Antagonistic Cooperation: Jazz, Collage, Fiction, and the Shaping of African American Culture

In Antagonistic Cooperation, Robert G. OMeally explores how twentieth-century African American culture has been shaped by the idea of "antagonistic cooperation," where musicians collaborate and compete to create art and community. He argues that artists used jazz improvisation and collage techniques to depict the Black self as layered and complex, driven by a sense of community.

Format: Hardback
Length: 296 pages
Publication date: 15 March 2022
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Winner, 2023 Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award
Finalist, 2023 Pauli Murray Book Prize in Black Intellectual History,
African American Intellectual History Society
Shortlisted, Historical Nonfiction Legacy Award, Hurston / Wright Foundation
Ralph Ellison famously characterized ensemble jazz improvisation as "antagonistic cooperation." Both collaborative and competitive, musicians play with and against one another to create art and community.

In Antagonistic Cooperation, Robert G. OMeally shows how this idea runs throughout twentieth-century African American culture to provide a new history of Black creativity and aesthetics.

From the collages of Romare Bearden and paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat to the fiction of Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison to the music of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, OMeally explores how the worlds of African American jazz, art, and literature have informed one another. He argues that these artists drew on the improvisatory nature of jazz and the techniques of collage not as a way to depict a fractured or broken sense of Blackness but rather to see the Black self as beautifully layered and complex. They developed a shared set of methods and motives driven by the belief that art must involve a sense of community.

OMeally's readings of these artists and their work emphasize how they have not only contributed to understanding of Black history and culture but also provided hope for fulfilling the broken promises of American democracy.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231189187