Race and the Rhetoric of Resistance

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-1-9788-2082-1
Verlag: Rutgers University Press

Buch, Englisch, 150 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 122 mm x 200 mm, Gewicht: 156 g

Jeffrey B. Ferguson is remembered as an Amherst College professor of mythical charisma and for his long-standing engagement with George Schuyler, culminating in his paradigm-changing book The Sage of Sugar Hill. Continuing in the vein of his ever questioning the conventions of 'race melodrama' through the lens of which so much American cultural history and storytelling has been filtered, Ferguson's final work is brought together here in Race and the Rhetoric of Resistance. Ferguson asks, what would thinking about 'race relations' be like if George Schuyler's relentless questioning was heeded? How could the 'bifurcating effects' of racial melodrama, the common, popular, and well-intentioned forms of sentimental heroicization and victimization be avoided in literary and in scholarly narratives?

Ferguson goes deeper than any other literary and cultural critic in teasing out the ironies that have surrounded notions of race and racial cultural production in America. One further irony is that in order to highlight some of the current blind spots, he draws on classic American studies concepts and texts, including Ralph Waldo Emerson's distinction between the party of memory and the party of hope, Alexis de Tocqueville's notions of American democracy and the races of America, Lionel Trilling's distinction between sincerity and authenticity, and Edmund Morgan's demonstration of the interconnectedness of American slavery and freedom. Elegant, memorable, and aphoristically written, these essays convey to the reader Ferguson's sense of humor, warmth, and grace, while they add up to a serious and principled critique of much common scholarly and pedagogic practice.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ferguson, Jeffrey B

Sollors, Werner

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gewalt und Diskriminierung: Soziale Aspekte
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Textlinguistik, Diskursanalyse, Stilistik
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Gesellschaftstheorie

Über Autor(innen)

Jeffrey B. Ferguson (1964-2018) was the Karen and Brian Conway Presidential Teaching Professor of Black Studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts, a mythical teacher, and the author of The Sage of Sugar Hill: George S. Schuyler, Satire, and the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem Renaissance: A Brief History with Documents, and an essay on Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt for A New Literary History of America.

Werner Sollors is the Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Research Professor of English and African American studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the author of several books including Amiri Baraka: The Quest for a 'Populist Modernism', Neither Black nor White yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature, The Temptation of Despair: Tales of the 1940s.

George Hutchinson is the Newton C. Farr professor of American culture in the department of English at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and the author of several books including Facing the Abyss:  American Literature and Culture in the 1940s, In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line, and The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White.