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Black women, identity, and cultural theory : (un)becoming the subject / Kevin Everod Quashie

Author
Quashie, Kevin Everod
Published
New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2004]
Copyright Date
©2004
Physical Description
1 online resource (1 volume)
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Language Note
English.
Contents
Introduction : what becomes -- The other dancer as self : notes on girlfriend selfhood -- Self(full)ness and the politics of community -- Liminality and selfhood : toward being enough -- An indisputable memory of blackness -- The practice of a memory body -- Toward a language aesthetic -- My own, language -- Conclusion : what is undone.
Summary
Kevin Everod Quashie explores the metaphor of the "girlfriend" as a new way of understanding three central concepts of cultural studies: self, memory, and language. He considers how the works of writers such as Toni Morrison, Ama Ata Aidoo, Dionne Brand, photographer Lorna Simpson, and many others, inform debates over the concept of identity. Quashie argues that these artists replace the notion of a stable, singular identity with the concept of the self developing in a process both communal and perpetually fluid, a relationship that functions in much the same way that an adult woman negotiates with her girlfriend(s). He suggests that memory itself is corporeal, a literal body that is crucial to the process of becoming. Quashie also explores the problem that language poses for the black woman artist and her commitment to a mastery that neither colonizes nor excludes. The analysis throughout this book interacts with schools of thought such as psychoanalysis, postmodernism, and postcolonialism, but.
Ultimately moves beyond these to propose a new cultural aesthetic that aims to center black women and their philosophies. Book jacket.
Subject(s)
Genre(s)
ISBN
9780813555409
081355540X
0813535360
9780813535364
9780813533667 (hardcover ; alk. paper)
081353366X (hardcover ; alk. paper)
9780813533674 (pbk. ; alk. paper)
0813533678 (pbk. ; alk. paper)
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-219) and index.
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