In recent years, attention on Black British history has increased in light of the 2020 resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement that encouraged Britons to rethink their participation in suppressing racialised communities. Much of this literature fills the gaps that have long existed in the British historical canon that overlook Black Briton’s and their existence in Britain entirely. This thesis seeks to contribute to this work through analysing the remarkable role of Black British bookshops and how they functioned as political, cultural, social, and imaginative spaces between the inauguration of the first Black bookshop in 1966 and the last International Book Fair of Radical, Black and Third World Books in 1995. Jürgen Habermas’s theory of public space is used and reframed to discuss the necessity of public space for marginalised communities in democratic societies. This is seen through the multifunctional aspects of bookselling space and the testimonies of bookshop owners and users who attest to the bookshop’s significance. Whilst the political importance of the Black British bookshop space has previously been emphasised, this thesis shows that their cultural, social and imaginative functions were also important aspects that drastically impacted the lives of Black Britons in the post-war era.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-476589 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Monteiro, Leah |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Historiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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