Fugitive Testimony : On the Visual Logic of Slave Narratives / Janet Neary.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Neary, Janet, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slave narratives--United States--History and criticism.

Slave narratives.

Slavery in art.

Semiotics and the arts.

Art, Modern--20th century--Themes, motives.

Art, Modern.

Themes, motives.

Art, Modern--Themes, motives.

United States.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

222 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

On the visual logic of slave narratives

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Fugitive Testimony traces the long are of the African American slave narrative from the eighteenth century to the present in order to rethink the epistemological limits of the form and to theorize the complicated interplay between the visual and the literary throughout its history. Gathering an archive of ante- and postbellum literary slave narratives as well as contemporary visual art, Janet Neary brings visual and performance theory to bear on the genre's central problematic: that the ex-slave narrator must be both object and subject of his or her own testimony. Taking works by current-day visual artists, including Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, and Ellen Driscoll, Neary employs their representational strategies to decode the visual work performed in nineteenth-century literary narratives by Elizabeth Keckley, Solomon Northup, William Craft, Henry Box Brown, and others. She focuses on the textual visuality of these narratives to illustrate how their authors use the logic of the slave narrative against itself as a way to undermine the epistemology of the genre and to offer a model of visuality as intersubjective recognition rather than objective division. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : representational static

Sight unseen : contemporary visual slave narratives

Behind the scenes and inside out : Elizabeth Keckly's use of the slave narrative form

Optical allusions: textual visuality in running a thousand miles for freedom

"The shadow of the cloud" : racial speculation and cultural vision in Solomon Northup's Twelve years a slave

Gestures against movements : Henry Box Brown and economies of narrative performance

Epilogue : racial violence, racial capitalism, and reading revolution: Harriet Jacobs, John Jones, Kerry James Marshall, and Kyle Baker.

"Fugitive Testimony examines African American slave narratives in light of contemporary artists' use of the genre within their visual art at the end of the twentieth century. It identifies a sustained representational strategy employed by black cultural producers across time to challenge the racial presumptions that manifest as artistic constraints."

Provided by publisher.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780823272891

0823272893

9780823272907

0823272907

OCLC:

941874950