Overview

Using the term """"exodus politics"""" to theorise the valorisation of black male leadership in the movement for civil rights, Robert J. Patterson explores the ways in which the political strategies and ideologies of this movement paradoxically undermined the collective enfranchisement of black people. He argues that by narrowly conceptualising civil rights in only racial terms and relying solely on a male figure, conventional African American leadership, though frequently redemptive, can also erode the very goals of civil rights. The author turns to contemporary African American writers such as Ernest Gaines, Gayl Jones, Alice Walker, and Charles Johnson to show how they challenge the dominant models of civil rights leadership. Patterson draws on a variety of disciplines—including black feminism, civil rights history, cultural studies, and liberation theology—in order to develop a more nuanced formulation of black subjectivity and politics. His connection of the concept of racial rights to gender and sexual rights allows him to illuminate the literature's promotion of more expansive models. By considering the competing and varied political interests of black communities, these writers reimagine the dominant models in a way that can empower communities to be self-sustaining in the absence of a messianic male leader.

Full Product Details

9780813935263

Table of Contents

Reviews

<p>Eloquent and exemplary, Exodus Politics is a work of excellent literary and cultural criticism. Patterson succeeds as a black cultural critic whose eye is consistently on the gendered limits of leadership in fictional representations of the Civil Rights movement.--Maurice Wallace, Duke University

<p>Eloquent and exemplary, Exodus Politics is a work of excellent literary and cultural criticism. Patterson succeeds as a black feminist critic whose eye is consistently on the gendered limits of leadership in fictional representations of the Civil Rights movement.--Maurice Wallace, Duke University

Probing African American literature, along with its literary and political histories and their representations, Robert J. Patterson's <i>Exodus Politics</i> is an important and necessary text that intervenes in this current 'post-black, ' 'post-racial, ' and 'post civil rights' moment of literary and cultural production. This book will be useful for both specialist and non-specialist audiences because of the ways that Patterson carefully historicizes and engages with civil rights narratives.</p>--Christina Sharpe, Tufts University, author of <i>Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects</i>

Author Information

Robert J. Patterson is Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at Georgetown University, USA.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available