Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (Perverse Modernities: A Series Edited by Jack Halberstam and Lisa Lowe)

Arguing that the fundamental, familiar, sexual violence of slavery and racialized subjugation have continued to shape black and white subjectivities into the present, Christina Sharpe interprets African diasporic and Black Atlantic visual and literary texts that address those “monstrous intimacies” and their repetition as constitutive of post-slavery subjectivity. Her illuminating readings juxtapose Frederick Douglass’s narrative of witnessing the brutal beating of his Aunt Hester with Essie Mae Washington-Williams’s declaration of freedom in Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond, as well as the “generational genital fantasies” depicted in Gayl Jones’s novel Corregidora with a firsthand account of such “monstrous intimacies” in the journals of an antebellum South Carolina senator, slaveholder, and vocal critic of miscegenation. Sharpe explores the South African–born writer Bessie Head’s novel Maru—about race, power, and liberation in Botswana—in light of the history of the KhoiSan woman Saartje Baartman, who was displayed in Europe as the “Hottentot Venus” in the nineteenth century. Reading Isaac Julien’s film The Attendant, Sharpe takes up issues of representation, slavery, and the sadomasochism of everyday black life. Her powerful meditation on intimacy, subjection, and subjectivity culminates in an analysis of Kara Walker’s black silhouettes, and the critiques leveled against both the silhouettes and the artist. Arguing that the fundamental, familiar, sexual violence of slavery and racialized subjugation have continued to shape black and white subjectivities into the present, Christina Sharpe interprets African diasporic and Black Atlantic visual and literary texts that address those monstrous intimacies and their repetition as constitutive of post-slavery subjectivity. Her illuminating readings juxtapose Frederick Douglasss narrative of witnessing the brutal beating of his Aunt Hester with Essie Mae Washington-Williamss declaration of freedom in Dear A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond , as well as the generational genital fantasies depicted in Gayl Joness novel Corregidora with a firsthand account of such monstrous intimacies in the journals of an antebellum South Carolina senator, slaveholder, and vocal critic of miscegenation. Sharpe explores the South Africanborn writer Bessie Heads novel Maru about race, power, and liberation in Botswanain light of the history of the KhoiSan woman Saartje Baartman, who was displayed in Europe as the Hottentot Venus in the nineteenth century. Reading Isaac Juliens film The Attendant , Sharpe takes up issues of representation, slavery, and the sadomasochism of everyday black life. Her powerful meditation on intimacy, subjection, and subjectivity culminates in an analysis of Kara Walkers black silhouettes, and the critiques leveled against both the silhouettes and the artist. Acknowledgments ix Introduction. Making Monstrous Intimacies: Surviving Slavery, Bearing Freedom 1 1. Gayl Jones's Corregidora and Reading the "Days That Were Pages of Hysteria" 27 2. Bessie Head, Saartje Baartman, and Maru Redemption, Subjectification, and the Problem of Liberation 67 3. Isaac Julien's The Attendant and the Sadomasochism of Everyday Black Life 111 4. Kara Walker's Monstrous Intimacies 153 Notes 189 Bibliography 223 Index 243 Gayl Jones's Corregidora And Reading The Days That Were Pages Of Hysteria -- Bessie Head, Saartje Baartman, And Maru : Redemption, Subjectification, And The Problem Of Liberation -- Isaac Julien's The Attendant And The Sadomasochism Of Everyday Black Life -- Kara Walker's Monstrous Intimacies. Christina Sharpe. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 223-242) And Index. Christina Sharpe interprets Black Atlantic visual and literary texts that grapple with the sexual violence of slavery and racialized subjugation, and their present-day legacies. A study of how black subjectivity is formed at the site of the intimate encounter