Kinship Across the Black Atlantic: Writing Diasporic RelationsThis book considers the meaning of kinship across black Atlantic diasporas in the Caribbean, Western Europe and North America via readings of six contemporary novels. It draws upon and combines insights from postcolonial studies, queer theory and black Atlantic diaspora studies in novel ways to examine the ways in which contemporary writers engage with the legacy of anthropological discourses of kinship, interrogate the connections between kinship and historiography, and imagine new forms of diasporic relationality and subjectivity. The novels considered here offer sustained meditations on the meaning of kinship and its role in diasporic cultures and communities; they represent diasporic kinship in the context and crosscurrents of both historical and contemporary forces, such as slavery, colonialism, migration, political struggles and artistic creation. They show how displacement and migration require and generate new forms and understandings of kinship, and how kinship may be used as an instrument of both political oppression and resistance. Finally, they demonstrate the importance of literature in imagining possibilities for alternative forms of relationality and in finding a language to express the meaning of those relations. This book thus suggests that an analysis of discourses and practices of kinship is essential to understanding diasporic modernity at the turn of the twenty-first century. |
Contents
Diasporic kinship across the black Atlantic | 1 |
Rewriting anthropology | 33 |
Historiography and the afterlife of slavery | 83 |
Queer diasporic relationality | 129 |
Diasporic futures? | 175 |
| 183 | |
| 195 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
accept alternative anthropology argues becomes begins black Atlantic blood body bonds Butler Carib mother Caribbean century chapter child City claim clear Colman colonial concept connection contemporary continues create critical cultural death defined demonstrates described desire diaspora discourses Duke University enslaved experiences father feels field forms future gender genealogical Glissant human identified identity imagining importance Indian indigenous insists intimacy intimate Joss Joss’s July July’s kinship knowledge later limits lives Marie means memory Millie modes Moon mother mourning narration narrative nature normative novel offers once original particularly past plantation political position possible postcolonial potential practices present queer questions race racial refusal relationality relations relationship remains resistance rewriting sense sexuality shared similar slave slavery social status story structures studies subjects suggests Texaco Thomas tradition transformation understanding University Press woman writing Xuela’s