Negotiating a Viable Subjectivity Black Men in African American and Afro-Hispanic Literature

Date of Award

2004

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Domino, Andrea

Keywords

Black Masculinity, African Americans, Afro-Hispanic, Manhood

Area of Concentration

Literature

Abstract

This thesis is an examination of black male protagonists and the range of subjectivities they demonstrate in selected prose fiction by African American and Afro-Hispanic authors of the twentieth century. In an attempt to limit the size and diversity of the texts, only men of color are included among the authors in this study. Within the analysis, particular attention is paid to the construction of protagonists through public discourse versus self-construction through speech or the production of texts. The chapters are arranged to present examples of progressively more viable forms of subjectivity, and the conclusion offers suggestions about what directions this research can take. The first chapter discusses Jose Luis Gonzalez's 'En este lado' (1954) and Manuel Zapata Olivella's 'Un extraño bajo mi piel' (1967) where we find examples of black men whose subjectivities are severely limited by both the significance of their bodies and the force of social construction. The second chapter presents James Baldwin's Another Country in which Rufus Scott, the protagonist, devolves from an engaged subject to an entirely socially constructed object. The third and fourth chapters discuss protagonists that negotiate their own subjectivities to varying degrees of success. Quince Duncan's Los cuatro espejos (1973) is the focus of the third chapter where there is a general discussion of the protagonist's struggle to resist the essentialist notions imposed on him. The fourth chapter continues this discussion while focusing specifically upon the role education plays in facilitating and hindering the formation of viable subjectivities by the well-educated black male protagonists of Charles Johnson's Middle Passage (1990), Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada (1976), Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying (1993), and David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident (1981).

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