AFR 358(S) Eroding Witness: Aesthetics, Knowledge, and Racial Perception (Same as American Studies 358 and English 358)

ENGL 358(S) Eroding Witness: Aesthetics, Knowledge, and Racial Perception (Same as Africana Studies 358 and American Studies 358)
To say that the operation of racism requires making "race" visible is only to state the obvious. How this happens-how the members of a society are trained to perceive specific traits and to connect them with racial identifications-may be somewhat more complex, even if it is taken for granted, as it generally is. Yet it is also obvious that racism imposes limitations on perception-rendering some people "invisible," or "voiceless," or indistinguishable from each other. Rather than thinking of these limits as defects, perhaps they may be understood as productive-as the enabling constraints within which a system of racist perception develops.
In this course, we will consider how such systems of perception have been challenged in African American literary traditions. This has sometimes been construed as a paradox of invisibility and hypervisibility, or as a tension between oral and print culture, or between music and writing. We'll engage it more broadly, situating literary texts within black cultural practices that routinely invoke multiple artistic media at once, pressing against their material limits in a strategy Nathaniel Mackey has termed "eroding witness." For if racism depends on a training of perception, the most powerful challenges to this training do not proclaim a disingenuous "colorblindness"; rather, they draw on visionary political and cultural traditions that improvise what Fred Moten calls "the ensemble of the senses." Assigned readings may include such writers and critics as W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, and Brent Hayes Edwards. We'll also extend our analysis in comparative directions through individual and collaborative research, on topics related to African American visual art, music, and film, and/or other literary and intellectual traditions.
Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: frequent writing exercises, two short papers, one group research presentation, and a final paper (10-12 pages)
Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit 25: (expected: 25).
(Post-1900)
Hour: SCHLEITWILER