Critical Compression and Black Transnational Periodicals

Abstract This essay looks at the way journalistic acts of “critical compression” were a key tactic used by creative editors such as Duse Muhamed Ali and Marcus Garvey to apprehend the workings of racism and imperialism at the scale of the world and to serve as a rebuttal. An editorial approach that uses a range of journalistic techniques to hail an international non-white readership, critical compression was used to maximize the ability of readers to identify, analyze, and counter white supremacy as a global phenomenon. Journals such as Ali’s African Times and Orient Review elucidated how racism functioned economically, culturally, symbolically, and trans-imperially, and sought to produce a global sensibility that contested Anglo-American supremacy on its own terrain: Anglophone journalism emanating from the metropole.