Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination

Title Page, Copyright

Extravagant Abjection SEXUAL CULTURES General Editors: José Esteban Muñoz and Ann Pellegrini Times Square Red, Times Square Blue Samuel R. Delany Private Affairs: Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations Phillip Brian Harper In Your Face: 9 Sexual Studies Mandy Merck Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America José Quiroga Murdering Masculinities: Fantasies of Gender and Violence in the American Crime Novel Greg Forter Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest Edited by Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan Black Gay Man: Essays Robert Reid Pharr, Foreword by Samuel R. Delany Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race, and Religion Edited by María Carla Sánchez and Linda Schlossberg The Explanation for Everything: Essays on Sexual Subjectivity Paul Morrison The Queerest Art: Essays on Lesbian and Gay Theater Edited by Alisa Solomon and Framji Minwalla Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism Edited by Arnaldo Cruz Malavé and Martin F. Manalansan IV Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces Juana María Rodríguez Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture Frances Négron-Muntaner Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era Marlon Ross In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives Judith Halberstam Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality in the U.S. Dwight A. McBride God Hates Fags: The Rhetorics of Religious Violence Michael Cobb Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual Robert Reid-Pharr The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory Lázaro Lima Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America Dana Luciano Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity José Esteban Muñoz Another Country: Queer Anti-Urbanism Scott Herring Extravagant Abjection Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination Darieck Scott a N E W YO R K U N IVER S ITY PR E S S New York and London NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London www.nyupress.org© 2010 by New York University All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scott, Darieck. Extravagant abjection : blackness, power, and sexuality in the African American literary imagination / Darieck Scott. p. cm. — (Sexual cultures) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-4094-1 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8147-4094-4 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-4095-8 (pb : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8147-4095-2 (pb : alk. paper) [etc.] 1. American fiction—African American authors—History and criticism. 2. African American men in literature. 3. Power (Social sciences) in literature. 4. Race relations in literature. 5. Rape in literature. 6. Homosexuality in literature. 7. Pornography in literature. 8. Abjection in literature. I. Title. PS374.N4S36 2010 813'5409896073—dc22 2010002954 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI), a collaborative publishing project of NYU Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers University Press, Temple University Press, and the University of Virginia Press. The Initiative is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information, please visit www.americanliteratures.org. ...