The New Negro - The Life of Alain Locke

A tiny, fastidiously dressed man emerged from Black Philadelphia around the turn of the twentieth century to mentor a generation of young artists like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jacob Lawrence and call them the New Negro--the gender ambiguous, transformative, artistic African Americans whose art would subjectivize Black people and embolden greatness. Alain Locke (1885-1954) believed Black Americans were sleeping giant that could transform America into a truly humanistic and pluralistic society. In the 1920s, these views were radical, but by announcing a New Negro in art, literature, music, dance, theatre, Locke shifted the discussion of race from the problem-centered discourses of politics and economics to the new creative industries of American modernism. Although this Europhile detested jazz, he used the Jazz Age interest in Black aesthetics to plant the notion in American minds that Black people were America's quintessential artists and Black urban communities were crucibles of creativity where a different life was possible in America. By promoting art, a Black dandy subjectivized Black people and became in the process a New Negro himself.

Product details

• Authors: Jeffrey C (Professor and Chair of the Department o, Jeffrey C Stewart, Jeffrey C. Stewart, Jeffrey C. (Professor and Chair of the De Stewart
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.04.2018
• EAN: 9780195089578
• ISBN: 978-0-19-508957-8
• No. of pages: 944
• Dimensions: 165 mm x 242 mm x 56 mm
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: antiquity to present day; History of Ideas, HISTORY / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies), 20th Century, PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / General, EDUCATION / History, Philosophy, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Archaeology, History of Education, History of the Americas, Philosophical traditions and schools of thought, History and Archaeology