In search of the (Black) international: The Black Scholar and the challenge to communication and media studies

Abstract

In the 1970s, the journal The Black Scholar (TBS) published two special issues largely under-read in communication studies, titled “Black Media I” and “Black Media II.” The lack of engagement in these special issues by communication scholars represents not merely disciplinary differences but it also signifies different trajectories that both fields take on Marxism. Communication studies would take Europe as its starting point, while Black studies would not dismiss Europe, but would take the Third World as its point of departure. In the process, media and communication analysis in TBS holds more critical potential than what currently exists in communication studies approaches to both Blackness and Marxism. Using a sociology of knowledge approach, I argue that the place to start a wholistic, Marxist, Black studies analysis of communication begins not in communication studies, but in Black studies, which TBS’s special issues are representative of.