Crossroads Modernism: Descent and Emergence in African-American Literary CultureU of Minnesota Press, 2002 - 314 pages An essential reconsideration of black literature and culture and its response to modernity In the African American encounter with modernism, all was not confrontation. Rather, as Edward M. Pavli ́c demonstrates here, African American artists negotiated the intersection of high modernism in Europe and American discourse to fashion their own distinctive response to American modernity. A deft repositioning of black literature and culture, Pavli ́c's book re-envisions the potentials and dilemmas where the different traditions of modernism meet and firmly establishes African American modernism at this cultural crossroads. Offering new insights into the work of a variety of African American artists--including Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Robert Hayden, David Bradley, Yusef Komunyakaa, Romare Bearden, and John Coltrane--Pavli ́c explores the complex ways in which key modernist philosophical ideas and creative techniques have informed black culture. Crossroads Modernism also provides an in-depth look at how West African cultural legacies are brought to bear in the structure of a truly African American modernist creative process. The book brings to light two interrelated strains of black modernism: Afro-Modernism, which employs established modernist concerns and conceits to illuminate internal and psychological experience; and Diasporic Modernism, which places greater emphasis on shared cultural space and builds on traditions rooted in West African cultures.Whereas much has been said about the (generally racist) use of "blackness" in constituting modernism, Crossroads Modernism is the first book to expose the key role that modernism has played in the constitution of "blackness" in African-American aesthetics. In light of this work, canonical texts in African American literature can no longer be read as devoid of their own singular contribution to international modernism. |
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above-ground above-underground aesthetic Afro Afro-modernism Afro-modernist American modernity ancestors artists ascent awareness Baldwin black culture black modernity Cake's call-and-response Chaneysville Incident communal underground complex connection consciousness creative critical crossroads Daniels Daniels's depersonalized descendental descent diasporic modernism diasporic modernist disruption dissociation Diver Eatonville Eliot Ellison emergence emphasizes energies ernist essay Esu/Elegba excavation experience Eyes Were Watching flux Harlem Harlem Renaissance Hayden Hurston Hurston's diasporic images improvised insights interaction interpersonal Invisible invokes James Baldwin Janie Janie's jazz John Komunyakaa Langston Hughes literary mainstream narrative narrator novel òrìsà patterns performance perspective Petro poem poetics poetry poets psychological racial Ralph Ellison Rambo rational reality relation relationship response ritual Robert Hayden sense shows Sonny's Blues Starks's Stepto's structure symbolic East symbolic South syndetic T. S. Eliot Tea Cake techniques tell tion tradition underground space vision vodun voice West African Wheatstraw Wright writes Yorùbá Yusef Komunyakaa Zora Neale Hurston