Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One Trade and Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- Part Two Forging Cultural Connections: America in Africa
- Part Three Forging Cultural Connections: Africa in America
- 10 The Chasm Is Wide: Unspoken Antagonisms between African Americans and West Africans
- 11 Double Consciousness and the Homecoming of African Americans: Building Cultural Bridges in West Africa
- 12 Sierra Leoneans in America and Homeland Politics
- Part Four U.S. Political and Economic Interests in West Africa
- Part Five Looking toward the Future: U.S.–West African Linkages in the Twenty-first Century
- List of Contributors
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
11 - Double Consciousness and the Homecoming of African Americans: Building Cultural Bridges in West Africa
from Part Three - Forging Cultural Connections: Africa in America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One Trade and Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- Part Two Forging Cultural Connections: America in Africa
- Part Three Forging Cultural Connections: Africa in America
- 10 The Chasm Is Wide: Unspoken Antagonisms between African Americans and West Africans
- 11 Double Consciousness and the Homecoming of African Americans: Building Cultural Bridges in West Africa
- 12 Sierra Leoneans in America and Homeland Politics
- Part Four U.S. Political and Economic Interests in West Africa
- Part Five Looking toward the Future: U.S.–West African Linkages in the Twenty-first Century
- List of Contributors
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
Summary
Introduction
An attempt is made in this chapter to explore the validity of DuBois' thesis of “double consciousness,” which has naturally been motivating African Americans to know more about Africa, visit Africa, rediscover their roots, and if possible live in Africa. But this psychological phenomenon is not peculiar to African Americans alone. It is common to various diasporic groups all over the world. Hence the longing for one's place of birth after relocating either voluntarily or involuntarily to faraway countries is natural and human.
According to DuBois, the African American
lives in a world which yields him no true self-consciousness. One ever feels his twoness—An American, a Negro: two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.
DuBois' thesis of double consciousness raises the question of other forms of consciousness. Is double consciousness synonymous with split consciousness? Are both conditions associated with modernity? Is self-awareness the same thing as self-image? What role did the spread of visual culture in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries play in creating or reinforcing double consciousness? How are race, class, gender, sexuality, and ethnic consciousness different from other consciousnesses? Is there any possibility of multiple consciousness?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The United States and West AfricaInteractions and Relations, pp. 200 - 213Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008