(Further) Figures of Violence

"The Street" in the American Landscape

Bibliographic Data

ID12130862
AuthorsLindon Barrett (corresponding author)
Year1993
Issue25
Pages205-205
Publication date1993-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCultural Critique (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0882-4371 • E-ISSN: 1460-2458
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1354566
OpenAlexW2325210243
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited4

The story of Ann Petry's The Street is one in which the insistent, yet often surreptitious, cultural violence permeating the American landscape is ultimately rendered graphic and immediate, and in which the forgery of radical difference between African-American ghettos of New York, or any American city, and the stately wealth of Connecticut, or any all-American suburb, is articulated and exposed. The Street recounts a story in which the mastering and masterful traditional voice in the American landscape finds itself challenged by the sly alterity of the singing voice, a voice assuming much more than mere traditional speech. Accordingly, a fundamental premise of my analysis is that AfricanAmericans, only ostensibly, appear mastered by and distant from a masterful and privileged Anglo-American population and culture. Taking Petry's recently reissued novel as its focus, my analysis reiterates that the initiatives of cultural production and lordship in the United States, initiatives urgently in need of revision, extend insidiously beyond a myth of black inferiority that first took shape on the deck of a slaving ship (Davidson 25). Extend

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