Habitations of the Veil: Metaphor and the Poetics of Black Being in African American Literature

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In Habitations of the Veil, Rebecka Rutledge Fisher uses theory implicit in W. E. B. Du Bois's use of metaphor to draw out and analyze what she sees as a long tradition of philosophical metaphor in African American literature. She demonstrates how Olaudah Equiano, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison each use metaphors to develop a critical discourse capable of overcoming the limits of narrative language to convey their lived experiences. Fisher's philosophical investigations open these texts to consideration on ontological and epistemological levels, in addition to those concerned with literary craft and the politics of black identity. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: The Poetics of Being Black A Question of Black Being I: Inhabiting the Veil: On Black Being 1 Being and Metaphor A Philosophy of Ordinary Black Being: Hurston’s “Characteristics of Negro Expression” 2 African American Philosophy and the Poetics of Black Being Crafting a Poetics of Black Being: Du Bois’s Philosophical Example Whither Blackness? Du Bois, Black Culture, and the Contemporaneity of Black Being II: The Poetics of Black Being Before and After Du Bois 3 Being and Becoming: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African The Rhetoric of the Image: Being and Becoming in Equiano’s Use of Portraiture Becoming and Belonging: National Desire and Spiritual Being in Equiano’s Time Hope in Narrative: Equiano’s Biblical Turn Phases of Being: Biblical Metaphorics in Equiano’s Narrative of Becoming Exile Freedom and the Liminal Abjection Faith Conversion and Salvation Actuation An Actuated Being 4 Remnants of Memory: Metaphor and Being in Frances E. W. Harper’s Sketches of Southern Life The Evolution of Harper’s Vernacular Poetry Between Metaphor and Black Being: Aunt Chloe’s Structure of Poetic Memory 5 A Technology of Modern Black Being: “The Conservation of Races” as a Critical Ontology of Race Being in the Occasion of Discourse: “Conservation A Technology of Black Being: “The Conservation of Races” as the Contested “Mediation by which We Understand Ourselves” The Interpretation of Black Historicity: Reading “Conservation” in Context “Conservation” and the Hermeneutics of Race 6 Habitations of the Veil: Souls Incipit and Excipit Poem and Paratext: The African American Spiritual and the Strivings of Black Being Inspiriting Time: The Spiritual and the Ontology of the Slave Metaphors of Perceiving, Knowing, and Mourning: “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” “Of the Dawn of Freedom,” and “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others Metaphors of Journeying and Insight: “Of the Meaning of Progress,” “Of the Wings of Atalanta,” and “Of the Training of Black Men Metaphors of the Temporal and the Atemporal The Fundamental Mythopoetics of Metaphor in African American Religion The Soul’s Biography: Metaphors of Transition and Transcendence Navigating the Undulating Waters of Being: The Spirituals and the Possibilities of Metaphor 7 Symbolic Wrights: The Poetics of Being Underground Incipit Mapping Black Ontology and Black Freedom: “Blueprint for Negro Writing” in Context Being Underground 8 A Love Called Democracy: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man By Way of Conclusion Speaking for the Beloved Love’s Habitation: Blackness, The Uncanny Maternal, and American Democracy The Repression of the Black Maternal The Irresponsible Dreamer: Reveries of Sexual Love Sacrificing Sexual Desire Black Being’s Moral of Love Notes Bibliography Index