Darieck Scott
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814740941
- eISBN:
- 9780814786543
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814740941.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
Challenging the conception of empowerment associated with the Black Power Movement and its political and intellectual legacies in the present, this book contends that power can be found not only in ...
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Challenging the conception of empowerment associated with the Black Power Movement and its political and intellectual legacies in the present, this book contends that power can be found not only in martial resistance, but, surprisingly, where the black body has been inflicted with harm or humiliation. Theorizing the relation between blackness and abjection by foregrounding often neglected depictions of the sexual exploitation and humiliation of men in works by James Weldon Johnson, Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, and Samuel R. Delany, the book asks: If we're racialized through domination and abjection, what is the political, personal, and psychological potential in racialization-through-abjection? Using the figure of male rape as a lens through which to examine this question, it argues that blackness in relation to abjection endows its inheritors with a form of counterintuitive power—indeed, what can be thought of as a revised notion of black power. This power is found at the point at which ego, identity, body, race, and nation seem to reveal themselves as utterly penetrated and compromised, without defensible boundary. Yet in this book, “power” assumes an unexpected and paradoxical form. In arguing that blackness endows its inheritors with a surprising form of counterintuitive power—as a resource for the political present—found at the very point of violation, the book enriches our understanding of the construction of black male identity.Less
Challenging the conception of empowerment associated with the Black Power Movement and its political and intellectual legacies in the present, this book contends that power can be found not only in martial resistance, but, surprisingly, where the black body has been inflicted with harm or humiliation. Theorizing the relation between blackness and abjection by foregrounding often neglected depictions of the sexual exploitation and humiliation of men in works by James Weldon Johnson, Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, and Samuel R. Delany, the book asks: If we're racialized through domination and abjection, what is the political, personal, and psychological potential in racialization-through-abjection? Using the figure of male rape as a lens through which to examine this question, it argues that blackness in relation to abjection endows its inheritors with a form of counterintuitive power—indeed, what can be thought of as a revised notion of black power. This power is found at the point at which ego, identity, body, race, and nation seem to reveal themselves as utterly penetrated and compromised, without defensible boundary. Yet in this book, “power” assumes an unexpected and paradoxical form. In arguing that blackness endows its inheritors with a surprising form of counterintuitive power—as a resource for the political present—found at the very point of violation, the book enriches our understanding of the construction of black male identity.
