The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness

The association between slavery and modernity is an enduring element of Gilroy’s analysis. Although he notes contemporary critics’ inability to adequately interpret this connection in literal terms, he also looks to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic as an indication that early modern thinkers were aware of it. Furthermore, this association takes a leading role in the production of a Black modern counterculture. Douglass’s autobiographies are a prime example, as they all recount his experience of slavery and escape, informing the subjectivity that helps him articulate his understanding of modernity. The Jubilee Singers also serve as a prime example, as their use of “slave songs” on the international stage was a counter to the stereotypical images of Blackness that were made popular by minstrelsy. 

The association between slavery and modernity is also important because it is the origin of the doubleness that is articulated in the work of later modern thinkers, such as Du Bois and Wright. However, as Gilroy illustrates in his discussion of Africentrism, not all Black thinkers see this association as generative of Black thought. For Africentrists, slavery and modernity are interruptions to the linear progress of African civilization and Black people, and they tried to obliterate Black