Kobena Mercer
Biographic Data
| ID | 169900 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kobena Mercer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kobena |
| FAMILY NAME | Mercer |
| SIGNATURE | MERCER K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goldsmiths University of London |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 86 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Longest Journey
This essay offers an account of the ways in which successive generations of Black artists in Britain engaged with modernism during the UK's transformation from a monocultural to a post‐imperial society. Whereas the first wave (including Frank Bowling and Anwar Shemza) sought to reconcile their late colonial backgrounds with the tenets of high modernism – the autonomy of the artwork, the disinterested beholder, and universalist claims of timeless …
Identity and Diversity in Postmodern Politics
This chapter examines the unwieldy relationship between the Left and the new social movements because they both share problems made symptomatic in terms of ‘identity,’ and yet there is no vocabulary in which to conduct a mutual dialogue on the possibility of alliances or coalitions around a common project, which is the starting point for any potentially hegemonic project. The salient ambiguity of the word itself draws attention to the breakup of …
Ethnicity and Internationality
Written Reflections
The Fateful Triangle
This collection of Stuart Hall's later writings explores the complex and often fraught relationship between race, ethnicity, and nation. Hall argues that these concepts are not fixed or essentialist categories, but rather fluid and contested social constructs that are constantly being redefined and renegotiated. He examines how these concepts have been used to create and maintain social hierarchies and inequalities, and how they can also be used …
Travel & See
"Over the years, Kobena Mercer has critically illuminated the visual innovations of African American and black British artists. In Travel & See he presents a diasporic model of criticism that gives close attention to aesthetic strategies while tracing the shifting political and cultural contexts in which black visual art circulates. In eighteen essays, which cover the period from 1992 to 2012 and discuss such leading artists as Isaac Julien, René…
Stuart Hall and the Visual Arts
Contrary to the view that Stuart Hall's involvement in the visual arts was a supplement to his work in cultural studies and political analysis, this reflection addresses key continuities that connect his 1970s writings on racism and the media with the enlivening impact that the hybrid aesthetics put forward by black British artists, photographers, and filmmakers from the 1980s onward had on Hall's theoretically distinctive approach to diasporic q…
Welcome to the Jungle
Welcome to the Jungle brings a black British perspective to the critical reading of a wide range of cultural texts, events and experiences arising from volatile transformations in the politics of ethnicity, sexuality and "race" during the 1980s. The ten essays collected here examine new forms of cultural expression in black film, photography and visual art exerging with a new generation of black British artists, and interprets this prolific creat…
Art History and the Dialogics of Diaspora
Proposing Bakhtin’s dialogical principle as a guiding light for cross-cultural studies in art historical research on the diasporic formation of Afro-modernism, Kobena Mercer’s discussion essay highlights the value of his postformalist outlook as he responds to commentaries by Eddie Chambers and Huey Copeland on his edited series Annotating Art’s Histories. Examining interactions among artists, artworks, and artworlds as a dialogical circuit facil…
Hew Locke's Postcolonial Baroque
Examining the work of British-Guyanese artist Hew Locke in view of the 17th century aesthetic category of the baroque, this essay suggests that Walter Benjamin's conception of allegory provides the most fitting interpretive framework for understanding the dialogic agency of diasporic indirection that characterizes Locke's investigations into the crisis of sovereignty. What makes it post-colonial is the double-voiced strategy whereby questions of …
Monster Metaphors
Black Hair/Style Politics
Ethnicity and Internationality
Queer Looks
Queer Looks is a collection of writing by video artists, filmmakers, and critics which explores the recent explosion of lesbian and gay independent media culture. A compelling compilation of artists' statements and critical theory, producer interviews and image-text works, this anthology demonstrates the vitality of queer artists under attack and fighting back. Each maker and writer deploys a surprising array of techniques and tactics, negotiatin…
Black art and the burden of representation
Short reviews
Susan Olzak and Joane Nagel, (eds) COMPETITIVE ETHNIC RELATIONS, Orlando: Academic Press, 1986, $29.95. Paul Gilroy, ‘THERE AIN'T NO BLACK IN THE UNION JACK’, THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF RACE AND NATION, London: Hutchinson, 1987, 217 pp. £7.95. John Benyon and John Solomos (eds), THE ROOTS OF URBAN UNREST, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987, 207 pp. Robin Cohen, THE NEW HELOTS: MIGRANTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOUR, Gower: Aldershot, 1987, 290 …
Third Cinema at Edinburgh
