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This book examines Toni Morrison's fiction as a sustained effort to challenge the dominant narratives produced in the white supremacist political imaginary and conceptualize a more inclusive political imaginary in which black bodies are valued. Herman Beavers closely examines politics of scale and contentious politics in order to discern Morrison's larger intent of revealing the deep structure of power relations in black communities that will enable them to fashion counterhegemonic projects. The volume explores how Morrison stages her ruminations on the political imaginary in neighborhoods or small towns; rooms, houses or streets. Beavers argues that these spatial and domestic geographies are sites where the management of traumatic injury is integral to establishing a sense of place, proposing these "tight spaces" as sites where narratives are produced and contested; sites of inscription and erasure, utterance and silence.
List of contents
Introduction.- Held in the Thrall: Morrison's Southern Men and the Arrested Motion of Tight Space.- From Zero to Nowhere: Tight Space and the Topophilia of Violence.- The Housing of Hurt: The Optic of Tight Space in Jazz.- A Measure of Last Resort: Limerence and the Geometrical Shape of Community in Love.- A Pox on All Your Houses: Susceptibility, Immunity, and the Dilemma of Allegory in A Mercy.- The Precarity of Freedom: Toni Morrison and the Post-Racial Moment.
About the author
Herman Beavers is Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Summary
This book examines Toni Morrison’s fiction as a sustained effort to challenge the dominant narratives produced in the white supremacist political imaginary and conceptualize a more inclusive political imaginary in which black bodies are valued. Herman Beavers closely examines politics of scale and contentious politics in order to discern Morrison's larger intent of revealing the deep structure of power relations in black communities that will enable them to fashion counterhegemonic projects. The volume explores how Morrison stages her ruminations on the political imaginary in neighborhoods or small towns; rooms, houses or streets. Beavers argues that these spatial and domestic geographies are sites where the management of traumatic injury is integral to establishing a sense of place, proposing these “tight spaces” as sites where narratives are produced and contested; sites of inscription and erasure, utterance and silence.
Additional text
"A fierce and lively book.... one of those rare books that could make people think about their intimate lives in a new way."
