A recurrent image in chapter 1 of the Black Atlantic by Paul Gilroy is of the sailing shaip. The title of the books introduces the reader to the theme. However, one would not know whether the author’s intention of coloring the Atlantic black is by reference to the hugeslavery trade or by reference to sadness. Once one “dives” into the first chapter, the meaning unveils itself and it sets a tone for a much deeper dimension, the matter is that of identity. Literature has usually glorified the set-off for adventure or harboring after a long risky trip. However, Gilroy glorifies the sailing trip; that is the part after setting off and before the landing. Understanding that Gilroy is mainly interested in studying the black identity, one would surely understand the image. The ship which Gilroy studies does not come from any where and heads no where either. The literary moment freezes at the sailing part, an image that draws on the black experience in America or a Black in England. I tend to believe that Gilroy tries to highlight how the black identity is in many ways a sailing ship. Somehow the “academic narrative” starts in the middle of the story, starts with the ship sailing. The starting harbor or where a Black American comes from is not of relevance. Even further because history did not keep record of these facts, nobody knows any thing about this part of the story. The ship does not know where she is going the same way a black does not know where he/she is heading. A concept Gilroy illustrates with Blacks taking refuge in art to express their wandering in life without an aim. He says” their convergence[blacks] is also undercut by the simple fact that in the critical thought of blacks in the west, social self-creation through labour is not the center-piece of emancipator hopes” (Gilroy 40). For Gilroy the image is so gloomy, is so black that the ship can sink down once she loses her orientation the same way black identity can drown within mainstream culture as it lost the most important parts any civilization is build on: the value of work or labor. He explains the values blacks adopted after slavery that ”for the descendant of slaves, work signifies only servitude, misery, and subordination. Artistic expression […] becomes the means towards both individual self-fashioning and communal liberation (Gilroy 40).
The quotes chosen for the book and included at the beginning have set the tone for the book. There is a deliberate emphasis on using quotes that abundantly illustrates the register of sailing. So, one can pick through Nietzsche, Frederick Douglass, Edouard Glissant and Walter Benjamin the words “sail, sailor, sailing, sea, embark, ocean, ships”. These words highlight the theme of maritime motion which is at the center of Gilroy’s argument. In spite of the sad tone of these quotes, Gilroy makes the point that the “Atlantic” changed values and identities. The Atlantic being the “continuum” between three continents changed the way people think of themselves and the others. The black identity is in quarantine due to all cultural divergence worries a thinker who can identify with that black culture but who can still draw the boundaries for it. Even more complicated, Gilroy proposes this identity’s feature has become more complicated because of the politicization of the small parts of the mosaic.
