Description

In this fascinating treatment of "party" life, Michael Hanchard traces the many different forms of communal expression that underlie black parties. Party/Politics reveals new dimensions to the way we think about the cultural and political sphere, both nationally and transnationally. The author draws broadly on examples from popular culture, literature, social movements, and daily life to explore an array of themes ranging from black ideologies, the demise of Black power and Third Worldism as emancipatory projects for liberation, to more contemporary issues and debates on multiculturalism and transnational forms of identity. Capturing what is often overlooked due to an emphasis on nations, on surveys, and on formal institutions, Hanchard offers an expansive, integrated framework for the study of not only black politics but of political and social theory the world over.

Reviews

"Michael Hanchard creates a ripple that will not stop. He exceeds the boundaries of transnational black politics, while speaking to its many genres on every page. He charts multiple modes of cultural expression as they feed into politics, and he compels us to come to terms with unexpected channels of political feedback. A tour de force, theoretically sophisticated and culturally engaged."--William E. Connolly, author of Pluralism

"In Party/Politics, Michael Hanchard examines both the conviviality and constraints that community connection brings to politics. More than any other contemporary writer, Hanchard reveals both the impact and lessons of black politics upon politics more generally and the global range and complexities of black politics especially. It is required reading as much for understanding politics and culture in the broad sense as for understanding black politics and cultural expression in all their particularities."--David Theo Goldberg, Director, University of California Humanities Research Institute

"This book describes the often indistinct line that separates culture from politics by focusing on black political and cultural life in the U.S. and around the globe."--Contemporary Sociology

"Hanchard offers a provocative and insightful mediation on the necessarily blurry and dynamic boundary between 'culture' and 'politics' in black life, not only in the U.S., but the whole of the African diaspora. A valuable corrective to the tendency of social scientists to conceive and study the political in narrowly truncated form."--Doug McAdam, author of Freedom Summer

"I love Michael Hanchard's intellectual suppleness; his apparently effortless pleasure in melding themes, literatures, and thinkers. In Party/Politics he joins politics and culture, offering Henri Lefevbre and Ray Charles, as well as Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. Hanchard's public sphere encompasses Brazil, the United States, the whole African diaspora and the entire would-be white world. A masterful analysis!"--Nell Irvin Painter, author of Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present

Product Details

352 pages; 4 line illus.; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-517624-7ISBN10: 0-19-517624-3

About the Author(s)