Black Archive Alliance Catalogue

BLACK ARCHIVE ALLIANCE
place which is clearly not always the case.
The group of texts and documents that this
project excavates is about hinting towards a
presence. This presence is at times in plain
sight but too often deemed irrelevant to the
cultural context in which we are situated.
The contemporary moment suggests to us that
we need to recognize the interconnectivity of
time and the antiquity of human mobility in
order to not fall for the blockish, notional
accumulation of peoples and histories into
shallow stereotypes. Within the Italian con-
scious
of what Pape Diaw calls the “folklore
of migration” 1 . The documents that make up
this project demonstrate to us the longstanding
and ongoing dialogue between the African
continent, its diaspora and Florence.
Several institutions across Florence have
stimulated and incited this type of research
over the years along with a range of
artistic development around it and we have a
great respect for the labor, oft unrecognized,
that this type of questioning and acknowledging
posits. It is all the more laudable
given the enormous gaps of scholarship
upon which to build foundations for this
research. There is a way that in order to
ves
speculation and interpretation are key
and while they must be guided by historical
context this requires an imaginative response
to the academic realm that can only be
strengthened by increased contributions of
harmonious and discordant voices. The growth
of scholarship in this realm is needed in
order to permit a “Speculative Blackness” 2
to chart a place for Afro Descendent people
in the future through a contextualization in
the past. To quote the legendary Paul Robeson
who in a 1938 speech, given in his time
in Madrid rallying against totalitarianism
Black History Month FLorence