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.The body iconographyperfected in Leni Riefenstahl s 1930s film Triumph of the Will, a  visualculture of race , finds itself uncritically replayed not only in the work ofcommercial fashion photographers like Bruce Weber, but also in that ofthe much praised gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.Being vigi-lant of these consequences of forgetfulness is as important as subjectingcontemporary black commercial culture to scrutiny, particularly for itsabandonment of communality, for forward thinking, for creating a wonderful culture of dissidence in favour of  conservatism, misogynyand sex.These black arts no longer question the social; instead theyseek intimate satisfactions in lifestyle and  racial recreation , the  bed-room and the  four wheel drive.There is a narrative line in Between Camps which sees the destructionof the dynamics of freedom and dissidence which were encapsulatedin black expressive culture.Sex and the culture of the gym replacelove and a politics and what Bhabha might call a political imaginary of the beyond.Even death no longer resonates as a modality of politi-cal effectivity, something which historically registered in the memoryof those who chose not to give in to death as a legitimate expression ofblack pain.Instead death in the ghetto, either through drugs, HIV ordrive-by killings is almost unremarkable.The successes of neo-liber-alism with the growth of its distinctive leisure culture make otherforms of social organisation all the more difficult to envisage; thusthere seems to be a more intense investment in the pleasures andthrills which capitalism has to offer.Black people are now permitted,through the license accorded to them by advertising imagery, to Uses Cultural Studies 10/3/05 11:52 am Page 59Gilroy s Critique of Racialised Modernity 59demonstrate what Gilroy calls  corporeal vitality.But while it is justthis which Fanon beautifully described as exactly what was deniedthe black male ( I dream I am jumping, swimming, running, climbing ,quoted in Gilroy, 2000: 255) it is now a mark of the limits of what canbe achieved.No wonder, then, that Gilroy s voice becomes melan-cholic, but as it does so also is his writing more forceful, moreemphatic in its expression of the existence of other possibilities of a resolutely nonracial humanism.Notes1 The three books (Gilroy 1987, 1993 and 2000) could be seen as a tril-ogy, so coherent is the development of an argument about thedangers of ethnic absolutism, the proximity of fascistic sensibilitiesand the political desire for moving beyond race.2 The precise contours of how ethnic absolutisms operate withinracially subjugated communities requires more extensive analysis, inthe UK as well as in the USA, for instance in the Today programme(BBC Radio 4, September 2001) it was reported that a handful ofmembers of the Bradford Sikh community met with the neo-fascistBritish National Party on the basis of shared ideas about racial sep-aration.However, this was immediately condemned by othermembers of the Asian community.3 Tony Blair spoke in praise of Enoch Powell at his funeral on 18thFebruary 2002.4 In the aftermath of September 11th 2001 there have been a range ofpolitical interventions aimed at securing the inclusion of BritishMuslims; the emphasis has been overwhelmingly cultural or throughreligious or  faith initiatives.5 Since the death of Princess Diana and the remarked upon visiblepresence of black and Asian people among the mourners atKensington Palace, there have been attempts at subsequent stateevents, that is, the death of the Queen Mother (April 2002) and theJubilee celebrations for the Queen (May June 2002) to highlight aswell as document similar modes of black participation.6 Gary Younge, a Guardian writer, represents one of the few voices asforceful and attentive to the dynamics of racial politics as Gilroy.7 The ease with which the current government, and especially HomeSecretary (2001 2004) David Blunkett, picks up, once again, therhetoric of black crime and the image of the  mugger preying onvulnerable citizens demonstrates something more than a re-working Uses Cultural Studies 10/3/05 11:52 am Page 6060 The Uses of Cultural Studiesof a law and order position; indeed it seems almost to suggest adirect challenge by New Labour to writers like Stuart Hall and PaulGilroy.Gilroy rehearses some of these themes in the introduction toa new edition of There Ain t No Black in the Union Jack (see Gilroy,2002). Uses Cultural Studies 10/3/05 11:52 am Page 61Extended NotesSnoop Doggy DoggStudents will have noted that I have not so far engaged at great lengthwith Gilroy in a more critical vein.Nor have I provided detailed accountsof those who have taken issue with his work.Gilroy is the most often citedblack academic in the USA today.This omission on my part, is not becauseI consider Gilroy somehow beyond critique, nor is it the case that the workof his critics is not noteworthy; this is far from the case.What motivates thechapter above is a sense from students that Gilroy s work is both challengingand difficult, and what I have sought to do is to make some of the mostimportant arguments more immediately graspable.One of the areas whichstudents are drawn to in Gilroy s work is his writing on rap, but this is alsowhere they claim to get very lost.Many cannot quite get what Gilroy issaying about contemporary hip hop music and in particular about SnoopDoggy Dogg.So in the notes that follow I take this as my task.I will try totake the reader through the chapter in Between Camps titled  After theLove Has Gone: Biopolitics and Decay of the Black Public Sphere.Butbefore doing that, for the sake of a short debate, let me outline some of thecriticisms levered at Gilroy by Laura Chrisman (Chrisman, 2000).Chrismancondemns Gilroy for offering a one-dimensional account of black neo-nationalist politics, which, she claims, are much more fluid and diversethan Gilroy allows [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]