Full Description
In this study, Victor Anderson traces instances of "ontological blackness" in African American theological, religious and cultural thought, arguing that African American critical thought has been trapped in a racial rhetoric that it did not create and which cannot serve it well. Drawing together 18th- and 19th-century accomodationism and its assimilationist heirs with the movements of Black Power and Afrocentrism, Anderson shows that all exhibit a similar structure of racial identity. He suggests that it is time to move beyond the confines of "the cult of black heroic genius" to what Bell Hooks has termed "postmodern blackness": a racial discourse that leaves room to negotiate African American identities along lines of class, gender, sexuality, and age as well as race.
Contents
Introduction
1. The Religious Functions of Cultural Criticism
Explicating Cultural Criticism
Religious Aspects of Cultural Criticism
Religious Criticism in a Racialized Culture
2. Categorical Racism and Racial Apologetics
Aesthetics and White Racial Ideology
Racial Apologetics
Beyond Categorical Racism and Racial Apologetics
3. Ontological Blackness in Theology
The Black Theology Project
The Challenge of Womanist Theology
4. Explicating and Displacing Ontological Blackness: The Heroic Grotesque in African American Cultural and Religious Criticism
Explicating the Heroic and Grotesque Genius
New Literary Critiques of African American Expressive Culture
The Grotesque of African American Public Life
Epilogue
Further Reading
Works Cited
Index
