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9781496802989

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Prefiguring Postblackness is an original, thorough, and consequential monograph that will alter contemporary discussions of what scholars have dubbed a 'postblack' cultural moment following the civil rights era, in which a singular and coherent notion of black identity that unified the Freedom Struggles of the twentieth century gives way to a notion of blackness riven with internal differences--of gender, of class, of nationality, of sexuality, of age, of an endless list of specificity. Finding incipient traces of a postblack sensibility in mid-century African American drama, Davis unmoors discussions of black representation that have developed, especially since the election of President Barack Obama, and shows that they have a deep history. Doing so, she tells us something new about both our current moment and the history that preceded it. Prefiguring Postblackness announces Davis as a significant theorist of African American identity and a major theater historian. --Shane Vogel, author of The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, Performance

Prefiguring Postblackness provides an astute reading of postblackness in plays which predate the Post-Soul Aesthetic. The Post-Soul Aesthetic is conceived of as a post-Civil Rights phenomenon, yet Davis analyzes plays such as A Raisin in the Sun, Dutchman, The Great White Hope, Wine in the Wilderness, and No Place to Be Somebody: A Black Black Comedy as texts out of time which prefigure postblackness by critiquing racial uplift ideology and reimagining proscriptive notions of black authenticity. Prefiguring Postblackness is a very important and timely contribution to our field, which pushes our discussions in important new directions. Venetria K. Patton, author of The Grasp That Reaches beyond the Grave: The Ancestral Call in Black Women s Texts and Women in Chains: The Legacy of Slavery in Black Women s Fiction

Author Information

Carol Bunch Davis, Galveston, Texas, is an assistant professor of English at Texas A&M University at Galveston. Her work has appeared in MELUS and Black Arts Quarterly.

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