What does it mean to be Black? If Blackness is not biological in origin but socially and discursively constructed, does the meaning of Blackness change over time and space? In Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology, Michelle M. Wright argues that although we often explicitly define Blackness as a "what," it in fact always operates as a "when" and a "where."
Table of Contents:
Contents
Introduction. Many Thousands Still Coming: Theorizing Blackness in the Postwar Moment
1. The Middle Passage Epistemology
2. The Problem of Return in the African Diaspora
3. Quantum Baldwin and the Multidimensionality of Blackness
4. Axes of Asymmetry
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Michelle M. Wright is associate professor of Black European and African Diaspora studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora.
Review :
"Opening up the middle passage, and working with and across narratives by thinkers such as Paul Gilroy, Ama Ata Aidoo, and James Baldwin, Physics of Blackness asks that we think through the time and space of the diaspora in order to notice that blackness is continually updating itself."—Katherine McKittrick, author of Demonic Grounds
"An unorthodox and highly engaging study by a scholar unrestrained by the conventions of the field. Michelle M. Wright advances a penetrating, stimulating, and immensely rewarding contribution for those that rise to the challenge."—Stephen Small, UC Berkeley
"By defining blackness against the limitations of [linear progress narratives], Wright expands our senses of temporality and even of physics."—KronoScope
"Its appeal to philosophical, literary, cultural and diasporic studies is apparent; but while contributing significantly to, and grounded in, the humanities, Physics of Blackness is not restricted to it. Its redeployment of analytical categories informs an innovative, interdisciplinary approach that necessarily reinvigorates and enhances generally academic and societally transformative pursuits for future oriented, inclusive and nonhierarchical understandings of not just black, but all,racial(ised) ontologies."—Transnational Literature
