Harlem Renaissance: A Genealogy Of Terms.pdf

The Harlem Renaissance is a dominant term for a cultural movement that emerged between the First and Second World Wars. However, this term displaced similar alternatives, including the New Negro, the New Negro movement, and the Negro/Black Renaissance. This essay traces the genealogy of these terms, metanarratives, and historiographical currents to demonstrate how the hegemony of the Harlem Renaissance is linked to its institutionalization as a subject and the rise of Black studies in the United States. The weighting of Harlem as a geographical reference point localized and nationalized the subject area, resulting in a selective historiography and diminished transnational dimensions of the New Negro and the Negro Renaissance. Recent scholarship has illustrated the intertwined relationship of political and artistic-aesthetic aspects of early twentieth-century black cultural activity, with a greater emphasis on Caribbean cross-currents. The Harlem Renaissance serves as a periodizing label or cultural descriptor, but its appropriateness has come into question due to alternative names and a growing awareness of the transnational aspects of a black-centred cultural phenomenon. The New Negro movement and the Negro Renaissance are often read in broader terms than those set by the culturalist agenda of Alain Locke, raising questions about the emergence and dominance of the Harlem Renaissance. The New Negro is an especially global and modern figure, marked by the transatlantic Middle Passage and produced by contact with the Americas. The figure of the New Negro represents an international figure with trans-American contours, serving as an entry point for conjectures on world literature. World literature encompasses all literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original language, but Damrosch's theorization does not fully account for cross-cultural works at the outset. The definition of the New Negro figure remains unclear, but it is an important aspect of understanding the transnational dimensions of black cultural activity.