Black Star - Ramamurthy, Anandi

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Résumé :
Black Star documents the vibrant Asian Youth Movements in 1970s and 80s Britain who struggled against the racism of the street and the state. Anandi Ramamurthy shows how they drew inspiration from Black Power movements as well as anti-imperialist and workers' struggles across the globe. This book is populated by landmark events in anti-racist struggle, from the Grunwick strike, to the Handsworth riots, and the acquittal of the Bradford 12. Ramamurthy writes of the evolution of a politicised Asian youth in Britain, focussing particularly on how the struggle to make Britain 'home' led to the conception of a broad-based identity inspiring unity amongst all those struggling against racism: 'political blackness'. Ramamurthy documents how by the late 1980s this broad based black identity disintegrated as Islamophobia became a new form of racism and how in the process the legacy of the Asian Youth Movements has been largely hidden. Black Star retrieves this history and demonstrates its importance for political struggles today.

Biographie:
Anandi Ramamurthy is a Professor of Media and Culture at Sheffield Hallam University: * Ramamurthy, A (2003) Imperial Persuaders: Images of African and Asian People in British Advertising Manchester University Press 234pp ISBN 0719063787 *Faulkner, S and Ramamurthy, A (eds) (2006) Visual Culture and Decolonisation in Britain, Ashgate 277pp ISBN 10:0-7546-4002-7 *Ramamurthy, A (2013) Black Star: Britain's Asian Youth Movements, Pluto Press. 240pp ISBN 9780745333489 *Hund, W, Pickering, M and Ramamurthy, A (eds) (2013) Colonial Advertising and Commodity Racism, Racism yearbook 2013, Lit Verlag, Hamburg 218pp. ISBN 978-3-643-904164 Paul Kelemen, Honorary Research Fellow, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester: Kelemen, P (2012) The British Left and Zionism: History of a Divorce, Manchester University Press 225pp ISBN 0719088131

The impasse of twenty-first century war-on-terror paranoid keep-calm-and-carry-on proto-fascist anxiety is skewered by the sharp posters, the enthusiasm, the dedication, the long vigils, and the styles and phrasings of all those left-wing uncles and radical aunts who hoarded boxes of leaflets and pamphlets in back rooms and in attics so they could one day be retrieved as testimony to a difficult settlement in multi-racial Britain. That this book retrieves this history as a living, and urgent, heritage - with the principle of 'self defense as no offense' still prominent - is an absolutely necessary triumph. -- Professor John Hutnyk, Goldsmiths College, University of London This fascinating account, told from the point of view of the Asian Youth Movements of the 1970s and 80s, reclaims an important chapter in the history of the struggle of working-class Black communities against racism in Britain. The politics of that period, the strategies of struggle and the responses of the British state are still enormously relevant today. -- Amrit Wilson, author of Dreams Questions Struggles