An Analysis Of Racism In Between The World And Me From The Perspective Of Body Politics

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a modern black American writer and national correspondent for The Atlantic.His master work,Between the World and Me,was published in 2015 and won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in the same year.Written in epistolary form,this book narrates the feelings of being black and reality that black people are in face of in America.The book unveils the ubiquitous and implicit racism and causes another extensive discussion about racial discrimination,thus reflects a certain amount of research value.Due to the fact that Coates puts emphasis on physical remolding and destruction while showing racial contradictions,this thesis focuses on the body and analyzes the deep meaning symbolized in the body.Combining the text and Terry Eagleton's body politics criticism,this thesis analyzes how the ruling class implants its ideology into the black body,thereby realizing the discipline and oppression against black people,and how black people fight against it by means of utilizing the interaction between the body and ideology.Firstly,this analysis begins with three different forms of the presentation of the body—body as a laboring instrument,body as a sexual agent,and body as an interpersonal relation,taking the black body as the focus of attention and combining the specific examples drawn from the text(incarceration,violence,dress culture,etc.),presenting the current interracial and intraracial living situation.Secondly,from the perspective of the ruling class—white people,combining the three different forms of presentation of the body,this thesis analyzes that the ruling class realizes their control over the black body from three aspects,which are class division,aesthetics and culture,and the laws and policies,hence accomplishing the goal of stabilizing their rule.Thirdly,from the perspective of the ruled—black people,this thesis explores that as the object being oppressed and plundered,how black people use their bodies as a political means,driving their bodies by appealing to the spiritual disillusion of the ruled and expelling their physiological numbness by awakening their consciousness.Between the World and Me aims at recovering the subjectivity and ego of their bodies in virtue of retrieving black morality,the renaissance of black art and culture,and the power of super body,then the physiological changes affect their minds further,consequently resisting the invasion of ideology and constraint of the racist ruling.Finally,based on the mutual interaction that body politics plays in racial contradiction—the body can be a tool of domination for the ruling class as well as a weapon for the ruled to revolt,this thesis provides an answer to the question that Coates promotes in his work yet not responds explicitly,that is,people who live within their black bodies will survive by virtue of the power of black nationalism and collectivism.