In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
- ISBN-10
- 0822373459
- ISBN-13
- 9780822373452
- Series
- In the Wake
- Category
- Social Science
- Pages
- 192
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2016-10-21
- Publisher
- Duke University Press
- Author
- Christina Sharpe
Description
In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake." Activating multiple registers of "wake"—the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness—Sharpe illustrates how Black lives are swept up and animated by the afterlives of slavery, and she delineates what survives despite such insistent violence and negation. Initiating and describing a theory and method of reading the metaphors and materiality of "the wake," "the ship," "the hold," and "the weather," Sharpe shows how the sign of the slave ship marks and haunts contemporary Black life in the diaspora and how the specter of the hold produces conditions of containment, regulation, and punishment, but also something in excess of them. In the weather, Sharpe situates anti-Blackness and white supremacy as the total climate that produces premature Black death as normative. Formulating the wake and "wake work" as sites of artistic production, resistance, consciousness, and possibility for living in diaspora, In the Wake offers a way forward.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
The Wake: A Novel
By Paul KingsnorthIn The Wake, a postapocalyptic novel set a thousand years in the past, Paul Kingsnorth brings this dire scenario back to us through the eyes of the unforgettable Buccmaster, a proud landowner bearing witness to the end of his world.
-
The Books at the Wake: A Study of Literary Allusions in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake
By James S. AthertonEntire chapters are devoted to such major figures as Swift and Lewis Carroll, while less important influences are grouped together under such headings as “The Irish Writers” and “The Fathers of the Church.” He also surveys the ...
-
Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects
By Christina SharpeArguing that the fundamental, familiar, sexual violence of slavery and racialized subjugation have continued to shape black and white subjectivities into the present, Christina Sharpe interprets African diasporic and Black Atlantic visual ...
-
In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made
By Norman F. CantorThe author draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death as a gripping, intimate narrative.
-
The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change
By Michelle MiJung KimLastly, the tendency to abide by the guidelines of proper English (and by now, I hope I've made myself clear that “proper” more often than not means white) can also show up through the use of coded and covert language to cover up bias ...
-
In the Wake of Disaster: Islamists, the State and a Social Contract in Pakistan
By Ayesha SiddiqiWhat is the state's responsibility to its people in the aftermath of a natural hazard based disaster? The book sets out to address this seemingly simple question, after large scale floods devastated Pakistan in 2010 and then again in 2011.
-
Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts
By Rebecca HallThis story of a personal and national legacy is a powerful reminder that while the past is gone, we still live in its wake.
-
In the Wake of War: Military Occupation, Emancipation, and Civil War America
By Andrew F. LangThese latter notions surprised white society and partly mollified their concerns about African American soldiery.29 In spite of his celebration of African American combat valor, Lincoln remained wedded to the concept of black ...
-
In the Wake of Terror: Medicine and Morality in a Time of Crisis
By Jonathan D. MorenoTimely and provocative essays on bioethical questions brought to the forefront by the bioterrorist threat.
-
Caught in the Wake
By Michael Häger, Patrick DiamanteThe goal in writing this story is not merely to document abuse and negligent denial, but to assure that others in Patrick's family, as well as members of any family, will not become ensnared by the destructive behavior of their loved ones, ...