Journal Article Third Cinema at Edinburgh Get access Kobena Mercer Kobena Mercer Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 27, Issue 6, November-December 1986, Pages 95–104, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/27.6.95 Published: 01 November 1986
Monster Metaphors
Journal Article Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' Get access Kobena Mercer Kobena Mercer Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 27, Issue 1, January/February 1986, Pages 26–43, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/27.1.26 Published: 01 January 1986
Black Communities' Experience of Psychiatric Services
Before we address the issue of ra.cism and the psychiatric services I would like to make one observation. Which is, that although the Transcultural Psychiatry Society has been in existence for some years, it is only now creating the space to accommodate the voices of the Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities. This implies that our communities have only just ’found a voice’. Which is not true. Black people have been making critical observations on …
Black art and the burden of representation
The Fateful Triangle
This collection of Stuart Hall's later writings explores the complex and often fraught relationship between race, ethnicity, and nation. Hall argues that these concepts are not fixed or essentialist categories, but rather fluid and contested social constructs that are constantly being redefined and renegotiated. He examines how these concepts have been used to create and maintain social hierarchies and inequalities, and how they can also be used …
Monster Metaphors
Journal Article Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' Get access Kobena Mercer Kobena Mercer Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 27, Issue 1, January/February 1986, Pages 26–43, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/27.1.26 Published: 01 January 1986
Art History and the Dialogics of Diaspora
Proposing Bakhtin’s dialogical principle as a guiding light for cross-cultural studies in art historical research on the diasporic formation of Afro-modernism, Kobena Mercer’s discussion essay highlights the value of his postformalist outlook as he responds to commentaries by Eddie Chambers and Huey Copeland on his edited series Annotating Art’s Histories. Examining interactions among artists, artworks, and artworlds as a dialogical circuit facil…
Hew Locke's Postcolonial Baroque
Examining the work of British-Guyanese artist Hew Locke in view of the 17th century aesthetic category of the baroque, this essay suggests that Walter Benjamin's conception of allegory provides the most fitting interpretive framework for understanding the dialogic agency of diasporic indirection that characterizes Locke's investigations into the crisis of sovereignty. What makes it post-colonial is the double-voiced strategy whereby questions of …
The Longest Journey
This essay offers an account of the ways in which successive generations of Black artists in Britain engaged with modernism during the UK's transformation from a monocultural to a post‐imperial society. Whereas the first wave (including Frank Bowling and Anwar Shemza) sought to reconcile their late colonial backgrounds with the tenets of high modernism – the autonomy of the artwork, the disinterested beholder, and universalist claims of timeless …
Stuart Hall and the Visual Arts
Contrary to the view that Stuart Hall's involvement in the visual arts was a supplement to his work in cultural studies and political analysis, this reflection addresses key continuities that connect his 1970s writings on racism and the media with the enlivening impact that the hybrid aesthetics put forward by black British artists, photographers, and filmmakers from the 1980s onward had on Hall's theoretically distinctive approach to diasporic q…
Short reviews
Susan Olzak and Joane Nagel, (eds) COMPETITIVE ETHNIC RELATIONS, Orlando: Academic Press, 1986, $29.95. Paul Gilroy, ‘THERE AIN'T NO BLACK IN THE UNION JACK’, THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF RACE AND NATION, London: Hutchinson, 1987, 217 pp. £7.95. John Benyon and John Solomos (eds), THE ROOTS OF URBAN UNREST, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987, 207 pp. Robin Cohen, THE NEW HELOTS: MIGRANTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOUR, Gower: Aldershot, 1987, 290 …
Third Cinema at Edinburgh
Journal Article Third Cinema at Edinburgh Get access Kobena Mercer Kobena Mercer Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 27, Issue 6, November-December 1986, Pages 95–104, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/27.6.95 Published: 01 November 1986
Black Communities' Experience of Psychiatric Services
Before we address the issue of ra.cism and the psychiatric services I would like to make one observation. Which is, that although the Transcultural Psychiatry Society has been in existence for some years, it is only now creating the space to accommodate the voices of the Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities. This implies that our communities have only just ’found a voice’. Which is not true. Black people have been making critical observations on …
Third Cinema at Edinburgh
Journal Article Third Cinema at Edinburgh Get access Kobena Mercer Kobena Mercer Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 27, Issue 6, November-December 1986, Pages 95–104, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/27.6.95 Published: 01 November 1986
Monster Metaphors
Journal Article Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' Get access Kobena Mercer Kobena Mercer Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 27, Issue 1, January/February 1986, Pages 26–43, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/27.1.26 Published: 01 January 1986
Short reviews
Susan Olzak and Joane Nagel, (eds) COMPETITIVE ETHNIC RELATIONS, Orlando: Academic Press, 1986, $29.95. Paul Gilroy, ‘THERE AIN'T NO BLACK IN THE UNION JACK’, THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF RACE AND NATION, London: Hutchinson, 1987, 217 pp. £7.95. John Benyon and John Solomos (eds), THE ROOTS OF URBAN UNREST, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987, 207 pp. Robin Cohen, THE NEW HELOTS: MIGRANTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOUR, Gower: Aldershot, 1987, 290 …
Black art and the burden of representation
Queer Looks
Queer Looks is a collection of writing by video artists, filmmakers, and critics which explores the recent explosion of lesbian and gay independent media culture. A compelling compilation of artists' statements and critical theory, producer interviews and image-text works, this anthology demonstrates the vitality of queer artists under attack and fighting back. Each maker and writer deploys a surprising array of techniques and tactics, negotiatin…
Ethnicity and Internationality
Monster Metaphors
Black Hair/Style Politics
Hew Locke's Postcolonial Baroque
Examining the work of British-Guyanese artist Hew Locke in view of the 17th century aesthetic category of the baroque, this essay suggests that Walter Benjamin's conception of allegory provides the most fitting interpretive framework for understanding the dialogic agency of diasporic indirection that characterizes Locke's investigations into the crisis of sovereignty. What makes it post-colonial is the double-voiced strategy whereby questions of …
Art History and the Dialogics of Diaspora
Proposing Bakhtin’s dialogical principle as a guiding light for cross-cultural studies in art historical research on the diasporic formation of Afro-modernism, Kobena Mercer’s discussion essay highlights the value of his postformalist outlook as he responds to commentaries by Eddie Chambers and Huey Copeland on his edited series Annotating Art’s Histories. Examining interactions among artists, artworks, and artworlds as a dialogical circuit facil…
Welcome to the Jungle
Welcome to the Jungle brings a black British perspective to the critical reading of a wide range of cultural texts, events and experiences arising from volatile transformations in the politics of ethnicity, sexuality and "race" during the 1980s. The ten essays collected here examine new forms of cultural expression in black film, photography and visual art exerging with a new generation of black British artists, and interprets this prolific creat…
Stuart Hall and the Visual Arts
Contrary to the view that Stuart Hall's involvement in the visual arts was a supplement to his work in cultural studies and political analysis, this reflection addresses key continuities that connect his 1970s writings on racism and the media with the enlivening impact that the hybrid aesthetics put forward by black British artists, photographers, and filmmakers from the 1980s onward had on Hall's theoretically distinctive approach to diasporic q…
Travel & See
"Over the years, Kobena Mercer has critically illuminated the visual innovations of African American and black British artists. In Travel & See he presents a diasporic model of criticism that gives close attention to aesthetic strategies while tracing the shifting political and cultural contexts in which black visual art circulates. In eighteen essays, which cover the period from 1992 to 2012 and discuss such leading artists as Isaac Julien, René…
The Fateful Triangle
This collection of Stuart Hall's later writings explores the complex and often fraught relationship between race, ethnicity, and nation. Hall argues that these concepts are not fixed or essentialist categories, but rather fluid and contested social constructs that are constantly being redefined and renegotiated. He examines how these concepts have been used to create and maintain social hierarchies and inequalities, and how they can also be used …
Identity and Diversity in Postmodern Politics
This chapter examines the unwieldy relationship between the Left and the new social movements because they both share problems made symptomatic in terms of ‘identity,’ and yet there is no vocabulary in which to conduct a mutual dialogue on the possibility of alliances or coalitions around a common project, which is the starting point for any potentially hegemonic project. The salient ambiguity of the word itself draws attention to the breakup of …
Ethnicity and Internationality
Written Reflections
The Longest Journey
This essay offers an account of the ways in which successive generations of Black artists in Britain engaged with modernism during the UK's transformation from a monocultural to a post‐imperial society. Whereas the first wave (including Frank Bowling and Anwar Shemza) sought to reconcile their late colonial backgrounds with the tenets of high modernism – the autonomy of the artwork, the disinterested beholder, and universalist claims of timeless …
Art (14 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Anthropology (8 works) · Art history (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · History (7 works) · Law (7 works)