The Violence of Whiteness in Contemporary Poetry1 (original) (raw)
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The Issue of Race in Post-Colonial African American Poetry
Opción: Revista de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, 2018
With studying of selected poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, the researcher aims to investigate the issue of race in Post-Colonial African American poetry via comparative-typological approaches. Brooks tries to depict the social inequality and the subordination of her people that has happened during the sixties of the twentieth century. As a result, Brooks' poetry was an attempt to forcefully encourage the blacks to be inspired by their heritage to attain their principal role in the society. As a conclusion, Brooks places emphasis on the humanistic love too being one of the principal requirements to a happy and brotherly life.
poem The Little Black Boy. In so doing, it focuses upon how Blake attempts to deconstruct the Cartesian dichotomy of Western world view, a dichotomy which has usually been based on "the theory that the universe has been ruled from its origins by two conflicting powers, one good and one evil, both existing as equally ultimate first causes." In this binary and hierarchal relationship, there are two essential terms in which one term is absolutely regarded as primary or fundamental in its essence, whereas the other term is considered secondary or something that lacks originality and presence. Once this equation is applied to the relationship between black and white people, it will easily be seen in the Western world that white people are always primary or fundamental to black-skinned people, and thus the perception behind this binary and hierarchal relationship seems the root of all the racial problems between black and white. This paper argues that Blake strives to deconstruct radically in The Little Black Boy the basis of this binary and hierarchal relationship which has been carried out for centuries in the Western world to segregate and then control the lives of black people. Finally, the paper maintains that Blake also shows a strong aspiration for creating an egalitarian society free of discrimination and injustices at a time when anti-slavery campaigns hit the top on both sides of Atlantic.
AFAM 380: Poetics of Blackness (SYLLABUS)
Blackness confounds meaning. At once the condition of possibility for the emergence of modernity and the limit-case for humanity as such, Black being is enshrouded in paradoxes and aporias, posing a number of problems for thought. This course aims to foster the development of conceptual tools and reading practices with which to engage the problematic of Blackness. Mobilizing “poetics” in the broadest sense of the term—i.e., as a mode of articulation and a system of meaning—this course brings together Black critical theory and contemporary black poetry in order to think through key sites of conflict in the theorization of Blackness. Rather than offer a history of Black poetry, this course is interested in approaching poetry as a crucial node of Black critical thought. This course will pay particular attention to questions of form, genre, the archive, queerness, gender, visuality, ontology and temporality as they approach and are undone by Blackness.
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IJASS JOURNAL, 2024
Out of the lockdown restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged contemporary American poetry through social media, online publishing, and print to portray a global health crisis, document the pain of social and physical distance, and reassert common humanness. It came to regenerate human empathy and compassion and stir in people the struggles of homelessness, exile, poverty, or at-home self-isolation. However, contemporary pandemic poetry, as it is called, transcended the therapeutic stand as a mere representation of emotional distress, tears behind the masks, or a source to remedy the physical harm and reestablish hope in humanity that the pandemic fractured. Through examining selected pandemic poems written by contemporary Black American poets, this paper argues that their poetry is neither a new version of stereotyped or clichéd themes about minorities in America, nor a poetic outlet during a health crisis. Instead, the paper is inclined to exhibit that poetry of minorities written during COVID-19 time is a manifesto of race-based violence that exposes an ongoing pandemic of structural racism. The paper also argues that pandemic poetry stands as a platform and praxis to reveal health antiracism discourse vs. established cultural and racialized assumptions of the different ‘other ’ that are deeply rooted in the non-minority mentality.
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As the body of British poetry is expanding, new forms of poetic expression come to life. The struggle of British society with its own multicultural reality is exemplified in the representations of black British poetry in the canon, which is still a decisive element for the lyrical evolution of British poetry. Since black British poetry is rarely incorporated in the canon, this text will investigate how black British poetry developed as a category with regard to its origins in relation with colonialism and the role of the Canon for its rise to recognition, as well as observe current trends of overcoming old challenges. By analysing the growing body of knowledge in existing literature, the thesis will illustrate the increasing interest that surrounds black British poetry from academics and the public and display the poets' commitment to change the status quo.
Hijacking the Type: Cathy Park Hong's Poetry against Conceptual Whiteness
This essay considers the participation of Cathy Park Hong in a movement of diverse writers of color in the U.S. That movement struggles against the white privilege that appropriates non-white ethnicity, as in the work of conceptual poets Vanessa Place and Kenneth Goldsmith, while excluding people of color themselves, as many have argued is the case with the avant-garde and, specifically, conceptual poetry. Hong, among others, has engaged the conceptual poets in essays and recent poems, calling them out for their exclusive and appropriative white privilege. The discussion in which she participates includes many voices in an ethnic pastiche that demonstrates Ramón Saldívar’s theorization of a “post-race” aesthetic. Four poems by Hong, each with a marginalized woman speaker or main character, use that aesthetic to force examination of sexist and racist practices in the American avant-garde.