Extravagant abjection : blackness, power, and sexuality in the African American literary imagination / Darieck Scott.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Scott, Darieck.

Series:

Sexual cultures.

Sexual cultures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Abjection in literature.

African American men in literature.

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

American fiction.

Homosexuality in literature.

Pornography in literature.

Power (Social sciences) in literature.

Race relations in literature.

Rape in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (329 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Challenging the conception of empowerment associated with the Black Power Movement and its political and intellectual legacies in the present, Darieck Scott contends that power can be found not only in martial resistance, but, surprisingly, where the black body has been inflicted with harm or humiliation.Theorizing the relation between blackness and abjection by foregrounding often neglected depictions of the sexual exploitation and humiliation of men in works by James Weldon Johnson, Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, and Samuel R. Delany, Extravagant Abjection asks: If we’re racialized through domination and abjection, what is the political, personal, and psychological potential in racialization-through-abjection? Using the figure of male rape as a lens through which to examine this question, Scott argues that blackness in relation to abjection endows its inheritors with a form of counter-intuitive power—indeed, what can be thought of as a revised notion of black power. This power is found at the point at which ego, identity, body, race, and nation seem to reveal themselves as utterly penetrated and compromised, without defensible boundary. Yet in Extravagant Abjection, “power” assumes an unexpected and paradoxical form.In arguing that blackness endows its inheritors with a surprising form of counter–intuitive power—as a resource for the political present—found at the very point of violation, Extravagant Abjection enriches our understanding of the construction of black male identity.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Fanon’s Muscles

2. “A Race That Could Be So Dealt With”

3. Slavery, Rape, and the Black Male Abject

4. The Occupied Territory

5. Porn and the N-Word

Conclusion

Notes

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780814786543

0814786545

9780814741351

0814741355

OCLC:

779828354