Now That We’ve Found Love What Are We Gonna Do With It? A Narrative Understanding of Black Identity

Abstract. This paper offers an interpretation of the changes in Black identity during the last century. By drawing on psychological literature and cultural artefacts, changing understandings of Blackness are read as differ-ent narrative forms. The shift from ‘Negro ’ to ‘Black ’ is presented as a shift from tragic to romantic narrative, while the ‘African ’ narrative that now occupies the centre stage of Black identity represents a satirical story. It is suggested that with a growing awareness of being both Black and ‘something else’, the apparent opposing themes in performing Blackness can be resolved by enacting a comedy narrative. There is some evidence that the comedy narrative is present but it has yet to gain ascendancy. Key Words: Black identity, history, narrative, social constructionism Conceptualizing and Investigating Identity This paper is a story about stories, the possible stories that Black people have used in their performance of identities. Identities here are seen in a pragmatic sense to specifically mean the rendering of stories that can be read from possible performances of persons. The resources by which these performances of subjectivity are possible have been argued to be contingent on personal, socio-political, cultural and historical factors and goal