{"product_id":"black-queer-flesh-rejecting-subjectivity-in-the-african-american-novel-9781517910068","title":"Black Queer Flesh: Rejecting Subjectivity in the","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA groundbreaking examination of how twentieth-century African American writers use queer characters to challenge and ultimately reject subjectivity \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBlack Queer Flesh\u003c\/i\u003e reinterprets key African American novels from the Harlem Renaissance to Black Modernism to contemporary literature, showing how authors have imagined a new model of Black queer selfhood. African American authors blame liberal humanism’s model of subjectivity for double consciousness and find that liberal humanism’s celebration of individual autonomy and agency is a way of disciplining Black queer lives. These authors thus reject subjectivity in search of a new mode of the self that Alvin J. Henry names “Black queer flesh”—a model of selfhood that is collective, plural, fluctuating, and deeply connected to the Black queer past. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHenry begins with early twentieth-century authors such as Jessie Redmon Fauset and James Weldon Johnson. These authors adapted the \u003ci\u003eBildungsroman\u003c\/i\u003e, the novel of self-formation, to show African Americans gaining freedom and agency by becoming a liberal, autonomous subjects. These authors, however, discovered that the promise of liberal autonomy held out by the \u003ci\u003eBildungsroman\u003c\/i\u003e was yet another tool of antiblack racism. As a result, they tentatively experimented with repurposing the \u003ci\u003eBildungsroman\u003c\/i\u003e to throw off subjectivity and its attendant double consciousness. In contrast, Nella Larsen, Henry shows, was the first author to fully reject subjectivity. In \u003ci\u003eQuicksand and Passing\u003c\/i\u003e, Larsen invented a new genre showing her queer characters—characters whose queerness already positioned them on the margins of subjectivity—escaping subjectivity altogether. Using Ralph Ellison’s archival drafts, Henry then powerfully rereads \u003ci\u003eInvisible Man\u003c\/i\u003e, revealing that the protagonist as a queer, disabled character taught by the novel’s many other queer, disabled characters to likewise seek a selfhood beyond subjectivity. Although Larsen and Ellison sketch glimpses of this selfhood beyond subjectivity, only Saidiya Hartman’s \u003ci\u003eWayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments\u003c\/i\u003e shows a protagonist fully inhabiting Black queer flesh—a new mode of selfhood that is collective, plural, always evolving, and no longer alienated from the black past.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBlack Queer Flesh\u003c\/i\u003e is an original and necessary contribution to Black literary studies, offering new ways to understand and appreciate the canonical texts and far more. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Alvin J. Henry’s \u003ci\u003eBlack Queer Flesh\u003c\/i\u003e makes not only a significant and needed contribution to Black literary studies, but indeed will transform twentieth-century African American criticism and theory. His critical articulation of ‘Black queer flesh’ shaped by theories of Black self-abnegation offers a critical approach that makes it possible to rethink the Black queer self in key literary texts.\"—Gary Edward Holcomb, author of \u003ci\u003eClaude McKay, Code Name Sasha: Queer Black Marxism and the Harlem Renaissance\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Alvin J. Henry’s lush theorization of Black queer flesh is a mode of being, a performance of the self outside of subjectivity that highlights how the anxieties and violence of racialization manifest. This is a study in negative sensation. \u003ci\u003eBlack Queer Flesh \u003c\/i\u003edigests these moments of raw embodiment so as to remake intimacy, being, and the very nature of the novel itself.\"—Amber Jamilla Musser, author of \u003ci\u003eSensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409714880855,"sku":"9781517910068","price":20.69,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781517910068.jpg?v=1730507774","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/black-queer-flesh-rejecting-subjectivity-in-the-african-american-novel-9781517910068","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}