Our Living Manhood : Literature, Black Power, and Masculine Ideology / Rolland Murray.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murray, Rolland, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American men--Political activity--History--20th century.

African American men.

African American men--Intellectual life--20th century.

American literature--African American authors.

American literature.

Black power--United States--History--20th century.

Black power.

Masculinity--United States--History--20th century.

Masculinity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (155 p.)

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2015]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

When Eldridge Cleaver wrote in 1965 that black men "shall have our manhood or the earth will be leveled by our attempt to gain it," he voiced a central strain of Black Power movement rhetoric. In print, as well as on stage and screen, Black Power advocates equated masculinity with their political radicalism and potency. While many observers have criticized the misogyny in this preoccupation, few have noted the challenges to it within the period in the works of authors such as James Baldwin, John Edgar Wideman, Clarence Major, and John Oliver Killens. These and other writers tested the link between masculinity and radical politics. By recovering their voices, Rolland Murray demonstrates that the movement's gender ideals were questioned more fully than scholars have acknowledged. He also examines how the Black Power era's contentious gender politics continue to play a role in contemporary African American culture and scholarship.Murray analyzes the ways in which notions of masculinity were interwoven with essential movement philosophies regarding revolutionary violence, charismatic leadership, radical rhetoric, and black sexuality. Striving to forge a more nuanced account of how masculinist discourse contributed to the movement's overall agenda, he frames masculinity both as a linchpin of the seductive politics of Black Power and as a focal point of dissent by black male authors.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Our Black Nations Reconsidered

1. My Father's Many Mansions: James Baldwin and the Architecture of Masculine Authority

2. The Clumsy Trap of Manhood: Revolutionary Nationalism, John Edgar Wideman, and Remembrance

3. Dark Intimacies: Sex, Nationalism, and Forgetting

4. How the Conjure-Man Gets Busy: Cultural Nationalism and Performativity

Conclusion. Masculine Legacies

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9781512809565

151280956X

OCLC:

1013947728