James McCorkle - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by James McCorkle
Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures
Charles Ball’s 1836 slave narrative is not only an example of an autobiographical narrative of es... more Charles Ball’s 1836 slave narrative is not only an example of an autobiographical narrative of escape from enslavement, it includes narratives of Africans who have been captured and brought to North America. Ball’s narrative records the heterogeneity of Africans arriving—from Muslim West Africans to those from the Congo, a ubiquitous term given more specificity in his narrative. Defining a distinction between an arrivant and someone, like himself, who may be a second generation enslaved person is Ball’s purpose, suggesting he belongs to a new culture. Ball’s descriptions parallel Zora Neale Hurston’s description of Kossola, a record of the last African brought to North America as an enslaved person. Ball’s role recording his encounters parallels that of Hurston as ethnographer and W. E. B. DuBois as a social historian.
ALT 38 Environmental Transformations, 2020
Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, 2021
C. S. Giscombe’s Giscombe Road and Nikky Finney’s Rice are arguably book-length poems that constr... more C. S. Giscombe’s Giscombe Road and Nikky Finney’s Rice are arguably book-length poems that construct an environmental consciousness through the lens of Black identity. Of importance in each is the use of material culture—maps, encyclopedia entries, schematic illustrations, and photographs—to construct the texts. Finney’s work tends to use photographs as supplements to her work, that is as illustrations which are intended to humanize against the grain of anti-Blackness; however, the materials in Giscombe’s collection are parts of a whole, not supplements, but quoted texts albeit utilizing a different visual modality. While there is a distinction between their use of material culture, Finney and Giscombe nonetheless create ecographies— autobiographies that situate and map oneself in a history of ecologies.
ALT 38 Environmental Transformations, 2020
Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages, 1997
Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, 1986
Journal of the African Literature Association, 2016
The reiterations of narratives of enslavement may be, to invoke Jacque Derrida's term, the haunto... more The reiterations of narratives of enslavement may be, to invoke Jacque Derrida's term, the hauntological, in which "the thing that represents the demise of something also signals its continuation in a different form." Ian Baucom argues that repetition and accumulation, not progress, defines a modern philosophy of history. Similarly, Arlene Keizer sees contemporary black subjectivity formed through the post-memonics of slavery. Toni Morrison's concept of rememory physicalizes remembering and cultural memory, necessitating an interrogation of the institution and materiality of slavery. While much of the attention on neo-slave narratives have focused on texts from the United States, the reconstructed slave narratives South African texts of Andr e Brink, Yvette Christians€ e, and Rayda Jacobs suggest that we investigate how we construct our memories and to what political and aesthetic purposes they are put. More important, perhaps, than the localness of a neo-slave narrative is that it reminds us, of the effects of globalization and the intertwining of systems of banking, transit, manufacture, and agriculture for example that define local conditions and the localness and intimacy of oppression.
Journal of the African Literature Association, 2014
Minnesota Review, 1984
Across the street the light is still on at dawn In a high window overlooking the harbor; but from... more Across the street the light is still on at dawn In a high window overlooking the harbor; but from here We can only see the arched facades, the courtyard, A factory smoke-stack, and that single lit window, the light Left on suggesting as many possibilities of who might be there As what the view of the harbor from that window encompasses, And of all the scenes we presume that room holds The one we settle on is where someone waits With a light on, as if the light could reach into The harbor's waters, measuring distance in the slow beat
Ariel a Review of International English Literature, Apr 1, 1986
The Missouri Review, 1983
The Missouri Review, 1985
When cities encroach upon the summer With their brown mazed air, crisp with flies and captives Fr... more When cities encroach upon the summer With their brown mazed air, crisp with flies and captives From southern islands and warm archipelagos. When we live long enough, boasts turn to stories Told in passing, the only feature we are sure of From the past, a brief wind through the pines We always find there, markers of our childhoods Or a golden age less remarked upon now Or with misplaced nostalgia, forgetting The dogs still at bay, while others carry away What we thought was important. There is little time Left after all, for the evening or one last song, Chairs stacked on tables, the Ughts go out, Cards tapped neatly back to order. In the distance someone waves goodnight To a window's yellow light, stippled with moths. After singing all afternoon on a tenement's stoop The accordionist's voice has gone hoarse, the sunlight thinned, Hydrants' pressure relaxes to slow streams Carrying the heat downriver, under the iron bridges, Out to sea, past the burning islands and warm ruins, The blistered dolphins diving past the fathoms
The Journal of American Culture, 2006
American Literature, 1990
Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures
Charles Ball’s 1836 slave narrative is not only an example of an autobiographical narrative of es... more Charles Ball’s 1836 slave narrative is not only an example of an autobiographical narrative of escape from enslavement, it includes narratives of Africans who have been captured and brought to North America. Ball’s narrative records the heterogeneity of Africans arriving—from Muslim West Africans to those from the Congo, a ubiquitous term given more specificity in his narrative. Defining a distinction between an arrivant and someone, like himself, who may be a second generation enslaved person is Ball’s purpose, suggesting he belongs to a new culture. Ball’s descriptions parallel Zora Neale Hurston’s description of Kossola, a record of the last African brought to North America as an enslaved person. Ball’s role recording his encounters parallels that of Hurston as ethnographer and W. E. B. DuBois as a social historian.
