Paul Gilroy's Black Atlantic

Words: 900
Pages: 4

Paul Gilroy, the author of the book, “Black Atlantic” prepares the readers through the short preface where he writes that “with the help of writers like Michael Foucault, Marshall Berman…I would try to persuade them that the history and the legacy of the Enlightenment were worth understanding and arguing about. I worked hard to punctuate the flow of the Europe-centered material with observations drawn from the dissonant contributions of black writers to Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment concerns” (Paul Gilroy, Black Atlantic, pg. ix). He focused on the Europe and the Enlightenment period to give the readers a brief aspect of history that changed humanity forever.
“We who are homeless, - Among Europeans today there is no lack of those who are entitled to call themselves homeless in a distinctive and honorable sense… We children of the future, how could we be at home in this today? We
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He said that "Africans find themselves in a grave historical period – an unenviable period in which their situation has fatefully and fatally continued to be determined by others"(African Departures, pg. 6). This occurs as a cause-effect situation, which shows that Africans are still suffering from what had happen in the past with colonization. The professor takes the initiative to inform every African that "our hands have been taken over by others to do their work. We need hands that do our work. the work of our being, hands whose work is destined to further our being."(African Departures, pg. 9). the Westerners took some Africans and defined their hands as tools to work on farms and plantations while using products from Africa. After colonization, the Westerners returned to their various countries without helping the project to rebuild the African