The Gift, and Death, of Blackness
In this article, I respond to the idiom of Black people's gifts, a term that is often associated with W. E. B. Du Bois and that was frequently invoked in the wake of the Emmanuel AME Massacre. I contend that there are at least two different ways of thinking about Black gifts, a doubleness tha...
| Published in: | Journal of Africana religions |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
The Pennsylvania State University Press
2018
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| In: |
Journal of Africana religions
Year: 2018, Volume: 6, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-26 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Du Bois, William E. B. 1868-1963
/ Bataille, Georges 1897-1962
/ Morrison, Toni 1931-2019
/ Blacks
/ Suffering
/ Gift
/ Society
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| RelBib Classification: | KBQ North America NBE Anthropology NCC Social ethics TJ Modern history TK Recent history VA Philosophy ZB Sociology |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | In this article, I respond to the idiom of Black people's gifts, a term that is often associated with W. E. B. Du Bois and that was frequently invoked in the wake of the Emmanuel AME Massacre. I contend that there are at least two different ways of thinking about Black gifts, a doubleness that runs throughout Du Bois's writings. On the one hand, we can read the gift simply as Black people's positive contributions to U.S. exceptionalismBlack courage, sacrifice, and even death ultimately function to advance and fortify imperial projects. Yet Du Bois also indicates that we might think of the gift of Blackness as that which cuts against these kinds of instrumental logics. To develop this second sense of the gift, I turn to the work of Georges Bataille and Toni Morrison, authors who link the gift of (Black) death with anguish, opacity, and intimacy with the dismembered. |
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| ISSN: | 2165-5413 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Africana religions
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