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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Whose challenges does Gilroy take up in the first section of the chapter?

2. What function does the first chapter serve?

3. Where does Gilroy say modern black politics is located in relation to Western civilization?

4. What does Gilroy say master-race intellectuals often do to race?

5. What does Gilroy say postmodernism claims for itself?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Gilroy define the consciousness of the slave?

2. What does Gilroy say most theorists of modernity focus on?

3. What is the master-slave dialectic?

4. What is double consciousness?

5. What role did music play in slaves' lives according to Gilroy?

6. What symbol does Gilroy use to symbolize the black Atlantic?

7. What group does Gilroy say his book focuses on?

8. How does Gilroy describe the black experience in England?

9. What role should slavery play in the history of Western culture in Gilroy's opinion?

10. How does the language of sexuality distract people from their racial identity in Gilroy's account?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the relationship between race and nationality according to Gilroy? What was it originally and what has it become? How has it changed over time? What changed it?

Essay Topic 2

Gilroy uses writers more than anyone else for his evidence of cultural trends regarding race. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using literature for cultural analysis? What does it exclude? What does it capture that couldn't be captured anywhere else?

Essay Topic 3

Black intellectuals have often encountered the difficulty that on one hand they need to show their learning, to prove their legitimacy to white intellectuals, but on the other, too much intellectualism is supposed to alienate them from their blackness. How does Gilroy navigate this treacherous water?

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This section contains 718 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample