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Chapter 13 - Black Male Studies and Contemporary African American Writing

from Part II - Aggressions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2021

Jean M. Lutes
Affiliation:
Villanova University, Pennsylvania
Jennifer Travis
Affiliation:
St John's University, New York
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Summary

The recent work of philosopher Tommy J. Curry in the nascent field of Black Male Studies has brought rigorous attention to racialized misandry, framing Black maleness as a site of racial-sexual victimhood, vulnerability, and violence. This essay deploys Curry’s framework of “the man-not” in order to examine how anti-Black misandry is explored in Ishmael Reed’s Reckless Eyeballing (1986) and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy: An American Memoir (2018). Reed and Laymon each thematize anti-Blackness in the contemporary period specifically through the ontology of anti-Black misandry. The essay outlines the possibilities of a counter-ontological surplus within the abjection of Black manhood, which Laymon describes as the “abundance” designated by Black maleness in an anti-Black world. The essay concludes with a discussion of how Black Male Studies may be understood within recent thought trends regarding Black sexuality and gender studies, as well as within the Ontological Turn in Black Studies.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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