Pragmatics of Democracy: A Political Theory of African American Literature before Emancipation. (3rd August 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jones, Douglas A
• Is Part Of: American literary history. Volume 33:Number 3(2021)
• Page Start: 498
• Page End: 509
• Publication Date: 2021-08-03
• Subjects: American literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; 820.9
• DOI: 10.1093/alh/ajab046
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0896-7148

Abstract

Abstract: "Pragmatics of Democracy: A Political Theory of African American Literature before Emancipation" reads scenes of embodied experience in early African American literary culture to theorize how persons come to regard democratic cultures as productive of the most excellent forms of life. The book proposes a typology of these iterative bodily events which dispose persons toward democratic subjectivity: ecstasy, violence, impersonality, respectability, and autonomy. [E]arly African American narratives offer speculations, categories, and hermeneutics concerning democracy grounded in Black life amid new-world chattel slavery that sometimes contradict, sometimes complement those that prevailed in early US political thought.