Narratives of African American Women's Literary Pragmatism and Creative Democracy

This book charts an interdisciplinary narrative of literary pragmatism and creative democracy across the writings of African American women, from the works of nineteenth-century philosophers to the novels and short stories of Harlem Renaissance authors. The book argues that this critically neglected narrative forms a genealogy of black feminist intersectionality and a major contribution to the development of American pragmatism. Bringing together the philosophical writings of Maria Stewart, Anna Julia Cooper, and Mary Church Terrell and the fictional works of Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston, this text provides a literary pragmatist study of the archetypes, tropes, settings, and modes of resistance that populate the narrative of creative democracy. Above all, this book considers how these philosophers and authors construct democracy as a lived experience that gains meaning not through state institutions but through communities founded on relationships among black women and their shared understandings of culture, knowledge, experience, and rebellion. Front Matter ....Pages i-xii Introduction (Gregory Phipps)....Pages 1-34 Nineteenth-Century Philosophical Pragmatism: The Black Maternal Archetype and the Communities of Creative Democracy (Gregory Phipps)....Pages 35-76 The Narrative of Creative Democracy in the Harlem Renaissance (Gregory Phipps)....Pages 77-111 The Search for Beautiful Experience in Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun (Gregory Phipps)....Pages 113-135 Creative Democracy in One Community: Literary Pragmatism in Jessie Fauset’s The Chinaberry Tree (Gregory Phipps)....Pages 137-162 Breaking Down Creative Democracy: The Cycle of Experience and Truth in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (Gregory Phipps)....Pages 163-185 Securing the Archetype and the Community: Irene Redfield’s Resistance to Creative Democracy in Nella Larsen’s Passing (Gregory Phipps)....Pages 187-211 “She Told Them About Her Trips to the Horizon”: Creative Democracy in the Short Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston (Gregory Phipps)....Pages 213-237 Conclusion (Gregory Phipps)....Pages 239-250 Back Matter ....Pages 251-274