Autochthonomies brings a necessary perspective to our debates about race, ethnicity, and identity formation by means of a sophisticated, intellectually engaging, and above all, novel approach to the history of the African diaspora. A necessary perspective and yet, maybe for some, unexpected. It might be unexpected given the extent to which we often take for granted our historical interpretations on the basis of what we regard as non-negotiable moral grounds. But other interpretations are indeed possible, and in manifold ways refreshing and uplifting, even if considering them seems to be, in one way or another, unsettling. “Individuals may construct,” Myriam Chancy writes, “culturally and politically viable identities within ethnic communities separate from literally superficial physiognomic traits, but the racialized structures of U.S. society continue largely to dictate the meaning both of privilege and of difference, of exclusion and of inclusion” (31). In other words, the African Diaspora and, by extension, African-derived identities, are much more than what coloniality has made of them. Rather than conceiving blackness and the cultural production of Afro-diasporic individuals within the epistemological limits of colonial racial categories, Chancy invites us to conceive a whole different cultural arena: one that is primarily defined by ongoing performances of cultural sovereignty by people of African descent and that reveals complex, profound, and sometimes (un)imaginable transhistorical and transnational connections. Thinking beyond race and coloniality offers an opportunity not only to underscore cultural scenarios and subjectivities that are quite too often neglected but also to reinterpret the ideas of many Black intellectuals and artists whose work has usually been framed exclusively as narratives of resistance.
In Autochthonomies Chancy offers a rigorous scholarly discussion and a theoretical development of these ideas vis-à-vis two crucial concepts—autochthonomy and lakou/yard consciousness—as well as through the detailed examination of literary, academic, and creative works by Black individuals produced between the nineteenth and the twenty-first centuries. Chancy’s “autochthonomy” is a neologism that combines a sense of being “autochthonous” to Africa, even if displaced or reconstituted by virtue of the African Diaspora, with a sense of “autonomy” regarding cultural identities. Thus, autochthonomies account for practices performed by people of African descent by means of which they underscore their connection and belonging to both Africa and the African Diaspora, particularly as those practices—and the processes of identity formation related to them—circumvent and go beyond Western coordinates of coloniality, othering, and racialization. Correspondingly, following the Haitian idea of “lakou”—a community village built around a shared yard—Chancy’s notion of lakou/yard consciousness is an effective way to account for the virtual space in which intradiasporic autochthonomies take place. Hence, as an intellectual project and as a somewhat all-encompassing narrative, Chancy’s work provides a compelling addition to the work of Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, James Clifford, and other influential scholars in the arenas of afro-diasporic studies, blackness, new ethnicities, and new indigeneities.
The introduction is devoted primarily to the characterization of the project at large amidst theoretical considerations that summon a diverse assortment of ideas from scholars in multiple fields, including postcolonial studies, anthropology, feminist/women’s studies, African American studies, Caribbean studies, and political science. In this light, the book’s argument and revisionist approach comes not only as innovative but remarkably interdisciplinary, with the potential of resonating loudly in many academic forums. The book’s four chapters are devoted to the study—that is, the interpretation and sometimes reinterpretation—of specific media objects as they serve as testimonies of vibrant practices of autochthonomy. These include art and literary texts that highlight the social construction of race, such as Octavia Butler’s Kindredi> and Pamela Gien’s The Syringa Tree; visual media pertaining to the global staging of the Rwandan genocide, like Raoul Peck’s 2005 film Sometimes in April; novels and philosophical texts that make evident the complex constitution of Black subjectivities, as in the intertextual entanglements Chancy traces between Franz Fanon and Mayotte Capécia via Mary Seacole; and travel literature, as in the work of Zora Neale Hurston and Claude McKay, especially since it allows one to appreciate, perhaps better than anything else, the extent to which intradiasporic cultural affiliations take place in scenarios of mobility. Rather than merely mapping the concepts of autochthonomy and lakou/yard consciousness in all these cases, the progression of the chapters is in itself an intellectual journey through which these concepts are further developed. The book’s brief conclusion is an appealing and effective way to bring all these new interpretations together under the umbrella of what certainly constitutes a new intellectual paradigm.
This paradigm, as I said before, may be unexpected or unsettling for some. One of the reasons for it is that focusing primarily on intradiasporic cultural epistemes seems to imply losing sight of white supremacy and racial oppression. Chancy is well aware of that. The point, however, is not turning a blind eye to matters of systemic asymmetries but, rather, to underscore that racism and coloniality are not the only realities for afro-diasporic people. As a matter of fact, one of the unfortunate legacies of postcolonial studies is the reaffirmation of Western narratives of domination, and hence, framing the subjective identities and cultural production of Black individuals primarily within a condition of subalternity; or as Chancy puts it, “people of African descent are seen as constituted by European disruption rather than part of a long history of human exchange anchored in a particular place (the African continent) and then dispersed from it, as have been other cultures and ethnicities, transhistorically and across geographies” (188-9). All things considered, Chancy’s work is not only an alternative approach in postcolonial studies, but it can operate alongside scholarly agendas focused on the denunciation and dismantling of white supremacy. Thus, any scholar dealing with the African Diaspora to any extent, but particularly those thinking through matters of ethnicity, identity formation, or media production, will greatly benefit from reading Autochthonomies . Likewise, it could be a suitable addition to upper-undergraduate or graduate courses, especially if reading some of the books or watching some of the films Chancy engages with or even other similar media. Doing so might be not only a way to find that other interpretations are possible but also to do justice to the legacy of a plethora of writers and artists in the African Diaspora whose work remains significantly unexplored.
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[Review length: 1034 words • Review posted on May 6, 2022]