The Anthropocene blues: Notes from Mississippi

This article argues for the importance of integrating histories of enslaved Africans and their descendants—including histories of resistance to racialized power structures—within narratives about the Anthropocene. It suggests that the Black Studies Scholar Clyde Wood’s concept of the “blues epistemology” offers conceptual tools for considering how Black political and intellectual traditions have strived to imagine and create a more livable world amid the entangled crises of racial injustice and ecological degradation. I argue that locating Black political thought within broader narratives of environmental change and economic development illuminates the racial dimensions of current global ecological crises and orients scholarship and political practice toward the spaces in which such thought is being animated today in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene.

Ambrose Akinmusire’s Satchel of Origami

This chapter discusses trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s use of unconventional music strategies to create innovative musical and performance art commentaries on police brutality across all of his recordings. It is argued that his compositions with lyrics “My Name Is Oscar” (2011) and “Rollcall for Those Absent” (2014) and “Free, White and 21” (2018) articulate his unflinching Black political thought on systemic violence whereas his improvised note choices on instrumental compositions like “Confessions to My Unborn Daughter” (2011) is a spatial art of collage that exploits and explores musical textures that represent his understanding of a Black sense of musical space. The chapter also claims that Akinmusire’s approach is not a rebellion toward what some critics would call jazz orthodoxy but a focused study of musical space and the lexicon of ancestral improvised language.

Blyden’s Philosophy and Its Impact on West African Intellectuals: Case of J.E. Casely Hayford of the Gold Coast (Ghana)

This study examines the impact of Blyden’s philosophy on J.E. Casely Hayford of the Gold Coast (Ghana). It exposes Blyden’s ideas, a philosophy on Africans physical and intellectual emancipation, and points out the similarities in the thought of both men. Blyden toured different parts of West Africa and spoke with great intensity about the African problem and ways of its remedy. His ideas had a lot of influence at the time and precipitated the emergence of nationalist messiah who undertook a mission to redefine the African universe. This study examines the ideas and intellect of J.E.Casely Hayford and revealed that his thoughts were a potency of Edward Wilmot Blyden’s philosophy. An examination of his ideas reveals how Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford took an uncompromising stand against the derogatory and the glaring abuses of European colonialism. He shaped cultural nationalism that disdained the apparent repulsive and despotic colonial hegemony and fashioned a new outlook for fellow Africans to stand up as humans. This article concludes that Hayford, drawing on Blyden’s philosophy, succeeded in fashioning a culture of protest against all forms of black degradation and thus presented a continuity in black political thought that remained up to present.

Queering Black Feminism

This article explores a Black queer feminist frame of reference as a critical response to the cisnormative and heteronormative Black political science literature. The contours of this frame are derived from the political thought of Cathy J. Cohen. Cohen’s political thought provides an exemplary case of how Black queer feminist political science can address the lacuna in which Black queer and trans individuals are marginalized within, if not excluded from, the literature on Black political thought and behavior. Cohen’s work exposes oppressive systems, demystifies the nature of political power, and inspires counter-hegemonic knowledge production that challenges the rigidity of what and who counts as “legitimate” subjects for political science inquiries. Before synthesizing a sample of Cohen’s political thought, this article succinctly reviews Black political science, including Black feminist political science, detailing its history, problems, trends, and how scholars have tended to carry out Black politics work within the discipline. Black political science is critically placed in its activist-scholar context. This article argues that Black political scientists must continue to look inward, not only considering how race and racist knowledge has structured the discipline, but also how power is distributed among (and between) various groups of Black political scientists themselves. It is Black queer feminism that will continue to advance the radical imperative of Black political science.