The Creative Ethos of the African Diaspora: Performance Aesthetics and the Fight for Freedom and Identity
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Format:
- Journal Article
- Publication Date:
- Mar-Jun 2007
- Published:
- Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Notes:
- The critical importance of the artist to the anti-slavery agency of the enslaved, is observable in one verse of a song by the enslaved in the USA: Got one mind for the boss to see;Got another mind for what i know is me. The Jamaican expression for this thought is 'plie fuul fi kech wiz'. The philosophy of praxis which these two examples denote ,are rooted in an aesthetcism in which performance became a critically important modus operandi for Black agency during ,and indeed after slavery; The social being the enslaved described themselves to be having one mind for the slvaeholder to see and another mind for what they knew themselves to be , denotes a social being who consciously constructs a (feigned) personality out of the cultural and intellectual fabric of white supremacy to protect and to mask the real personality and intentions of the enslaved through performance rituals of flattery, mimicry and deception and other forms of creative improvisational socio-political acts of becoming.;
