Conjugal union : the body, the house, and the Black American / Robert Reid-Pharr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reid-Pharr, Robert, 1965-

Series:

Race and American culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Race identity.

African Americans.

African Americans--Intellectual life.

Black nationalism--United States.

Black nationalism.

African American intellectuals.

History.

Body image--Social aspects.

United States.

Body image--Social aspects--United States--History.

Body image.

African American intellectuals--History.

American literature--African American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--African American authors.

African American families.

African American families in literature.

Physical Description:

xi, 166 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1999.

Summary:

In Conjugal Union, Robert F. Reid-Pharr argues that during the antebellum period a community of free black northeastern intellectuals sought to establish the stability of a Black American subjectivity by figuring the black body as the necessary antecedent to any intelligible Black American public presence. Reid-Pharr goes on to argue that the fact of the black body's constant and often spectacular display demonstrates an incredible uncertainty as to that body's status. Thus antebellum black intellectuals were always anxious about how a stable relationship between the black community might be maintained. Paying particular attention to Black American novels written before the Civil War, the author shows how the household was utilized by these writers to normalize this relationship of body to community such that a person could enter a household as a white and leave it as a black.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Engendering Race 15

Chapter 2 American Panorama 37

Chapter 3 Clean House, Peculiar People 65

Chapter 4 Black, White, and Yeller 89

Chapter 5 Conjugal Union 111.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-164) and index.

ISBN:

0195104021

OCLC:

39539250

Access Restriction:

Also available in an online ed. (restricted for use by University of Pennsylvania site/user ID and password).