Thinking Through Crisis: Depression-Era Black Literature, Theory, and Politics
Winner, 2020 William Sanders Scarborough Prize, Modern Language Association
Honorable Mention, MSA First Book Prize

In Thinking Through Crisis, James Edward Ford III examines the works of Richard Wright, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes during the 1930s in order to articulate a materialist theory of trauma. Ford highlights the dark proletariat’s emergence from the multitude apposite to white supremacist agendas. In these works, Ford argues, proletarian, modernist, and surrealist aesthetics transform fugitive slaves, sharecroppers, leased convicts, levee workers, and activist intellectuals into protagonists of anti-racist and anti-capitalist movements in the United States.

Thinking Through Crisis intervenes in debates on the 1930s, radical subjectivity, and states of emergency. It will be of interest to scholars of American literature, African American literature, proletarian literature, black studies, trauma theory, and political theory.

"1130660946"
Thinking Through Crisis: Depression-Era Black Literature, Theory, and Politics
Winner, 2020 William Sanders Scarborough Prize, Modern Language Association
Honorable Mention, MSA First Book Prize

In Thinking Through Crisis, James Edward Ford III examines the works of Richard Wright, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes during the 1930s in order to articulate a materialist theory of trauma. Ford highlights the dark proletariat’s emergence from the multitude apposite to white supremacist agendas. In these works, Ford argues, proletarian, modernist, and surrealist aesthetics transform fugitive slaves, sharecroppers, leased convicts, levee workers, and activist intellectuals into protagonists of anti-racist and anti-capitalist movements in the United States.

Thinking Through Crisis intervenes in debates on the 1930s, radical subjectivity, and states of emergency. It will be of interest to scholars of American literature, African American literature, proletarian literature, black studies, trauma theory, and political theory.

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Thinking Through Crisis: Depression-Era Black Literature, Theory, and Politics

Thinking Through Crisis: Depression-Era Black Literature, Theory, and Politics

by James Edward Ford
Thinking Through Crisis: Depression-Era Black Literature, Theory, and Politics

Thinking Through Crisis: Depression-Era Black Literature, Theory, and Politics

by James Edward Ford

Hardcover

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Overview

Winner, 2020 William Sanders Scarborough Prize, Modern Language Association
Honorable Mention, MSA First Book Prize

In Thinking Through Crisis, James Edward Ford III examines the works of Richard Wright, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes during the 1930s in order to articulate a materialist theory of trauma. Ford highlights the dark proletariat’s emergence from the multitude apposite to white supremacist agendas. In these works, Ford argues, proletarian, modernist, and surrealist aesthetics transform fugitive slaves, sharecroppers, leased convicts, levee workers, and activist intellectuals into protagonists of anti-racist and anti-capitalist movements in the United States.

Thinking Through Crisis intervenes in debates on the 1930s, radical subjectivity, and states of emergency. It will be of interest to scholars of American literature, African American literature, proletarian literature, black studies, trauma theory, and political theory.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780823286904
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Publication date: 11/05/2019
Series: Commonalities
Pages: 336
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

James Edward Ford III is Associate Professor of English at Occidental College. His writings on the aesthetics of black radicalism, black popular culture, and political theory have appeared in the journals Novel, Biography, Cultural Critique, College Literature, New Centennial Review, ASAP Journal, and multiple edited collections. He is currently working on “Phillis, the Black Swan: Disheveling the Origins” and “Hip-Hop’s Late Style: Disheveling the Origins,” two projects that rethink the origins and ends of black American cultural production.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments | ix

Introduction: From Being to Unrest, from Objectivity to Motion | 1

Notebook 1 Down by the Riverside: Richard Wright,
the 1927 Flood, and the Citizen-Refugee | 35

Notebook 2 “Crusade for Justice”: Ida B. Wells and the Power of the Multitude | 74

Notebook 3 W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction:
Theorizing Divine Violence | 123

Notebook 4 Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the
Mountain: An Anthropology of Power | 193

Notebook 5 The New Day: Notes on Education and the Dark Proletariat | 244

Conclusion: From Being to Unrest, from Objectivity to Motion—A Race for Theory | 291

Notes | 299

Index | 333

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