Description
Book SynopsisTakes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the literal starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence.
Trade ReviewWe have all read about the hunger of slaves whose masters sought to starve them into submission. ButThe Delectable Negroasks of these slaves: 'How does it feel to be an edible, consumed object?' Inverting the trope of slave hunger, VincentWoodardprovocatively suggests that the slaveholder is a parasite who feeds off the slaves body in acts that range from cannibalistic to sexual modes of consumption, especially the homoerotic. In an even greater provocation, however, Woodard argues that within the black community, hunger is transformed into a regenerative space from which the search for home and communal belonging may be initiated. A bold and brilliant book. -- Carla L. Peterson,author of Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City
The Delectable Negrouncovers a compelling set of themes in the scholarship on U.S. slave culture: white cannibalism as a significant trope for white depletion of, and desire for, the laboring and eroticized black male body. In a stunning series of arguments, Woodard forces us to reconsider the historical out-of-hand rejection of black African fear (and, not rarely, claims) of white cannibalism, showing how remarkably wide-reaching was the sense that slavery satisfied some sadomasochistic instinct among the slave-owning class. -- Maurice O. Wallace,author of Constructing the Black Masculine
The Delectable Negro is a brilliant, fearless, and deeply political book. * Early American Literature *
With unflinching clarity,The Delectable Negroexposes and examines the pervasive cultural fantasies that have rendered the enslaved black body into a consumable object from the eighteenth century to the present. [] [I]ts powerful insights will continue to generate new lines of important inquiry for years to come. * American Historical Review *
It should be noted here that Woodard died before this book was published; it is a shame that he could not see his daring work enter debate. Praise must go to Joyce and McBride, moreover, for their careful and attentive editorial work that made this publication of this text possible. . . . Woodard's career would surely have been even bolder after this book, but this text's interruption into critical theory alone is itself worth celebrating. * American Studies *
Table of ContentsEditor's Note Justin A. JoyceForewordE. Patrick Johnson Introduction: "Master ... eated me when I was meat" 1. Cannibalism in Transatlantic Context 2. Sex, Honor, and Human Consumption 3. A Tale of Hunger Retold: Ravishment and Hunger in F. Douglass's Life and Writing 4. Domestic Rituals of Consumption 5. Eating Nat Turner 6. The Hungry Nigger Notes BibliographyIndex About the Author About the Editors
