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ruthormist 's review for:
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
by Toni Morrison
In this series of lectures, Morrison discusses how Americanness and whiteness (and in conjunction, "autonomy, authority, newness and difference, [and] absolute power") are constructed in literature through white authors' conscious depictions of an Africanist presence (which includes not only Black characters, but also the absence of Black characters).
"Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny" (52).
I think this should be essential reading for anyone interested in literary criticism, and especially for anyone studying works in the American literary "canon", although I definitely think her methodology can be applied to other periods of literature as well!
"Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny" (52).
I think this should be essential reading for anyone interested in literary criticism, and especially for anyone studying works in the American literary "canon", although I definitely think her methodology can be applied to other periods of literature as well!