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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. What does music do to the genteel image many moderns have of themselves according to Gilroy?

2. What does Gilroy say blacks search for in spite of the fragmentation of musical genres and traditions?

3. What does Gilroy say modern historical conditions require of race concepts?

4. What do black artists sometimes focus on, to their detriment, according to Gilroy?

5. What kind of social relations does music create according to Gilroy?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What does Gilroy say British audiences expected from Jimi Hendrix?

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

4. Why is Martin Robison Delany important to Gilroy?

5. What critique does Gilroy make of the concepts that governed race and ethnicity when he wrote The Black Atlantic?

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

7. What can music accomplish as Gilroy describes it?

8. What has music done for black culture in Gilroy's account?

9. What is the master-slave dialectic?

10. What is double consciousness?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Is Gilroy writing about the black experience, or the modern experience? If the modern self is a fragmented self, do all individuals with self-awareness experience the same double-consciousness? How does Gilroy avoid this universalizing argument, which erases blackness as it universalizes aspects of black consciousness.

Essay Topic 2

Evaluate the proposition that race has been superseded by the more modern experience, shared across races, of power and powerlessness in terms of capital and labor. Which is to say that powerless poor people have more in common than people of the same race but different classes.

Essay Topic 3

Gilroy celebrates black music for its ability to avoid the monotone discourse that takes place in other parts of black culture. How does Gilroy himself preserve the sound of other voices and perspectives throughout his book?

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This section contains 753 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample