Problem of Embodiment in Early African American Narrative
Product details
- ISBN 9780313303593
- Publication Date: 30 Jun 1997
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Offering a revolutionary way of reading 19th-century slave narratives, Fishburn seeks to recover the philosophical foundations of African American literature. Underlying slave narrative is an expression of the problem of physical embodiment; that is, the dualistic thinking of the mind-body division. Fishburn's work uncovers the tension between needing to acknowledge the fact of human embodiment and wishing to overcome its consequences in a racist society. One of the strongest points made by this pioneering work is the controversial claim that these slave narratives offer one of the most telling, if largely overlooked, pre-Heideggerian critiques of liberal humanism ever attempted in the West.
KATHERINE FISHBURN is Professor of English at Michigan State University, where she teaches courses in African American literature, twentieth-century literature, women's literature, and cultural studies. She is author of a book on Richard Wright, a monograph on Doris Lessing, and three Greenwood Press titles: Reading Buchi Emecheta: Cross-Cultural Conversations (1995), The Unexpected Universe of Doris Lessing: A Study in Narrative Technique (1985), and Women in Popular Culture: A Reference Guide (1982).
