Of African Descent? Blackness and the Concept of Origins in Cultural Perspective

Abstract

Over the past decade, the DNA ancestry-testing industry-based largely in the United States-has experienced a huge upsurge in popularity, thanks partly to rapidly developing technologies and the falling prices of products. Meanwhile, the notion of "genetic genealogy" has been strongly endorsed by popular television documentary shows in the US, particularly vis-à-vis African-American roots-seekers-for whom these products are offered as a means to discover one's ancestral "ethnic" origins, thereby "reversing the Middle Passage." Yet personalized DNA ancestry tests have not had the same reception among people of African descent in other societies that were historically affected by slavery. This paper outlines and contextualizes these divergent responses by examining and comparing the cultural and political meanings that are attached to notions of origin, as well as the way that Blackness has been defined and articulated, in three different settings: the United States, France and Brazil.

‘An Gorta Mor (The Great Hunger): Passage to India’ – Exploring genealogy and roots tourism through documentary filmmaking

“…'Roots research' gained popularity after the world-famous 1976 novel 'Roots' by Alex Haley, which later became one of the most famous television series in the USA (Abel, 2018). The series' popularity contributed to making genealogy tourism a new niche segment of the tourism industry (Coles and Timothy, 2004).…”

(T)Race. La couleur de la peau, inscription corporelle d’une origine servile

“…Mais ce choix implique un certain changement de perspective. Il s'agit désormais moins de remonter aux ancêtres esclaves que de surmonter le butoir de l'institution particulière, d'enjamber la période de la traite et de l'esclavage pour remonter à l'origine africaine [Abel, 2016 ;2018]. La sociologue Alondra Nelson a publié récemment un ouvrage sur ces nouveaux recours génétiques qui se sont multipliés chez les Africains Américains [Nelson, 2016].…”

Supporting the use of genetic genealogy in restoring family narratives following the transatlantic slave trade

“…Before the historic diaspora began finding African relatives through autosomal genetic genealogy, the expectation of results regarding African ancestors centered on ancestral ethnicities and homelands. Lineage genetic testing is used to pursue ancestry (Nelson, 2008, 2016; Nelson and Robinson, 2014; Winston and Kittles, 2005), genealogical research (Abel, 2018), reunions and kinship (Fehler, 2011; Nelson, 2008, 2016), ties with ancestral homelands (Fehler, 2011; Nelson, 2016; Schramm, 2012), recasting history, and citizenship (Nelson, 2016). Information from lineage testing sometimes is accompanied by a sense of completeness (Nelson, 2016) or disappointment (e.g., learning that an ancestral lineage in Africa could not be identified from the DNA test results) (Winston and Kittles, 2005).…”