Defining the Terms
This term, often associated with author Toni Morrison, describes the assumption that the default observer or audience is white.
What is the "white gaze"?
He linked the Black experience to ancient civilizations and rivers in his poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."
Who is Langston Hughes?
This poet and activist famously argued that art must be "by, for, and about Black people."
Who is Larry Neal?
The film Black Panther presents a powerful example of this artistic and philosophical movement.
What is Afrofuturism?
The Negro Speaks of Rivers," which re-rooted Black identity in an ancient past, is a powerful act of ____ in response to the oppressive social ____ of his time.
What is Agency in response to Structure?
This is the "common sense" of a society, where one group's ideas seem natural and pervasive.
What is Hegemony?
Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God used the authentic voice of the Black South, a style known as the vernacular.
Who is Zora Neale Hurston?
This jazz musician used improvisation as a form of freedom, breaking from traditional European musical structures to create an unrestrained sound.
Who is John Coltrane?
This musician claimed to be from Saturn and used his music to transport listeners to a utopian, intergalactic reality.
Who is Sun Ra?
The minstrel show's portrayal of Black people as lazy and buffoonish is a clear example of art reinforcing a harmful ____.
What is Ideology?
This is the ability to act and make choices within limiting social structures. The Harlem Renaissance was a collective act of this.
What is Agency?
This photographer created a counter-narrative to dehumanizing images by taking meticulously composed portraits of dignified, middle-class Black families.
Who is James Van Der Zee?
The plays of Imamu Amiri Baraka, which aimed to build a strong, unified Black identity, are an example of this faction within the Black Arts Movement.
What are Cultural Nationalists?
The central question of Afrofuturism is: What happens when a people systematically erased from history are given the opportunity to write their own...?
What is their own future?
James Van Der Zee's dignified portraits of Black families were an act of ____ that challenged the mainstream media's historical mis**____** of Black people.
What is Representation, or counter-representation?
This philosophical concept describes the process of re-establishing a sense of being and possibility for a people whose existence has been denied by dominant narratives. Black Panther is an example of it.
What is ontological repair?
This was the central idea of the "new Negro" identity that Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston were trying to create with their literature.
What is a dignified portrayal of Black inner lives, joys, and struggles?
The graphic design of the Black Panther Party newspaper is a prime example of this faction, which believed art should directly serve a political agenda.
What are Revolutionary Nationalists?
Author Octavia Butler's work, like Parable of the Sower, shows a future where this group's survival and leadership are central.
What are Black people?
The ongoing debate over cultural appropriation is a direct reflection of ____ dynamics, while the Black Arts Movement's demand for art "by, for, and about black people" is an act of ____.
What are Power and Resistance?
The Black Arts Movement coined this term to describe the way white consumers adopted Black culture without engaging with the political struggles that created it.
What is "Black cool"?
The Harlem Renaissance was a direct and powerful response to this concept, which defined Black people through the view of their oppressors.
What is the "white gaze"?
The Black Arts Movement advocated for theatre that was performed not on Broadway, but in community centers for this specific purpose.
Answer: What is for educating and arousing political consciousness?
This 2018 film's imagining of an un-colonized African nation is what scholars call a project of ontological repair, because it re-establishes a sense of being and possibility.
What is Black Panther?
The concept of ____ describes how a "common sense" of society, like the expectations of what "Black art" should look like, can influence artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, even as they attempt to challenge it.
What is Hegemony?