Research Catalog

Archives of the Black Atlantic : Reading Between Literature and History

Title
Archives of the Black Atlantic : Reading Between Literature and History / Wendy W. Walters.
Author
Walters, Wendy W.
Publication
New York ; London : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013.

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library Sc E 14-557Schomburg Center - Research & Reference

Details

Description
xii, 191 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.
Summary
"Many African diasporic novelists and poets allude to or cite archival documents in their writings, foregrounding the elements of archival research and data in their literary texts, and revising the material remnants of the archive. This book reads black historical novels and poetry in an interdisciplinary context, to examine the multiple archives that have produced our historical consciousness. In the history of African diaspora literature, black writers and intellectuals have led the way for an analysis of the archive, querying dominant archives and revising the ways black people have been represented in the legal and hegemonic discourses of the west. Their work in genres as diverse as autobiography, essay, bibliography, poetry, and the novel attests to the centrality of this critique in black intellectual culture. Through literary engagement with the archives of the slave trader, colonizer, and courtroom, creative writers teach us to read the archives of history anew, probing between the documents for stories left untold, questions left unanswered, and freedoms enacted against all odds. Opening new perspectives on Atlantic history and culture, Walters generates a dialogue between what was and what might have been. Ultimately, Walters argues that references to archival documents in black historical literature introduce a new methodology for studying both the archive and literature itself, engaging in a transnational and interdisciplinary reading that exposes the instability of the archive's truth claim and highlights rebellious possibility."--Publisher's website.
Series Statement
Routledge Research in Atlantic Studies ; 6
Uniform Title
Routledge research in Atlantic studies ; 6.
Subjects
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-170) and index.
Contents
Introduction: Black historical literature and the archive -- Fiction and documents: Patricia Powell's The Pagoda -- Archives of anthropology and psychoanalysis: V.Y. Mudimbe's The Rift -- Prison or paradise? archiving the black American West in Toni Morrison's Paradise -- Elizabeth Alexander's "Amistad": reading the black history poem through the archive -- "Object into subject": Michelle Cliff, John Ruskin, and the slave ship -- The spectral ledger: Fred D'Aguiar's Feeding the Ghosts -- Reading the archive, looking for bones -- Epilogue: Toward an aspirational archive.
Call Number
Sc E 14-557
ISBN
  • 9780415821513 (hardback)
  • 0415821517 (hardback)
  • 9780203562840 (ebook) (canceled/invalid)
LCCN
  • 2012043858
  • 40022179530
OCLC
810534195
Author
Walters, Wendy W.
Title
Archives of the Black Atlantic : Reading Between Literature and History / Wendy W. Walters.
Publisher
New York ; London : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013.
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Series
Routledge Research in Atlantic Studies ; 6
Routledge research in Atlantic studies ; 6.
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-170) and index.
Other Standard Identifier
40022179530
Research Call Number
Sc E 14-557
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