellectual Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)
Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist and sociologist who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1951. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of...
. Other members of the group which produced that volume included Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar
Pratibha Parmar
Pratibha Parmar is a British filmmaker. She has worked as a director, producer and writer. Parmar is known internationally for her political and often controversial documentary film work as well as her activism within the global feminism and lesbian rights movements. She has collaborated with many...
.
Gilroy taught at South Bank University, Essex University and then Goldsmiths College for many years before leaving London to take up a tenured post at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
where he was the chair of the Department of African American Studies and Charlotte Marian Saden Professor of Sociology and African American Studies. He is now the first holder of the Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29...
Professorship in Social Theory at the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
.
Gilroy worked for the Greater London Council
Greater London Council
The Greater London Council was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council which had covered a much smaller area...
for several years during the 1980s before becoming an academic. During that period, he was associated with the weekly listings magazine City Limits and The Wire
The Wire (magazine)
The Wire is a British avant garde music magazine, founded in 1982 by jazz promoter Anthony Wood and journalist Chrissie Murray. The magazine initially concentrated on contemporary jazz and improvised music, but branched out in the early 1990s to various types of experimental music...
.
Gilroy is known as a path-breaking scholar and historian of the music of the Black Atlantic diaspora
Diaspora
A diaspora is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of...
, as a commentator on the politics of race, nation and racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
in the UK, and as an archaeologist of the literary and cultural lives of blacks in the western hemisphere. According to the US Journal of Blacks in Higher Education he has been consistently among the most frequently cited black scholars in the humanities and social sciences. He held the top position in the humanities rankings in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2008.
Gilroy's theories of race, racism and culture were influential in shaping the cultural and political movement of black British people during the 1990s. Along with people like Lenny Henry
Lenny Henry
Lenworth George "Lenny" Henry, is a British actor, writer, comedian and occasional television presenter.- Early life :...
, Trevor Nelson
Trevor Nelson
Trevor Nelson MBE is an English DJ and presenter.Born in Hackney to a family of St Lucian heritage, he attended Central Foundation Boys' Grammar School in Cowper St, Islington, London EC2 and Westminster Kingsway College...
, Norman Jay
Norman Jay
Norman Jay MBE is an innovative and pioneering British DJ. He first came to prominence playing unlicensed or 'warehouse' parties in the early 1980s, such as Shake 'n' Fingerpop. His diverse and deep musical knowledge and his refusal to be restricted to playing from any single genre distinguishes...
, and Ian Wright
Ian Wright
Ian Edward Wright, MBE is a retired English footballer turned television and radio personality.Wright enjoyed success with London clubs Crystal Palace and Arsenal, spending six years with the former and seven years with the latter. With Arsenal he has lifted the Premier League title and both major...
he has enabled black British people to declare their commitment and belonging to the United Kingdom.
Gilroy was awarded an honorary doctorate of the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
by Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom which specialises in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1891 as Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute...
in September 2005. In the Autumn of 2009 he served as Treaty of Utrecht
Treaty of Utrecht
The Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, comprises a series of individual peace treaties, rather than a single document, signed by the belligerents in the War of Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht in March and April 1713...
Visiting Professor at the Centre for Humanities, Utrecht University
Utrecht University
Utrecht University is a university in Utrecht, Netherlands. It is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe. Established March 26, 1636, it had an enrollment of 29,082 students in 2008, and employed 8,614 faculty and staff, 570 of which are full professors....
.
He is married to the writer and academic Vron Ware
Vron Ware
Vron Ware is a British academic with the Open University, married to the Guyanese-British academic Paul Gilroy. She is known for her theories of anti-racism....
. The couple live in North London
North London
North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...
, and have two children, Marcus and Cora.
The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness
Gilroy’s book, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double ConsciousnessDouble consciousness
Double consciousness, in its contemporary sense, is a term coined by W. E. B. Du Bois. The term is used to describe an individual whose identity is divided into several facets...
(1993), marks a turning point in the study of diasporas. Applying a cultural studies approach, Gilroy provides a study of African intellectual history and its cultural construction. Moving away from all cultural forms which could be deemed ethnic absolutism, Gilroy offers the concept of the Black Atlantic as a space of transnational cultural construction. In his book, Gilroy makes the peoples who suffered from the Atlantic slave trade the emblem of his new concept of diasporic peoples. This new concept breaks with the traditional diasporic model based on the idea that diasporic people are separated by a communal source or origin, offering a second model that privileges hybridity. Gilroy's theme of Double Consciousness involves Black Atlantic striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency being absolutely transformed.
Rather than encapsulating the African American tradition within national borders, Gilroy recognizes the actual significance of European and African travels of many African American writers. To prove his point, Gilroy re-reads the works of African American intellectuals against the background of a trans-Atlantic context. Gilroy’s concept of the Black Atlantic fundamentally disrupts contemporary forms of cultural nationalism and reopens the field of African American studies by enlarging the field interpretive framework.
An example of how Gilroy and his concepts in the Black Atlantic directly affected a specific field of African American studies would be its role in defining and influencing the shift between the political black British movement of the 1960/70s to the 1980/90s. Gilroy came to outright reject the working class movements of the '70s and '80s on the basis that the system and logic behind the movements was fundamentally flawed as a result of its roots in the way of thinking that not only ignored race but also the trans-Atlantic experience as an integral part of the black experience and history. This argument is expanded upon in one of his previous co-authored books, The Empire Strikes Back (1983), which was supported by the now closed Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was a research centre at the University of Birmingham, England. It was founded in 1964 by Richard Hoggart, its first director...
of the University of Birmingham in the UK.
The Black Atlantic received an American Book Award
American Book Award
The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...
in 1994. It has subsequently been translated into Italian, French, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. The influence of the study is generally accepted to be profound, though academics continue to debate in exactly what form its greatest significance may lie .
External links
- Paul Gilroy - Bibliography
- Paul Gilroy on Twitter - https://twitter.com/bungatuffie
- Lecture on - August insurrection in the UK
- Articles on - openDemocracy
- Interviewed by Prof. Tommie ShelbyTommie ShelbyTommie Shelby is a philosopher and writer. Shelby is currently Professor of African and African American Studies and Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. He is the second black scholar to be tenured in the Philosophy Department at Harvard...
in Transition MagazineTransition MagazineTransition Magazine , founded by Rajat Neogy , a Ugandan of Indian ancestry, was published from 1961 to 1976 on the African continent and was revived in 1991 in the United States. Born in Africa and bred in the Diaspora, Transition is a unique forum for the freshest, most compelling, most curious...
(2007) - Interview: Paul Gilroy in Conversation (2007); Video: Contemporary Racisms: David Theo Goldberg and Paul Gilroy (2007) - darkmatter Journal
- The Black Atlantic website - http://www.blackatlantic.com/
- The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education citation rankings - http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/63_citationrankings.html
- Gilroy discusses his photographic history of Black Britain on NPR - http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=34841288&m=34824288