The Britishness of Black Britain

Abstract

Chapter 1 argues that articulations of Black Britain, in general and specifically in literary terms, have been imbricated with state-led attempts to redefine Britain and the Union in the light of a new racially-defined diversity: ‘elaborated Britishness’. The chapter traces a shift in Black politics towards inclusion in the British national project, symbolised by Stuart Hall’s urging to ‘put the Black in the Union Jack’, and matched by government efforts to naturalise a new narrative of Britishness premised on inclusivity. This has a pronounced correlation in the institutional and disciplinary formation of Black British literature, and the chapter reads a number of prominent works in the field for their ‘British nationalist’ character. The chapter culminates in an examination of one of the most significant recent works of Black scholarship, Paul Gilroy’s Postcolonial Melancholia. Reflecting on its unconscious British national character from a Scottish critical perspective, the chapter argues for an approach to Blackness informed by sub-national formations in Britain.