Death Rights: Romantic Suicide, Race, and the Bounds of Liberalism - Couverture souple

Livre 31 sur 43: SUNY Press Open Access

Koretsky, Deanna P.

 
9781438482880: Death Rights: Romantic Suicide, Race, and the Bounds of Liberalism

Synopsis

Analyzes how literary representations of suicide have reinforced antiblackness in the modern world.

Death Rights presents an antiracist critique of British romanticism by deconstructing one of its organizing tropes-the suicidal creative "genius." Putting texts by Olaudah Equiano, Mary Shelley, John Keats, and others into critical conversation with African American literature, black studies, and feminist theory, Deanna P. Koretsky argues that romanticism is part and parcel of the legal and philosophical discourses underwriting liberal modernity's antiblack foundations. Read in this context, the trope of romantic suicide serves a distinct political function, indexing the limits of liberal subjectivity and (re)inscribing the rights and freedoms promised by liberalism as the exclusive province of white men.

The first book-length study of suicide in British romanticism, Death Rights also points to the enduring legacy of romantic ideals in the academy and contemporary culture more broadly. Koretsky challenges scholars working in historically Eurocentric fields to rethink their identification with epistemes rooted in antiblackness. And, through discussions of recent cultural touchstones such as Kurt Cobain's resurgence in hip-hop and Victor LaValle's comic book sequel to Frankenstein, Koretsky provides all readers with a trenchant analysis of how eighteenth-century ideas about suicide continue to routinize antiblackness in the modern world.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships Open Book Program-a limited competition designed to make outstanding humanities books available to a wide audience. Learn more at the Fellowships Open Book Program website at https: //www.neh.gov/grants/odh/FOBP.

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À propos de l'auteur

Deanna P. Koretsky is Assistant Professor of English at Spelman College.

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Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9781438482897: Death Rights: Romantic Suicide, Race, and the Bounds of Liberalism

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  1438482892 ISBN 13 :  9781438482897
Editeur : State University of New York Press, 2021
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