Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:51:01.419Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Race and the (Para)Textual Condition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Beth A. McCoy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When seen through the lens of the African American freedom struggle, the seemingly minor spaces and places federated by Gérard Genette under the term paratext take on a major role. Entangled throughout the margins and fringes of books and other kinds of texts (especially visual ones), the paratext (e.g., citations, prefaces, typeface) has served as a field through which white supremacy has been transacted indirectly: white-written prefaces to fugitive slave narratives are vivid examples. At the same time, the paratext has also served as a vector through which white power has been resisted. Examining the paratextual issues surrounding Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Without Sanctuary, James Allen's exhibition of lynching photography, this essay explores what is gained and lost when the paratext is used as a means of resisting racialized domination. (BAMcC)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 1: Special Topic: The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature , January 2006 , pp. 156 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Allen, James, comp. and ed. Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. Santa Fe: Twin Palms, 2000.Google Scholar
Als, Hilton. “GWTW.” Allen 38–44.Google Scholar
Andrews, William L. “Editing ‘Minority’ Texts.” The Margins of the Text. Ed. Greetham, D. C. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997. 45–55.Google Scholar
Andrews, William L. To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760–1865. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1986.Google Scholar
Berry, John D., ed. Language Culture Type: International Type Design in the Age of Unicode. New York: Association Typographique Internationale, 2002.Google Scholar
Brawley, Lisa. “Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom and the Fugitive Tourist Industry.” Novel 30 (1996): 98–129. JSTOR. 28 July 2005 <http://www.jstor.org/>.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Cole, Yoji. “Tavis Smiley Knows Where the Power Is.” Diversity Inc. 9 Feb. 2004. <http://www.diversityinc.com/members/6346.cfm>..>Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. “What's Going On? Black Feminist Thought and the Politics of Postmodernism.” Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1998. 125–54.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Signature Event Context.” Limited Inc. Ed. Graff, Gerald. Trans. Weber, Samuel and Mehlman, Jeffrey. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1988. 1–24.Google Scholar
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. Ed. and introd. Blight, David W. New York: Bedford, 1993.Google Scholar
DuBois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. Ed. and introd. Blight, David W. and Williams, Robert Gooding. New York: Bedford, 1993.Google Scholar
Eglash, Ron. African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Garrison, William Lloyd. Preface. Douglass 29–35.Google Scholar
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Signifying Monkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Gates, Henry Louis Jr., and McKay, Nellie Y., gen. eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: Norton, 1996.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. 1987. Trans. Lewin, Jane E. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilroy, Paul. Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures. London: Serpent's Tail, 1993.Google Scholar
Harris, Trudier. Exorcising Blackness: Historical and Literary Lynching's Burning Rituals. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Hill, Patricia Liggins, et al., eds. Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Tradition. New York: Houghton, 1998.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself. Ed. and introd. Yellin, JeanFagan. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. 1785. New York: Torchbooks-Harper, 1964.Google Scholar
Jones, Edward P. The Known World. New York: Harper, 2003.Google Scholar
Levitan, Mark. A Crisis of Black Male Employment: Unemployment and Joblessness in New York City, 2003. Community Service Society: Fighting Poverty, Strengthening New York. Feb. 2004. Community Service Soc. of New York. 27 July 2005 <http://www.cssny.org/pubs/special/2004_02labormarket.pdf>..>Google Scholar
Ligon, Glenn. “Narratives.” Yale Journal of Criticism 7.1 (1994): 31–40.Google Scholar
Locke, John. Second Treatise on Government. 1689. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980.Google Scholar
Lordan, Beth. “No Thanks: One Writer's Case against the Modern, Mushrooming Acknowledgments Page.” Chicago Tribune 11 July 1999: 3.Google Scholar
Mason, Theodore O. “The African-American Anthology: Mapping the Territory, Taking the National Census, Building the Museum.” American Literary History 10 (1998): 185–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald's. Advertisement. Africans in America. “The Terrible Transformation.” Prod. and dir. Orlando Bagwell. Videocassette. WGBH Educ. Foundation. 1998.Google Scholar
McGann, Jerome. The Textual Condition. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.Google Scholar
McKenzie, D. F. Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meehan, Kevin. “Spiking Canons.” Nation 12 May 1997: 42–46.Google Scholar
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Plume, 1987.Google Scholar
Mostern, Kenneth. “Review Essay: Social Marginality/Blackness: Subjects of Postmodernity.” MELUS 23.4 (1998): 167–87. JSTOR. 19 July 2005 <http://www.jstor.org/>.Google Scholar
Mullen, Harryette. “African Signs and Spirit Writing.” Callaloo 19 (1996): 670–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newfield, Christopher. “What Was ‘Political Correctness’? Race, the Right, and Managerial Democracy.” PC Wars: Politics and Theory in the Academy. Ed. Williams, Jeffrey. New York: Routledge, 1995. 109–45.Google Scholar
Olney, Charles. “‘I Was Born’: Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature.” The Slave's Narrative. Ed. Davis, Charles T. and Gates, Henry Louis Jr. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985. 148–75.Google Scholar
Painter, Nell Irvin. “Black Studies, Black Professors, and the Struggles of Perception.” Chronicle of Higher Education 15 Dec. 2000: B7.Google Scholar
Phillips, Wendell. “Letter from Wendell Phillips, Esq.” Douglass 36–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. Flight to Canada. 1976. New York: Scribner's, 1998.Google Scholar
Smith, Roberta. “An Ugly Legacy Lives On, Its Glare Unsoftened by Age.” New York Times 13 Jan. 2000: E1.Google Scholar
Snead, James. “On Repetition in Black Culture.” Black American Literature Forum 15.4 (1981): 146–54.Google Scholar
Staples, Brent. “The Perils of Growing Comfortable with Evil.” New York Times 9 Apr. 2000, late ed., sec. 4: 16.Google Scholar
Thompson, Audrey. “Tiffany, Friend of People of Color: White Investments in Antiracism.” Qualitative Studies in Education 16.1 (2003): 7–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York: Vintage, 1983.Google Scholar
Van Sertima, Ivan. “Trickster, the Revolutionary Hero.” Talk That Talk: An Anthology of African American Storytelling. Ed. Goss, Linda and Barnes, Marian E. New York: Simon, 1989. 103–11.Google Scholar
Van Vechten, Carl. Nigger Heaven. New York: Knopf, 1926.Google Scholar
Wiegman, Robyn. American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Durham: Duke UP, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Patricia J. “Without Sanctuary.” Nation 14 Feb. 2000: 9.Google Scholar
Without Sanctuary. New-York Historical Soc. 14 Mar.–9 July 2000.Google Scholar