1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910451509503321

Autore

Judy Ronald A. T

Titolo

(Dis)forming the American canon [[electronic resource] ] : African-Arabic slave narratives and the vernacular / / Ronald A.T. Judy ; foreword by Wahneema Lubiano

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Minneapolis, : University of Minnesota Press, c1993

ISBN

0-8166-8427-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (369 p.)

Disciplina

810.9/896073

892.7

Soggetti

African Americans in literature

American prose literature - African American authors - History and criticism - Theory, etc

American prose literature - Arab American authors - History and criticism - Theory, etc

Arab Americans in literature

Autobiography

Canon (Literature)

Narration (Rhetoric)

Slavery - United States - Historiography

Slaves' writings, American - History and criticism - Theory, etc

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Contents; Acknowledgments; A Note on Transliteration; Abbreviations Used in Citations of Kant's Work; Foreword; 1 Introduction: Critique of Incorporation; Part I. Writing Being: The Slave Narrative as the Original Text; 2 Critique of American Enlightenment: The Problem with the Writing of Culture; 3 Writing Culture in the Negro: Grammatology of Civil Society and Slavery; 4 Critique of Genealogical Deduction: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and the (Dis)Formation of Canon Formation

Part II. The Indeterminate Narrative of the African American Slave: A Negative History of Making Time in Arabic5 Africa as a Paralogism: The



Task of the Ethnologists; 6 Designating Ben Ali's Manuscript Arabic; 7 Reading the Sign's Indeterminate Corpora; 8 Critique of Hypotyposis: The Inhuman Significance of Ben Ali's Diary; Epilogue: Thought After: Thinking Heterography; Notes; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; Q; R; S; T; U; V; W; Y; Z

Sommario/riassunto

Judy offers an alternative interpretation of literacy that challenges traditional Enlightenment discourse's claim that literacy and reason are the privileged properties of Western culture. Judy argues, on the basis of his readings of autobiographical African-American Arabic slave narratives, that through the production of the Arabic text, the African slave already had all the elements that the West attributes to "reason" before his original introduction to Western culture-a literacy that already mediated between Africa and Europe.