In Search of African American Space

"In Search of African American Space" explores the relationship between the African diaspora and contemporary spatial practice from multiple critical vantages in order to locate a transhistorical moment in the afterlife of slavery. Traditional notions of space are challenged as the analyses in this volume transcend discipline, deriving from architecture, performance art, history, and visual theory.

Richly illustrated and organized thematically, the anthology, edited by Jeffrey Hogrefe and Scott Ruff, is divided into two sections. The first is dedicated to an aspect of practice that has operated outside of the academy. Contributions by architects of arguably the first generation to work in the discourse of the African diaspora are featured. These architects are conscious of performances typologies of opposition that have emerged from the slave-ship hold, slave plantation quarters, and urban "slum/ghetto" as they seek to define, interpret, and design African American art, architecture, and public space. In the second section, quotidian practices are rendered significant as expressions of culture, aesthetics, and political activism. The transformation of space is an act of autonomy. Making African American spatial practices present is vital in this volume for to allow their absence, denial, or erasure is to allow the lingering effects of slavery to manifest as part of the contemporary condition.