Collective Improvisations: Amiri Baraka and the Articulation of Blackness Across Socio-Cultural Movements

In 1966, Leroi Jones, soon to be Amiri Baraka, outline​d​ a program to reorient the philosophical underpinnings of ​Black study. Modes of inhabiting and thereby constructing the domains in which one participates were revealed as a function of one’s mode of expression. ​Jones/Baraka proposed that blackness ​was expressed by ​the operation of a collective improvisation. How​​ can improvisation, traditionally conceived as an individual activity, be a collective process? Taking our cue from articulation theory and the request that it be formalized by Stuart ​H​all, we explore what may superficially seem counter-intuitive but​ is able to be modeled​ ​by way of an explanation of its generative syntactic structure. In so doing, puzzles associated with identity theory, intersubjectivity, and ​modalities​ of expression are revealed as not ​as intractable​ as they are assumed to be, especially​ with​in​ the discipline of Black studies.