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The African-Jamaican Aesthetic explores the ways in which diasporic African-Jamaican writers employ cultural referents aesthetically in their literary works to challenge dominant European literary discourses; articulate concerns about racialization and belonging; and preserve and enact cultural continuities in their new environment(s). The creative works considered provide insight into how local and indigenous Caribbean knowledges are both changed by the transfer to new, diasporic locales and reflect a unified consciousness of African-Jamaican roots and culture. The works surveyed also reveal significant connections with a ‘past’ Africa. Indeed, Africa is treated as a central source of aesthetic influence in these writers’ expression of local cultures and indigenous knowledges. Aspects covered include language (Jamaican Patwa), religion, folklore, music, and dance to identify the continuities in an African-Jamaican aesthetic, which is understood here as an ongoing dialogue of cultural memory between the Caribbean, Africa, and diasporic spaces. Writers discussed include Claude McKay, Una Marson, Louise Bennett, Afua Cooper, Lillian Allen, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah, Lillian Allen, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Makeda Silvera, and Joan Riley

Aesthetics, African. --- Authors, African. --- Authors, Jamaican --- Aesthetics.

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"How do arts convey the existence of potent knowledge without revealing details of that knowledge? In Seeing the Unseen, art historian Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi examines tensions between the seen and unseen that makers, patrons, and audiences of arts in western West Africa negotiate through objects, assemblages, and performances. Gagliardi examines how ambiguity anchors design of the arts, and she shows that attempts to determine exact meanings miss the point. Specialists across western West Africa construct assemblages, installations, and buildings that hint at the possibility of revelation, but full disclosure remains unattainable. Specific activities and contexts integral to the design and use of the works often leave no visible trace. Through attention to many ways of seeing and knowing, Seeing the Unseen opens new possibilities for the study of so-called historical or classical arts of Africa grounded in the specificity of individual works, their making, and their reception. It also prompts us to reflect on how we know and what it means to know in any context"--

Symbolism in art. --- Arts and society. --- Aesthetics, African. --- Power associations (Ethnology) --- Arts and society --- French-speaking Western Africa. --- Arts --- Arts and sociology --- Society and the arts --- Sociology and the arts --- Allegory (Art) --- Signs and symbols in art --- Art --- African aesthetics --- Social aspects --- Africa, French-speaking Western --- Africa --- French-speaking West Africa