Figures in Black Words, Signs, and the "Racial" Self [Paperback]

For over two centuries, critics and the black community have tended to approach African-American literature as simply one more front in the important war against racism, valuing slave narratives and twentieth-century works alike, primarily for their political impact.
In this volume, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a leading scholar in African-American studies, attacks the notion of African-American literature as a kind of social realism. Insisting, instead, that critics focus on the most repressed element of African-American criticism--the language of the text--Gates advocates the use of a close, methodical analysis of language, made possible by modern literary theory. Throughout his study, Gates incorporates the theoretical insights of critics such as Bakhtin, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, and Bloom, as he examines the modes of representation that define black art and analyzes the unspoken assumptions made in judging this literature since its inception.
Ranging from the eighteenth-century poet, Phillis Wheatley, to modern writers, Ishmael Reed and Alice Walker, Gates seeks to redefine literary criticism itself, moving away from a Eurocentric notion of a hierarchical canon--mostly white, Western, and male--to foster a truly comparative and pluralistic notion of literature.

The originality, brilliance, and scope of the work is remarkable....Gates will instruct, delight, and stimulate a broad range of readers, both those who are already well versed in [African-American] literature, and those who, after reading this book, will eagerly begin to be. --Barbara E. Johnson,Harvard University

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is establishing himself as the leading critic of Afro-American literature and his new book,Figures in Black, will certainly confirm his standing. Gates's brilliance lies in fulfilling an exceptionally difficult task: that of interpreting this body of literature through contemporary critical theory without losing sight of its traditilcÀ