The Afterlives of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

Abstract:This response essay is a reflection on the composition of Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (2017) by its author and a sustained conversation with three of her peers, each of whom illuminate distinct aspects of Schomburg’s life and the scholarship surrounding him and his contemporaries. The exchange includes ruminations about marronage and Maroon subjectivity; the futurity of the archive, including its omissions; and a redefining of blackness as a force that ruptures and disrupts facile categorization.