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...

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1. VerfasserIn: Winters, Joseph (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
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Veröffentlicht: The Pennsylvania State University Press 2018
In: Journal of Africana religions
Jahr: 2018, Band: 6, Heft: 1, Seiten: 1-26
normierte Schlagwort(-folgen):B Du Bois, William E. B. 1868-1963 / Bataille, Georges 1897-1962 / Morrison, Toni 1931-2019 / Schwarze / Leid / Geschenk / Gesellschaft
RelBib Classification:KBQ Nordamerika
NBE Anthropologie
NCC Sozialethik
TJ Neuzeit
TK Neueste Zeit
VA Philosophie
ZB Soziologie
Online Zugang: Volltext (Verlag)
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung: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. exceptionalism—Black 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.
ISSN:2165-5413
Enthält:Enthalten in: Journal of Africana religions