Self reflection(s)
Subjectivity and racial subordination in the contemporary African-American writer
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2952138 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jeffrey Prager (University of California, Los Angeles, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1995 |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 355-371 |
| Publication date | 1995-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Identities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1350-4630 • E-ISSN: 1363-0296 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13504630.1995.9959441 |
| OpenAlex | W2064374931 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 8 |
Shelby Steele's The Content of our Character, and John Wideman's Philadelphia Fire are contrasted for what they reveal about the two authors’ confrontation with self‐expression and self‐definition in a society that denies African‐American individuality. I argue that Steele's and Wideman's distinctive solutions to personal expression as demonstrated in these works constitute the discursive boundaries, the poles between which black male subjectivity oscillates in this racialist society. To explicate these particular positions, I draw on psychoanalytic concepts of narcissism, masculinity, and subjectivity. Thomas Mann's Death in Venice is invoked to articulate, albeit in a different society and context, the subjective crisis of the intellectual, the linkage between one's inner world and outer society, and the relation between personal identity and national self‐understanding. While Steele opts for an isolated, transcendent individualism, Wideman embraces a conception of self inextricably connected to and constrained by the wider African‐American community. I argue that each ‘solution’ produces its own form of self‐estrangement, revealing the phychic cost and intractability of racial division in America
Aesthetics · Epistemology · Individualism · Masculinity · Narcissism · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Self · Sociology · Subjectivity · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · History · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,06 |
| Citation span | 1995 - 2014 (20) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |