Austin Clarke’s “Saga Boys”: Black Aesthetics as Epistemology?

Abstract

Austin Clarke in Nine Men Who Laughed and Ebony Patterson in her Gangstas for Life series both inspire an investigation of the way in which the “Black dandy” is an index of Black aesthetics as epistemology. Via a dialogue between Clarke’s Black male dandies of the post 1960s Toronto in his short stories and Patterson’s visualizations of the post 1980s dancehall dandies in Kingston, this article argues that Afro-Caribbean invocations of the Black dandy is more than fashion statement; it is epistemological stance. I am deliberately tracing a connection between dancehall dandies and Clarke’s saga boys in order to first show the legacy and consonance of Clarke’s work in Black epistemological thought as well as to indicate the trans-historical reach of the unfinished re-humanization project for Black subjects.