Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature

Question 1

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature

Postmodernism and New Social Movements

Answer 1

Postmodernism

• Emergence of marginal voices
• Rise of social/cultural/ethnic difference domestically
• “Postcolonial” condition
  
  • Growing interest in non-Western cultures.
  • Rise of New Social Movements.
  • Globalization.

New Social Movements

• Often focused on symbolic struggles
• Result: pluraility of voices that criss-cross the social field (composed of paralogisms)

1. Issues of lifestyle.
2. Bodily emancipation.
3. Ecology.
4. Occupation and use of space.
5. International. coperation and North-South relations.
6. Ethnnic and cultural difference.

Question 2

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature

Characteristics (10)

Answer 2

• No social meta-history / meta-narrative
  
  • Plurality of small histories / “situated positions” that traverse the social field.
• Relation to subaltern identities and cultures.
• Less rabidly experimental
• Quite innovative
• Less self-referential (less meta-literary, more oriented towards portrayal of society)
• Often thematic innovation
  
  • Minority heritage
  • Memory (individual and collective)
  • Contrast btween “old” and “new” worlds
• Ethnic literature: magical realism.
• Minority literatures explore the individual’s insertion in the community.
• Communal dimension

Question 3

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature

Hispanic literature
Native American literature
Queer literature
Chinese-American literature

Answer 3

Hispanic literature
Victor Hernández Cruz
Nuyorican poets
Rodolfo Anaya
Luis Valdés (Teatro Campesino)
Sandra Cisneros
Gloria Anzaldúa

Native American literature
N. Scott Momaday
Leslie Marmon Silko
Sherman Alexie

Queer literature
Adrienne Rich
David Leavitt
Dennis Cooper
Sarah Schulman
Kathy Acker

Chinese-American literature
Maxine Hong Kingston
Amy Tan

Question 4

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature
Black literature
The 1940s and 1950s

Answer 4

• Returning black and non-white GIs felt American racism by contrast with Europe
• Post-war prosperity not so much for black communities.
• School desegregation decision.

Richard Wright + Ralph Ellison + James Baldwin

• Fiction and essay writers
• Wright and Baldwin write realist fiction with touches of 30s social realism.
• Ellison most experimental one.
  
  • “Invisible Man”: non-linear chronolgy, action dissolves into disconnected events.
• Work parallel to development of Négritude.
• International dimension.

Richard Wright
“Uncle Tom’s Children”
“Native Son”
“Black Boy”
“Pagan Spain”

Ralph Ellison
“Invisible Man”
“Shadow Act”
“Juneteenth”

James Baldwin
“Go Tell It on the Mountain”
“Notes of a Native Son”
“Giovanni’s Room”
“Another Country”
“The Fire Next Time”

Question 5

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature
1960s and 1970s. Civil Rights Movement and after

Answer 5

• Mobilization for civil rights.
  
  • First protests against segregation in public services.
  • Lunch counter sit-ins
  • Voter registration drives in the South.
    
    • Civil Rights Act
    • Voting Rights Act
      - Violence, discrimination, police brutality, lack of public recognition for black culture.
      - 1964 Bombing of 16th St Baptist Church
      - Killing of civil rights and anti-racist militants.
      - Rise of BLACK POWER
      - BLACK PANTHERS

Question 6

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature
1960s and 1970s literature and culture.
- Characteristics (8)

Answer 6

• Influenced by black activism
• Political and social commitment
• Black cultural nationalism, pan-Africanism, Afro-centrism.
• Accessibility and community appeal.
• Use of black vernacular and black cultural references.
• Performative forms, more community-oriented.
• Collective work.
• Creation of black support networks.

Question 7

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature
1960s and 1970s literature and culture.
Leroi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka)

Answer 7

• Poet, playwright,essayist.
• Starts close to New York School, “moves out” of white society.

DRAMA
*“Black Mass”
“Slave Ship”

ESSAY
*“Blues People”

FICTION
*“The System of Dante’s Hell”
“Tales”
“Un Poco Low Coup”
“Tales of the Out & the Gone”

POETRY
*“The Dead Lecturer: Poems”
“Black Magic”
“It’s Nation Time”
“New Music, New Poetry”

Question 8

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature
1960s and 1970s literature and culture.
Nikki Giovanni

Answer 8

• Poet and activist

*“Black Feeling, Black Talk”
“Black Judgement”
“Re:creation”
“My House”
“The Women and the Men”

Question 9

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature
1970s and 1980s
Characteristics (2)

Answer 9

• Rise of women writers
  
  • Maya Angelou
  • Alice Walker
  • Toni Morrison
  • Toni Cade Bambara
  • Ntozake Shange
• Fusion of traditional black and experimental concerns.
  
  • Clarence Major

Question 10

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature
1970s and 1980s
Toni Cade Bambara

Answer 10

“Gorilla, My Love”
“The Sea Birds are Still Alive”
“The Salt Eaters”
“Those Bones are not My Child”

“Zora”
“The Bombing of Osage Avenue”

“The Johnson Girls”
“Tar Baby”

Question 11

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature
1970s and 1980s
Toni Morrison

Answer 11

*The Bluest Eye”
“Sula”
“Beloved”
“Jazz”
“Paradise”

Question 12

Postmodernism of difference and African-American literature
The present

Answer 12

• Critical attitude towards “white America”
• Revisiting of history
• Renouncing persistent racism and racial violence

Claude Rankine
*“Don’t Let Me Be Lonely”
“Citizen: An AMerican Lyric”
“The White Card: A Play”
“Just Us: An American Conversation”