When Brooklyn Was Ours: The Post-Soul Black Arts Movement in the Republic of Brooklyn

Keywords: arts; black geographies; cultural industries; gentrification; political economy; race and ethnicity; urban development
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 74

Abstract

This paper applies McKittrick’s theory of a “Black sense of place” to the Black arts movement that flourished in the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York and reached its peak in the 1980s and 1990s. Movement participants used film, music, fashion, and other art forms as vehicles for Black self-fashioning and financial empowerment amidst deep racial, economic, and spatial marginalization in the revanchist city. Their nuanced representations of the Black experience in the post-civil rights era ushered in broader possibilities for self- and artistic expression across the media landscape. Furthermore, as part of a largely democratizing and organic collective that enriched individual artists and gave back to local black communities, they demonstrated the power of Black people building community in their own image.

The paper also discusses the afterlife of this movement, particularly in relation to ongoing hypergentrification in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. While some movement alumni are prominent critics of the neighborhood’s changing racial and class composition, their contributions undoubtedly added to the external allure of the area and hastened local processes of real estate speculation. These dynamics reflect the fraught role of Black artists as critics and agents of hypergentrification, as well as the difficulties of creating art and institutions by and for Black people in a capitalist and fully commodified society.