Constructing the Black Masculine , livre ebook

252

pages

English

Ebooks

2002

Écrit par
Wallace Maurice O. Wallace

Publié par
Duke University Press

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252

pages

English

Ebook

2002

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

12 juin 2002

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9780822383796

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

In seven representative episodes of black masculine literary and cultural history-from the founding of the first African American Masonic lodge in 1775 to the 1990s choreographies of modern dance genius Bill T. Jones-Constructing the Black Masculine maps black men's historical efforts to negotiate the frequently discordant relationship between blackness and maleness in the cultural logic of American identity. Maurice O. Wallace draws on an impressive variety of material to investigate the survivalist strategies employed by black men who have had to endure the disjunction between race and masculinity in American culture.Highlighting their chronic objectification under the gaze of white eyes, Wallace argues that black men suffer a social and representational crisis in being at once seen and unseen, fetish and phantasm, spectacle and shadow in the American racial imagination. Invisible and disregarded on one hand, black men, perceived as potential threats to society, simultaneously face the reality of hypervisibility and perpetual surveillance. Paying significant attention to the sociotechnologies of vision and image production over two centuries, Wallace shows how African American men-as soldiers, Freemasons, and romantic heroes-have sought both to realize the ideal image of the American masculine subject and to deconstruct it in expressive mediums like modern dance, photography, and theatre. Throughout, he draws on the experiences and theories of such notable figures as Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and James Baldwin.

Voir

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

12 juin 2002

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9780822383796

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

c o n s t r u c t i n g t h e b l a c k m a s c u l i n e

A John Hope Franklin Center Book

m a u r i c e o . w a l l a c e

Constructing the Black Masculine

IdentityandIdealityinAfricanAmericanMen’s

Literature and Culture, 1775–1995

Duke University Press

Durham and London 2002

∫2002 Duke University Press

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$

Typeset in Carter & Cone Galliard by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

appear on the last printed page of this book.

For Teddy, Johari, and Michael

And, not least, for Pam

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

p a r t o n e : s p e c t r a g r a p h i a 191. On Dangers Seen and Unseen: Identity Politics and the Burden of Black Male Specularity

108

133

147

170

p a r t t w o : n o h i d i n g p l a c e 2. ‘‘Are We Men?’’:Prince Hall, Martin Delany, and the Black Masculine Ideal in Black Freemasonry, 1775–1865

3. Constructing the Black Masculine:Frederick Douglass, Booker

T. Washington, and the Sublimits of African American Autobiography

4. A Man’s Place:Architecture, Identity, and Black Masculine Being

p a r t t h r e e : l o o k i n g b ( l ) a c k 5. ‘‘I’m Not Entirely What I Look Like’’:Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and the Hegemony of Vision; or, Jimmy’s FBEye Blues

6. What Juba Knew:Dance and Desire in Melvin Dixon’s

Vanishing Rooms

Afterword:‘‘What Ails You Polyphemus?’’: Toward a New

Ontology of Vision in Frantz Fanon’sBlack Skin White Masks

179Notes

213

227

Bibliography

Index

l i s t o f i l l u s t r a t i o n s

1.New York Times Magazine, 4 Dec. 1994

2. Albert Watson, ‘‘Iron’’ Mike Tyson