The Rhetoric of Race

The Rhetoric of Race: Toward a Revolutionary Construction of Black Identity examines the legacy of the leading scholars of African American identity: W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke and Amiri Baraka. The purpose of this volume is to investigate and critique their ideas in order to show the extent to which their efforts to create a definition of black identity were not as fruitful as might be expected. The book attempts to elaborate a revolutionary definition of black identity framed within the following theoretical positions: the demand for the recognition of a past of suffering, the replication of the negative in relation to the African American, and the call-response as a form of black communication. Using rhetoric as a starting point, this construction attempts to justify itself from the philosophical positions defended by Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. Foucault's ideas serve as a basis for analysing the possibilities of this black identity of resistance to power, while Deleuze's ideas are useful in investigating the withdrawal into itself that this identity makes in order to create an internal space. Despite being part of the external, this internal space becomes a meeting point for all the historical aspects of this identity as it speaks of what it has been, is and will be. Moreover, it is argued that this internal encounter with its multiple parts leads this identity to project a positive self when confronted with the external. The analysis of the ideas of African-American researchers such as Barbara Smith and bell hooks serves as a closing chapter. Chapter 5 sets out the conclusions drawn from this study. They analyse the importance of hip-hop music in the contemporary world for the African American community. Because of its cultural and linguistic strength, hip-hop has the potential to construct a positive idea of what it is to be black in the United States for today's African American youth.