ALT 38 Environmental Transformations, 2020
Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, 2021
C. S. Giscombe’s Giscombe Road and Nikky Finney’s Rice are arguably book-length poems that constr... more C. S. Giscombe’s Giscombe Road and Nikky Finney’s Rice are arguably book-length poems that construct an environmental consciousness through the lens of Black identity. Of importance in each is the use of material culture—maps, encyclopedia entries, schematic illustrations, and photographs—to construct the texts. Finney’s work tends to use photographs as supplements to her work, that is as illustrations which are intended to humanize against the grain of anti-Blackness; however, the materials in Giscombe’s collection are parts of a whole, not supplements, but quoted texts albeit utilizing a different visual modality. While there is a distinction between their use of material culture, Finney and Giscombe nonetheless create ecographies— autobiographies that situate and map oneself in a history of ecologies.
ALT 38 Environmental Transformations, 2020
Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages, 1997
Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, 1986
Journal of the African Literature Association, 2016
The reiterations of narratives of enslavement may be, to invoke Jacque Derrida's term, the haunto... more The reiterations of narratives of enslavement may be, to invoke Jacque Derrida's term, the hauntological, in which "the thing that represents the demise of something also signals its continuation in a different form." Ian Baucom argues that repetition and accumulation, not progress, defines a modern philosophy of history. Similarly, Arlene Keizer sees contemporary black subjectivity formed through the post-memonics of slavery. Toni Morrison's concept of rememory physicalizes remembering and cultural memory, necessitating an interrogation of the institution and materiality of slavery. While much of the attention on neo-slave narratives have focused on texts from the United States, the reconstructed slave narratives South African texts of Andr e Brink, Yvette Christians€ e, and Rayda Jacobs suggest that we investigate how we construct our memories and to what political and aesthetic purposes they are put. More important, perhaps, than the localness of a neo-slave narrative is that it reminds us, of the effects of globalization and the intertwining of systems of banking, transit, manufacture, and agriculture for example that define local conditions and the localness and intimacy of oppression.
Journal of the African Literature Association, 2014
Minnesota Review, 1984
Across the street the light is still on at dawn In a high window overlooking the harbor; but from... more Across the street the light is still on at dawn In a high window overlooking the harbor; but from here We can only see the arched facades, the courtyard, A factory smoke-stack, and that single lit window, the light Left on suggesting as many possibilities of who might be there As what the view of the harbor from that window encompasses, And of all the scenes we presume that room holds The one we settle on is where someone waits With a light on, as if the light could reach into The harbor's waters, measuring distance in the slow beat
Ariel a Review of International English Literature, Apr 1, 1986
The Missouri Review, 1983
The Missouri Review, 1985
When cities encroach upon the summer With their brown mazed air, crisp with flies and captives Fr... more When cities encroach upon the summer With their brown mazed air, crisp with flies and captives From southern islands and warm archipelagos. When we live long enough, boasts turn to stories Told in passing, the only feature we are sure of From the past, a brief wind through the pines We always find there, markers of our childhoods Or a golden age less remarked upon now Or with misplaced nostalgia, forgetting The dogs still at bay, while others carry away What we thought was important. There is little time Left after all, for the evening or one last song, Chairs stacked on tables, the Ughts go out, Cards tapped neatly back to order. In the distance someone waves goodnight To a window's yellow light, stippled with moths. After singing all afternoon on a tenement's stoop The accordionist's voice has gone hoarse, the sunlight thinned, Hydrants' pressure relaxes to slow streams Carrying the heat downriver, under the iron bridges, Out to sea, past the burning islands and warm ruins, The blistered dolphins diving past the fathoms
The Journal of American Culture, 2006
American Literature, 1990