A01=I. Augustus Durham
affect
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Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_I. Augustus Durham
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Blackness
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBTB
Category=JBSF
Category=JBSL
Category=JFSJ
Category=JFSL
Category=NHTB
COP=United States
death
Delivery_Pre-order
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
genius
Language_English
life
melancholy
PA=Not yet available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Forthcoming
psychoanalysis
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781478025528
- Weight: 476g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 29 Dec 2023
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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In Stay Black and Die, I. Augustus Durham examines melancholy and genius in black culture, letters, and media from the nineteenth century to the contemporary moment. Drawing on psychoanalysis, affect theory, and black studies, Durham explores the black mother as both a lost object and a found subject often obscured when constituting a cultural legacy of genius across history. He analyzes the works of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, Marvin Gaye, Octavia E. Butler, and Kendrick Lamar to show how black cultural practices and aesthetics abstract and reveal the lost mother through performance. Whether attributing Douglass’s intellect to his matrilineage, reading Gaye’s falsetto singing voice as a move to interpolate black female vocality, or examining the women in Ellison’s life who encouraged his aesthetic interests, Durham demonstrates that melancholy becomes the catalyst for genius and genius in turn is a signifier of the maternal. Using psychoanalysis to develop a theory of racial melancholy while “playing” with affect theory to investigate racial aesthetics, Durham theorizes the role of the feminine, especially the black maternal, in the production of black masculinist genius.
I. Augustus Durham is Assistant Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York.
