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(2019) Exploitation and misrule in colonial and postcolonial Africa, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
The physical and psychological dismemberment of the African continent and its Diaspora, occasioned by the transatlantic slave trade and colonization, cannot be wished away or repaired by negating the self (past), and therefore remains one of the primary concerns of writers of the Black Atlantic. In spite of their efforts at agency—the deconstruction of racial essentialism—the "passing" characters in the novels discussed in this chapter not only fail to transcend "race" in order to attain freedom, they also deny their selves and historical relevance, thus paradoxically reinforcing that which they intend to challenge. The chapter contends that the phenomenology of "blackness' is historical and that the black body and its traumatic experiences have to be acknowledged and "re-membered" for wholeness to ensue.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-96496-6_7
Full citation:
Logan, M. K. (2019)., Identity, the "passing" novel, and the phenomenology of "race", in K. Kalu & T. Falola (eds.), Exploitation and misrule in colonial and postcolonial Africa, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 145-161.
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