Disaffected : the cultural politics of unfeeling in nineteenth-century America / Xine Yao.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Yao, Xine, 1985- author.

Contributor:

Tom Farinholt and Blair Edlow Memorial Book Fund.

Series:

Perverse modernities

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Literature and society--United States--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

United States.

History.

Race in literature.

Affect (Psychology) in literature.

Stereotypes (Social psychology) in literature.

Sentimentalism in literature.

Emotions in literature.

African Americans in literature.

Asians in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

ix, 291 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2021.

Summary:

"In Disaffected Xine Yao explores the racial and sexual politics of unfeeling-affects that are not recognized as feeling-as a means of survival and refusal in nineteenth-century America. She positions unfeeling beyond sentimentalism's paradigm of universal feeling. Yao traces how works by Herman Melville, Martin Delany, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Sui Sin Far engaged major sociopolitical issues in ways that resisted the weaponization of white sentimentalism against the lives of people of color. Exploring variously pathologized, racialized, queer, and gendered affective modes like unsympathetic Blackness, queer female frigidity, and Oriental inscrutability, these authors departed from the values that undergird the politics of recognition and the liberal project of inclusion. By theorizing feeling otherwise as an antisocial affect, form of dissent, and mode of care, Yao suggests that unfeeling can serve as a contemporary political strategy for people of color to survive in the face of continuing racism and white fragility. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. The Babo Problem / White Sentimentalism

2. Feeling Otherwise / Martin R. Delany

3. The Queer Frigidity Of Professionalism / White Women Doctors

4. Objective Passionlessness / Black Women Doctors

5. Oriental Inscrutability / Chinese Faces.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Tom Farinholt and Blair Edlow Memorial Book Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Yao, Xine, 1985- Disaffected.

ISBN:

9781478013891

1478013893

9781478014836

1478014830

OCLC:

1240412894

Publisher Number:

99989376484