| dc.description.abstract | Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) and George Padmore (1902-1959) were two prolific West Indian activists and black Atlantic intellectuals operating in the West Indies, the USA, Europe, and West Africa in the 19th and 20th century. Their mission in life was to elevate the black man and boost Africa’s reputation and dignity. In the classic Pan-African canon, they have been highly decorated; Blyden has been called ‘the father of Pan-Africanism’ and Padmore has been recognized as ‘the father of African Liberation’. However, what are the idea-historical relations between Blyden and Padmore?
This thesis seeks to question the idea of a Pan-African intellectual tradition by stating that the Pan-African story of ‘purity and parity’ does not adequately explain the dynamism, contradictions, and antagonisms of Pan-Africanism and such Atlantic characters as Blyden and Padmore. By utilizing Paul-Gilroy’s black Atlantic perspective and ship metaphor, I have discussed whether Blyden, as a Victorian imperialist, propagandist, and African personality romantic, at any level aligns with Padmore’s pragmatic and revolutionary focus on decolonisation, or vice versa. In doing so, I acknowledge the experience, observation, and analysis of alienation, subordination, and double consciousness, as well as economic suppression and crisis in Afro-America and Africa, in the construction of various Pan-African and black Atlantic platforms. However, I propose that this brutal and racial reality should by represented by a conceptual apparatus and action-centred perspective empirically sensitive to the black Atlantic vitality transcending (black) national particularity and ethnicity. At this point, there are good reasons to ask with Gilroy whether a black nationalistic perspective adequately portrays “…the forms of resistance and accommodation intrinsic to modern black political culture.” | nor |