Affect and Diaspora
Unfashionable Hope in Melvin B. Tolson's Libretto for the Republic of Liberia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9250826 |
|---|---|
| Authors | DeJong DeJong (Western University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 110 |
| Publication date | 2014-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Research in African Literatures (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0034-5210 • E-ISSN: 1527-2044 |
| Publisher | Indiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2979/reseafrilite.45.3.110 |
| OpenAlex | W2025763074 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 22 |
This essay reads Melvin B. Tolson’s Libretto for the Republic of Liberia as a poem undergirded by a transnational and multi-ethnic politics of identification. Previous scholars of Tolson’s work have argued that his poetry expands and redefines the possibilities inherent in modernist poetics. Building on these claims, I point to a specific and heretofore unremarked strategy through which he accomplishes this goal: namely, a bold affective optimism that both presages Afro-futurism and counters political ideologies founded on racial difference. Tolson’s Marxist-democratic vision of a future utopian society centered in Africa but extending throughout the world is rooted in his belief in the possibility of affective connection between individuals otherwise divided by class, race, or language. In its subversion and revision of received cultural categories, such a connection also constitutes a response to engrained forms of racial melancholia. While refusing to overlook systemic and historical injustice, Tolson’s Libretto, thus, offers a window into a politics of optimism that restores a sense of social hope to discussions in recent and contemporary affect theory
Aesthetics · Affect (linguistics) · Art · Democracy · Epistemology · Existentialism · Ideology · Injustice · Literature · Marxist philosophy · Poetics · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Subversion · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Theatre and Performance Studies
The golden age of Black nationalism, 1850-1925
W.E.B. Du Bois
The Dialogic Imagination
The dialect of modernism
Time, technology, and the imperial eye
The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey
The Melancholy of Race
The Position of the Unthought
Collective Insecurity
Marginal Forces/Cultural Centers
Melvin B. Tolson, 1898-1966
Libretto for the Republic of Liberia
The Price of Liberty
In Search of Africa
Melvin B. Tolson and the Deterritorialization of Modernism
The Case of Blackness
African Modes of Self-Writing
Shame in the Cybernetic Fold
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |