Spectacle Lynching and Textual Responses

Miranda: Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone

关键词: African American;    blues;    identity;    lynching;    photography;    representation;   

DOI  :  10.4000/miranda.10493

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The spectacle lynchings of the early 20th century performed a ritual that assigned roles and distributed racial identities in American society. Representation was an essential component of the ritual, ensuring its diffusion in the images and narratives produced in response to the events. Beginning with a discussion of the lynching photography gathered in James Allen’s Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, this essay goes on to consider the difficulties that African American writers confront in responding to the images that cast their people in the role of victims. Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me” illustrates how representations of the lynching ritual induce a recurrent cycle of terror that haunts his black speaker. Ta-Nehisi Coates’s 2015 book demonstrates how the political, literary and existential problem endures. Recognizing how representation ensures the replication of racial divisions, Toni Morrison evokes the lynching spectacle in ways that scramble its categories and suggest new configurations of power.

【 授权许可】

Unknown