A Gift of the Spirit: Reading "The Souls of Black Folk" (Psychoanalysis and Social Theory) - Softcover

Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor

 
9780801473531: A Gift of the Spirit: Reading "The Souls of Black Folk" (Psychoanalysis and Social Theory)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0801473535 ISBN 13: 9780801473531
Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2007

Synopsis

In A Gift of the Spirit, Eugene Victor Wolfenstein offers a reading of W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk aimed at demonstrating its organic unity and coherence. He takes as his interpretive key the experience of the color line with which Du Bois's narrative begins―the incident from his youth in which a white girl refused his offer of a visiting card. Wolfenstein contends that this instance of misrecognition makes visible an aesthetic and affective configuration involving insult and injury, both racial and personal; anger as the immediate response to the humiliating wound; and, when that anger is suppressed, a melancholy retreat from the site of injury. As Wolfenstein reconstructs it, Souls tells the story of Du Bois's twofold approach to waging the battle for recognition: proud and disciplined resistance to the impositions and injustices of white supremacy; and the development of an intellectual station above the field of battle, where it could be surveyed from on high.

With its serious and respectful approach to this canonical work in African American social theory, A Gift of the Spirit is a fitting tribute to the enduring relevance of Du Bois's singular achievement.

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About the Author

Eugene Victor Wolfenstein is Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Los Angeles and from 1988 to 2002 was a member of the faculty of the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. His previous books include Inside/Outside Nietzsche: Psychoanalytic Explorations, also from Cornell, Psychoanalytic-Marxism: Groundwork, and The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution.

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Publisher
Cornell University Press
Publication date
2007
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0801473535
ISBN 13 
9780801473531
Binding
Paperback
Edition number
1
Number of pages
192

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780801445224: A Gift of the Spirit: Reading "The Souls of Black Folk" (Psychoanalysis and Social Theory)

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0801445221 ISBN 13:  9780801445224
Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2007
Hardcover