Description
Highlighting their chronic objectification under the gaze of white eyes, Wallace argues that black men suffer a social and representational crisis in being at once seen and unseen, fetish and phantasm, spectacle and shadow in the American racial imagination. Invisible and disregarded on one hand, black men, perceived as potential threats to society, simultaneously face the reality of hypervisibility and perpetual surveillance. Paying significant attention to the sociotechnologies of vision and image production over two centuries, Wallace shows how African American men-as soldiers, Freemasons, and romantic heroes-have sought both to realize the ideal image of the American masculine subject and to deconstruct it in expressive mediums like modern dance, photography, and theatre. Throughout, he draws on the experiences and theories of such notable figures as Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and James Baldwin.
About the Author
Maurice O. Wallace is Assistant Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Duke University.
Reviews
"A most impressive interrogation into the problematic of black masculine identity as it has manifested in the U.S. context from the late eighteenth century through the present day. Readers from across a range of disciplines will be uniformly impressed by the scope and dexterity of Wallace's critical intelligence. This is an overwhelmingly admirable achievement and a very important book."-Phillip Brian Harper, author of Are We Not Men? Masculine Anxiety and the Problem of African-American Identity
"Highly original and deeply probing in its analyses into the intricacies of its topic, Constructing the Black Masculine is a timely and rewarding addition to the study of African American literature, American studies, and race and sexuality. Maurice O. Wallace has a lot to teach."-Nellie McKay, coeditor of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature
Book Information
ISBN 9780822328698
Author Maurice O. Wallace
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 422g