Reading Black intimacies: Literary studies beyond representational inclusion

My dissertation examines how the economic, political, and social transformations of the post Civil Rights era are reflected in contemporary Black literature. I discuss how the current exercise of racism shapes experiences of isolation, fracture, and alienation that manifest intraracially. Rather than exclusive focus on the political, ideological, and cultural forces that organize racial subjectivity from the dominant gaze, my analysis centers how the exercise of racial domination impacts how raced subjects perceive each other. The dissertation posits what I call "intraracial recognition" as a critical framework for assessing the obstacles to and possibilities for such forms of collective consciousness. African Americans' complex negotiations of structural oppression and interpersonal or intimate relationships can therefore be read as defining features of Black writing in the contemporary era. My project and understanding of intraracial recognition borrow from scholarly studies of both "social death" and "intimate politics." Throughout my analysis I demonstrate how the refusal of social and political forms of recognition to Black people is also a gendered process. The dissertation includes analyses of Corregidora, Down These Mean Streets, Jazz, and erotic fiction anthologies.