Freedom to Struggle
The Ironies of Colson Whitehead
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2969029 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Adam Kelly (0000-0002-3446-1847, University of York, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2018-10-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Open Library of Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2056-6700 • E-ISSN: 2056-6700 |
| Publisher | Open Library of the Humanities (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.16995/olh.332 |
| OpenAlex | W2895012089 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 18 |
This essay explores the changing role played by the idea of freedom in the fiction of Colson Whitehead. I begin by outlining some of the significations of ‘freedom’ within American culture before and during the period of neoliberal hegemony, placing particular emphasis on trends in the word’s provenance for African Americans between the civil rights era and the time in which Whitehead is writing. I then undertake an extended comparison between Whitehead’s novels Apex Hides the Hurt (2006) and The Underground Railroad (2016). I argue that in Apex—published against the background of the Bush doctrine and the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—Whitehead treats freedom ironically. The novel both pursues and treats critically a postmodern aesthetics that envisages symbolic action on language as the primary ground of politics. The Underground Railroad , by contrast, inhabits an African American literary genre—the novel of slavery—that is strongly wedded to discourses of bondage and freedom. This novel, arriving a decade after Apex, shows Whitehead responding to changes in American society and culture—particularly the advent of Black Lives Matter and a growing public awareness of the implications of mass incarceration policies for African Americans—that seem to call for a more sincere reckoning with the notion of freedom. I conclude with a discussion of time in Whitehead, arguing that his distinctive engagement with temporality lies at the heart of the vision of freedom after neoliberalism offered by his fiction
Aesthetics · Counterculture · Doctrine · Epistemology · Hegemony · Political science · Politics · Postmodernism · Sociology · Temporality · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Plant Parasitism and Resistance · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy
Intuitionists
The Naacp, Black Power, and the African American Freedom Struggle, 1966–1969
States of Possibility in Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad
Eugene D. Genovese
Investment in Human Capital
After the love has gone
Neoliberalism and the time of the novel
With Names, No Coincidence
An End of Southern History
Freedom to Struggle
Suffering Agency
Afro-Pessimism
After the Love Has Gone
Self-Appreciation; or, The Aspirations of Human Capital
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2022 (5) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |