Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS vii
3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
4. Introduction ENCOUNTERING ILLEGIBILITY The Enactment of Critical Blackness 1
5. PART I Vision
6. Chapter One PICTURING BLACKNESS IN THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF ROY DECARAVA 23
7. Chapter Two A MUSE FOR BLACKNESS Kara Walker’s “Outlaw Rebel” Vision 58
8. PART II Genre
9. Chapter Three ANTIESSENTIALIST FORM The Bebop Effect of Percival Everett’s Erasure 89
10. Chapter Four BEYOND SATIRE The Humor of Incongruity in Paul Beatty’s The Sellout 122
11. PART III History
12. Chapter Five THE POLITICS OF INERTIA Temporal Distortion in Suzan-Lori Parks’s 100 Plays for the First Hundred Days 153
13. Chapter Six HERETICAL POETICS IN ROBIN COSTE LEWIS’S THE VOYAGE OF THE SABLE VENUS 189
14. AFTERWORD Circulating Critical Blackness 223
15. NOTES 227
16. BIBLIOGRAPHY 259
17. INDEX 277