In "Beyond This Narrow Now" Nahum Dimitri Chandler shows that the premises of W. E. B. Du Bois's thinking at the turn of the twentieth century stand as fundamental references for the whole itinerary of his thought. Opening with a distinct approach to the legacy of Du Bois, Chandler proceeds through a series of close readings of Du Bois's early essays, previously unpublished or seldom studied, with discrete annotations of The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches of 1903, elucidating and elaborating basic epistemological terms of his thought. With theoretical attention to how the African American stands as an example of possibility for Du Bois and renders problematic traditional ontological thought, Chandler also proposes that Du Bois's most well-known phrase-"the problem of the color line"-sustains more conceptual depth than has yet been understood, with pertinence for our accounts of modern systems of enslavement and imperial colonialism and the incipient moments of modern capitalization. Chandler's work exemplifies a more profound engagement with Du Bois, demonstrating that he must be re-read, appreciated, and studied anew as a philosophical writer and thinker contemporary to our time.

About the Author
Nahum Dimitri Chandler is Professor in the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine, author of X: The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Thought and editor of The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Essential Early Essays by W. E. B. Du Bois.

Reviews
"Nahum Dimitri Chandler's "Beyond This Narrow Now" gives the reader the marvelous benefit of Chandler's exquisite knowledge of the DuBoisian oeuvre and his singular unrelenting commitment to tarrying with it. As one of our master teachers, Chandler is at his best here in leading us systematically, virtually line by line, through early Du Bois in his critical conceptual formation." -- Hortense J. Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor, Vanderbilt University
"'Beyond This Narrow Now' is a seminal contribution to foregrounding Du Bois' epistemological roots and its implication for the future." -- Mosa M. Phadi * Ethnic and Racial Studies *
"Chandler is a meticulous scholar and a brilliant thinker with much to say about Du Bois as an intellectual problem. Parts of the book will be accessible to many readers, and Chandler's approach to analysis serves as a master class in close reading. However, because of the occasionally esoteric nature of Chandler's approach, readers with a background in critical theory or philosophy have the most to gain. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers/faculty, professionals/practitioners."
-- J. W. Miller * Choice *
"Chandler's work is a definitive contribution towards a re-assessment of contemporary orientations of Du Boisian scholarship. His original thoughts and perspectives on Du Bois . . . provide new, innovative approaches to the work of such an iconic thinker and writer." -- Lena Dallywater * Connections *
"Insofar as he remains a critical resource in the present, perhaps one of the things that is most useful about Du Bois today is his ability to interpret historical possibility as the other side of historical limit, and to convince us that the future can still be altogether otherwise than the past that has been given to us, even now. There is no better guide to these aspects of Du Bois's thought than Nahum Chandler's 'Beyond This Narrow Now.'. . . Chandler is a poetic and evocative stylist, as well as a profound thinker, who offers the reader aesthetic and intellectual pleasures that help compensate for whatever syntactic or semantic hurdles pop up along the way." -- Ian Litwin * Georgia Review *
"Chandler provides a patiently elaborated study of Du Bois's early thought-a 'delimitation' of this thought that argues for the openness of its investigations and thus our perennial return to its hermeneutics." -- Rebecka Rutledge Fisher * American Literary History *
"The merit of Chandler's work is that he stretches Du Bois's reflections along the arc drawn by contemporaneity and brings them into conversation with a constellation of critical theories from post-structuralism to post-colonialism, highlighting the specificity and contemporary importance of Du Bois's thought." -- Vincenzo Di Mino * Journal of Critical Race Inquiry *
"Provocative and inciting. . . . Chandler insists that the massive Du Bois archive solicits a robust critical reconsideration attuned to its philosophical implications. . . . [E]very chapter of 'Beyond this Narrow Now' rewards patient reading." -- Christina Zwarg * Modern Language Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9781478014805
Author Nahum Dimitri Chandler
Format Paperback
Page Count 328
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 431g