Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Color and Culture
Black Writers and the Making of the Modern Intellectual
-
Ross Posnock
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
1998
About this book
Posnock offers a new historical perspective on “black intellectuals” as a social category, ranging from Douglass to Patricia Williams, from Du Bois to Samuel Delany and Adrienne Kennedy. These writers challenge two durable assumptions: that high culture is “white culture” and that racial uplift is the sole concern of the black intellectual.
Reviews
In this solidly academic volume, Posnock presents the black intellectual from an historical viewpoint, addressing them as a social group unto themselves. Looking back over a century ‘from Frederick Douglass to Patricia Williams,’ he addresses the myriad causes for which ‘high culture’ blacks have fought, stretching still wider the discussion of black history in America.
-- Samiya A. Bashir Black Issues Book Review
-- Samiya A. Bashir Black Issues Book Review
Ranging freely across the twentieth century, Posnock’s emphasis is on intellectual history, with an occasional admixture of literary criticism… Color and Culture is one of those books so prolific in suggestion, so stimulating in its juxtapositions, so profound in its critique of racial essentialism, that the reviewer’s task becomes an exercise in frustration: such intellectual riches do not lend themselves to a short summary.
-- Christine MacLeod Modern Language Review
-- Christine MacLeod Modern Language Review
Color and Culture is a magnificent contribution to American literary history. Monumentally important in its exploration of the tensions between ethnicity and cosmopolitanism, Professor Posnock’s book is the work on black literature that I have been waiting to read for three decades, one that both liberates and enlarges our discussions on racial identity and a century of black intellectual commerce from Du Bois to Samuel Delany.
-- Charles Johnson, author of Dreamer and the National Book Award winner, Middle Passage
-- Charles Johnson, author of Dreamer and the National Book Award winner, Middle Passage
This learned, passionate apologia for cosmopolitan black intellectuals unsettles familiar figures and categories. Whether one is assenting to Color and Culture, arguing with it, or (as I often found myself) doing both at the same time, this is a book to contend with.
-- Michael P. Rogin, author of Blackface, White Noise
-- Michael P. Rogin, author of Blackface, White Noise
Posnock’s analysis starts from the observation that fixing identity, à la multiculturalism or postmodernism, has had destructive political, cultural, and social effects. Most discussion of public intellectuals presumes black writers are relative late-comers to the intellectual cadre. Posnock’s book turns the recent discussion on its head. Taking a cue from Adolph Reed, Posnock admires black intellectuals precisely when they refuse the burden of representing or speaking for the race.
-- Kenneth W. Warren, author of Black and White Strangers
-- Kenneth W. Warren, author of Black and White Strangers
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Acknowledgments
vii -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
ix -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Introduction: Culture Has No Color
1 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
1 After Identity Politics
21 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2 The Unclassified Residuum
48 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3 Black Intellectuals and Other Oxymorons: Du Bois and Fanon
87 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4 The Distinction of Du Bois: Aesthetics, Pragmatism, Politics
111 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5 Divine Anarchy: Du Bois and the Craving for Modernity
146 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6 Motley Mixtures: Locke, Ellison, Hurston
184 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
7 The Agon Black Intellectual: Baldwin and Baraka
220 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
8 Cosmopolitan Collage: Samuel Delany and Adrienne Kennedy
260 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Notes
297 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Works Cited
331 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
347
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
July 1, 2009
eBook ISBN:
9780674042339
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
365
eBook ISBN:
9780674042339
Audience(s) for this book
Professional and scholarly;
