Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Bloomsbury Academic Collections)

"In this study, Victor Anderson traces instances of 'ontological blackness' in African American theological, religious and cultural thought, arguing that African American critical thought has been trapped in a racial rhetoric that it did not create and which cannot serve it well. Drawing together 18th- and 19th-century accomodationism and its assimilationist heirs with the movements of Black Power and Afrocentrism, Anderson shows that all exhibit a similar structure of racial identity. He suggests that it is time to move beyond the confines of 'the cult of black heroic genius' to what Bell Hooks has termed 'postmodern blackness': a racial discourse that leaves room to negotiate African American identities along lines of class, gender, sexuality, and age as well as race."--Bloomsbury Publishing. "In this study, Victor Anderson traces instances of "ontological blackness" in African American theological, religious and cultural thought, arguing that African American critical thought has been trapped in a racial rhetoric that it did not create and which cannot serve it well. Drawing together 18th- and 19th-century accomodationism and its assimilationist heirs with the movements of Black Power and Afrocentrism, Anderson shows that all exhibit a similar structure of racial identity. He suggests that it is time to move beyond the confines of "the cult of black heroic genius" to what Bell Hooks has termed "postmodern blackness": a racial discourse that leaves room to negotiate African American identities along lines of class, gender, sexuality, and age as well as race." -- Provided by publisher Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The Religious Functions of Cultural Criticism 2 Categorical Racism and Racial Apologetics 3 Ontological Blackness in Theology 4 Explicating and Displacing Ontological Blackness: The Heroic and Grotesque in African American Cultural and Religious Criticism Epilogue Further Reading Works Cited Index According to Beyond Ontological Blackness, this new cultural politics of black identity has the potential to free individuals and communities to find their fulfillment on a broader human scale than that offered by restrictive racial identities.