TY - JOUR
AU - Laura E. Helton
AB - This article asks how Arturo Schomburg assembled a collection that would bear value, literally and figuratively, for the New Negro. It focuses on transactions—how Schomburg bought and then sold his library—and disavowals—what he refused to purchase. Those moments when either the financial or affective price of history was too high for Schomburg show that the project of Black archive-building turned on absence as well as acquisition. Schomburg simultaneously critiqued the market's devaluation of Black textuality, ambivalently depended on that devaluation to afford his collection, and embraced an economic understanding of Black history as a form of reparations.
BT - African American Review
IS - 1
LA - English
N2 - This article asks how Arturo Schomburg assembled a collection that would bear value, literally and figuratively, for the New Negro. It focuses on transactions—how Schomburg bought and then sold his library—and disavowals—what he refused to purchase. Those moments when either the financial or affective price of history was too high for Schomburg show that the project of Black archive-building turned on absence as well as acquisition. Schomburg simultaneously critiqued the market's devaluation of Black textuality, ambivalently depended on that devaluation to afford his collection, and embraced an economic understanding of Black history as a form of reparations.
PY - 2021
SP - 109
EP - 127
T2 - African American Review
TI - Schomburg’s Library and the Price of Black History
VL - 54
ER -