Reading Multiple Consciousness

Exploring the Complexity of Postmodern Identity

Komla M. Avono

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781978793941
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Comparative Literature
• Index: Literature

For over a century, the intellectual debate of scholars from African descent has been dominated by the idea of double consciousness spearheaded by W.E.B. DuBois. Interestingly, with many years of vexatious issues of the encounter between the West and Africa, many scholars approached the debate on the basis of the consciousness of the Self and the Other. However, this idea seems to overlook the multiplicities of being black/white. Reading Multiple Consciousness: Exploring the Complexity of Postmodern Identity suggests a different approach to the issue by taking more steps beyond double consciousness. It enriches the debate over race literature and colonization as it offers another way of reading texts. This book proposes that the complexity of postmodern identity is more accurately described by a theory of multiple consciousness. This study arises out of the necessity of a more nuanced theoretical framework for a younger generation of researchers on both sides of the Atlantic, a conceptual approach that does justice to the complexity of their experience.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword: Beyond the Self/Other Binary
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Multiple Consciousness: Laye Camara’s The Dark Child and Richard Wright’s Black Boy
• Chapter 2: Audience, Double-Consciousness, and African Teachers of American Literature
• Chapter 3: A Hungry Man Is a Negro Man: Racializing Poverty in Richard Wright’s Black Boy
• Chapter 4: The Weakness of Power in Richard Wright’s Native Son: Lessons Learned in the Context of American Exceptionalism
• Chapter 5: The Black Man’s Construction of His Own Invisibility in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
• Chapter 6: Collecting, Connecting, and Correcting: Vital Steps at the Heart of the Harlem Renaissance
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author