Title: Conjugal union
First published: 1999
Description: "In Conjugal Union, Robert F. Reid-Pharr argues that during the antebellum period a community of free black northeastern intellectuals sought to establish the stability of a Black American subjectivity by figuring the black body as the necessary antecedent to any intelligible Black American public presence. Reid-Pharr goes on to argue that the fact of the black body's constant and often spectacular display demonstrates an incredible uncertainty as to that body's status.

Thus antebellum black intellectuals were always anxious about how a stable relationship between the black body and the black community might be maintained. Paying particular attention to Black American novels written before the Civil War, the author shows how the household was utilized by these writers to normalize this relationship of body to community such that a person could enter a household as a white and leave it as a black."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: African American authors, African American intellectuals, African Americans, American literature, Black nationalism, Body image, History, History and criticism, Intellectual life, Race identity, Social aspects, Social aspects of Body image, African American families in literature, Rassenbeziehung, Rassische Identität, Geschichte, Schwarze, Ethnische Beziehung, African American families, Ethnische Identität, Ethnische Beziehungen, Marriage, united states, Afro-American families, Afro-Americans, Afro-American families in literature
Places: United States
LC classification: E185.625 .R44 1999