Photographic histories of black Britain can disrupt cozy nostalgia

Evidence

A member of the audience asks Paul Gilroy if there is not something a little romantic about producing a book like this now. “I am quite attracted to the idea that black history might be modeled on the kiss,” he says, responding with a wry smile. “I’ve received lots of emails from people who are either in the photographs or who recognize friends or relatives. There is a lot of love in the photographs, or I should say, love circulates in that history.” Gilroy’s essay, that accompanies the photographic sequence, asks searching questions of the reader that prohibit the book becoming a coffee table accessory with a cozy relationship to the past. The photographs seem to look back at us in an inquiring way. They beg questions of our present and its compromises and accommodations with a society that remains haunted by the legacy of empire and racism. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1050

Categorization

• XREF: Gilroy modeling black history ‘on the kiss’ and love circulating in history connects to the reader’s scaffold on imagined communities and affect as infra-political glue.
• QUESTION: Gilroy’s ‘love circulates in that history’ — worth examining whether an affirmative/affective register of black British identity can coexist with the exclusion-focused vocabulary this module is assembling.