Blackness and Value: Seeing Double (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, Series Number 117)

Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture

by Lindon Barrett

Blackness and Value investigates the principles by which "value" operates, and asks if it is useful to imagine that the concepts of racial blackness and whiteness in the United States operate in terms of these principles. Testing these concepts by exploring various theoretical approaches and their shortcomings, Lindon Barrett finds that the gulf between "the street" (where race is acknowledged as a powerful enigma) and the literary academy (where until recently it has not been) can be understood as a symptom of racial violence. While commonly approaches to race and value are examined historically or sociologically, this intriguing study provides a new critical approach that speaks to theorists of race as well as gender and queer studies.

288 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 1998

About the author

Lindon Warren Barrett was born on October 10, 1961 in Guyana and moved to England with his parents, Dorothy and Leslie Barrett along with his older brother, Leslie, Jr., when he was one year old. Five years later, the Barretts moved to Winnipeg, where Lindon grew up. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Manitoba and York University in Toronto, where he earned his B.A. in 1983. He did his graduate work at the University of Denver (M.A., 1986) and the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his Ph.D. in English in 1990. In the same year, he received his first academic job at the University of California, Irvine, where he rose from assistant to full professor by 2001. He remained on the faculty for 17 years, until he joined the faculty at University of California-Riverside in 2007.

For a decade and a half Lindon served the UCI community in a number of different capacities. A distinguished scholar and teacher, Lindon was one of the founding members of the program in African American Studies and served as its director between 2004 and 2007. He taught a range of courses in literary and cultural theory, gender and sexuality, African American literature and popular culture, which, over the years, reached thousands of undergraduate and graduate students at UCI.

(from http://senate.universityofcalifornia....)

Reviews

[Leto Ybarra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book through Snorton's "Black on Both Sides" and although I have only read the introduction, I find it a very important book, and I'm still considering how it relates value and blackness. I have only read the introduction so far, since I want to spend time with it. I really appreciate the journey he makes through different approaches to value (Marx, Baudrillard, Peter Stallybrass...), the relationality implicit in the generation of value and valuelessness, and particularly how he approaches the violence posited as the subsequently occluded origin of value”. I like how the author brings value and violence into dialogue by mentioning Benjamin's essay on violence, and even hints on how to approach it (it is a challenging text, to which I plan to return after accumulating more tools lol).

[Tapji Garba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible! Such an important intervention, and I think really distend’s Marxian value-form theory

[J Kameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vitally important book.