Blackness and Value: Seeing Double

by Lindon Barrett

• ISBN13: 9780521109956
• ISBN10: 0521109957
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-04-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Blackness and Value investigates the principles by which "value" operates, and asks if it is useful to imagine that the concepts of racial blackness and whiteness in the United States operate in terms of these principles. Testing these concepts by exploring various theoretical approaches and their shortcomings, Lindon Barrett finds that the gulf between "the street" (where race is acknowledged as a powerful enigma) and the literary academy (where until recently it has not been) can be understood as a symptom of racial violence. While commonly approaches to race and value are examined historically or sociologically, this intriguing study provides a new critical approach that speaks to theorists of race as well as gender and queer studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Violence and the unsightly

Figures of violence

Figuring others of value

(Further) figures of violence

Reasonings and Reasonableness

De-marking limits

Phonic and Scopic Economies

Signs of others

Signs of the visible

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