Of Black Boys and Haunted Houses: Spectrality and Historical Rewriting in Randall Kenan’s Short Fiction

Vanesa Lado-Pazos

Abstract


Since the so-called spectral turn of the 1990s, the ghost has been placed at the forefront of critical debates as a conceptual metaphor through which to destabilize the hegemonic discourses and values of modernity. Adopting the theoretical framework of spectrality studies, this paper seeks to interrogate the functions fulfilled by the ghost in “Tell Me, Tell Me” (1992) and “Resurrection Hardware or, Lard and Promises” (2018) by Randall Kenan. The comparative analysis of both narratives will render spectrality as a multi-layered metaphor of great socio-political import that allows for the articulation of transhistorical Black oppression in America and effects a historical revision aimed at the re-inscription of marginalized and silenced voices. 


Keywords


spectrality; Black oppression; historical revision; Randall Kenan; values

Full Text:

PDF

References


Baldwin, James. (1998). The White Man’s Guilt. In: Toni Morrison (ed.), James Baldwin: Collected Essays (pp. 722–727). New York: The Library of America.

Brogan, Kathleen. (1998). Cultural Haunting: Ghosts and Ethnicity in Recent American Literature. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Chassot, Joanne. (2018). Ghosts of the African Diaspora: Re-visioning History, Memory, and Identity. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press.

Del Villano, Bianca. (2009). Ghostly Alterities: Spectrality and Contemporary Literatures in English. Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag. (Original work published in 2007.)

Gordon, Avery. (1997). Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Kenan, Randall. (1993). Tell Me, Tell Me. In: Randall Kenan, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead and Other Stories (pp. 236–269). Orlando: Harvest. (Original work published in 1992.)

Kenan, Randall. (2000). A Visitation of Spirits. New York: Vintage Contemporaries. (Original work published in 1989.)

Kenan, Randall. (2021). Resurrection Hardware or, Lard & Promises. In: Randall Kenan, If I Had Two Wings. Stories (pp. 113–140). New York: Norton. (Original work published in 2020.)

Morrison, Toni. (2010). Beloved. London: Vintage. (Original work published in 2010.)

Morrison, Toni. (1994). The Pain of Being Black: An Interview with Toni Morrison. In: Danille Taylor-Guthrie (ed.) Conversations with Toni Morrison (pp. 255–261). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Norman, Brian. (2015). When Dead Men Talk: Emmett Till, Southern Pasts, and Present Demands. In: Eric Gary Anderson, Taylor Hagood, Daniel Cross Turner (eds.), Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature (pp. 136–148). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Wilkerson, Isabel. (2020). Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. London: Allen Lane.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/ff.2024.42.1.121-133
Date of publication: 2024-12-13 15:10:38
Date of submission: 2024-06-24 15:38:48


Statistics


Total abstract view - 23
Downloads (from 2020-06-17) - PDF - 7

Indicators



Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2024 Vanesa Lado-Pazos

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.