- Joined
- Feb 16, 2016
If you check the twitter thread, one of the mouth agape urban youth uploaded a copy for the herd to appraise. Apparently she eventually figured out how to not make it private.
From the introduction:
Further down...
The manuscript was so shit they spent years tracking down every single old man addled brain citation so it was even publishable. Oh and it didn't have a real conclusion.
Have fun!
A review of it I found:
BOOK REVIEW
The Delectable Negro: human consumption and homoeroticism within U.S. slave
culture
VINCENT WOODARD, 2014 (Ed. Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride, foreword E.
Patrick Johnson)
New York: New York University Press
311 pp., ISBN 0 8147 9461 6, £ 55 (hardback); ISBN 0 8147 9462 3, £ 18.99 (paperback)
In his brilliant reading of Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861),
Vincent Woodard argues for a more fluid conception of gender and black consumption in
order to envision ‘new and dynamic’ worlds of ‘possibility’ for black experiences under
slavery (p. 167). Woodard’s study of the archives of consumption – a term used to express
a range of practices including institutionalized hunger, sexual modes of consumption,
seasoning rituals, cannibalism, erotic pleasure, and soul harvesting – aims to do this by
providing a new language and apparatus for thinking about how ‘blacks experienced their
consumption as a fundamentally ... homoerotic occurrence’ (p. 7). Moreover, Woodard’s
reading of black experiences of consumption (through the prism of homoerotic encounters
and gender indeterminacy) emphasizes the possibility of agency for enslaved subjects,
shedding light on hitherto under-theorized acts of resistance. In part, by taking seriously
the enslaved person’s epistemology of cannibalistic practices as actual event rather than
metaphor, Woodard demonstrates his commitment to centereing the integrity of the
knowledge paradigms of enslaved persons, thereby restoring authority to the black
speaker. This important study also compels us to think anew the site of erotic pleasure and
hunger (described by Woodard as auto-consumption) as places for radically transforming
the discourse of black consumption and ‘the politics of interiority’ (p. 212).
This fascinating study, published posthumously with commendable editorial
assistance from Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride, is a tour de force with a
sweeping critical vision ranging from the reading of white cannibalism in transatlantic
literature to legacies of black hunger a propos homoeroticism in the context of 1960s
political insurgence. The range of critical methodologies and texts (including but not
limited to slave narratives, WPA interviews, advertisements, cartoons, neo-slave
narratives, journals, diaries, poetry, and historical fiction) embolden this project but also
threaten its coherence. The introduction to the study situates cannibalism as ‘an originary
framework for the emergence of homoeroticism’ within the economies of the slave trade
and plantation culture (p. 19). The concept of ‘originary framework’ correlates with the
author’s interest in language and philosophy and his wider argument about the failure of
critics to conceptualize the libidinal experience of the enslaved person beyond familiar
binaries of homo/hetero, master/slave, black/white, masculine/feminine, etc. With its
explicit aim to expand our thinking about sexuality in the period of slavery and search for a
language expressive of queer subjectivity, this book will appeal to readers interested in the
intersections of sexuality, language, and gender identities.
In Chapter 1, Woodard ‘establish[es] an interconnection between cannibalism and
chattel homoeroticism’ (p. 25) by attending to Africanist perspectives on the economies of
consumption. Moderating the boundary between literal acts of eating, carving, and
cooking flesh as well as metaphorical acts of ‘seasoning’ the flesh (through violence,
religious conversion and sexual brutality), The Delectable Negro connects institutiona-
lized practices with intimate human relations during the eighteenth century. Following
Woodard’s reading of Equiano’s narrative in Chapter 1, the next chapter explores the
Essex affair and the interplay between sex, honor, and human consumption in the
antebellum period. Chapters 3 and 4 provide sustained original readings of two canonical
slave narratives, drawing attention to the subversive use of hunger and gender
performativity to claim space for a wider epistemology of slave sexuality. In Chapter 3,
Woodard explores Frederick Douglass’s narrative through the lens of hunger in order to
recuperate a ‘latent grammar’ for the ‘unspeakable dimensions of his own [Douglass’] sex
and embodied knowledge’ (p. 104). In contrast to conventional interpretations of
Douglass’s heroic resistance and rhetorical mastery, the author reads for subterfuge,
encoding, and inversions of speech (via a compelling reading of incest) to demonstrate the
‘effeminate values’ and emotional and erotic life (p. 112) concealed within Douglass’s
text. Chapter 4 establishes a correlation between hunger and gender categorization with
particular focus on incest and human consumption in the work of Harriet Jacobs. This
chapter contains a strong and original reading of the character of Luke and provides a
necessary preliminary exploration of the role of white women within economies of power,
sexuality, and gender consumption.
Chapters 5 and 6 turn their focus to the contemporary period and Chapter 5 in
particular marks a shift in tone and methodology away from close textual analysis and
theorization to wider cultural narrative. Woodard explores responses to Styron’s novel The
Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) aiming to illustrate the transhistorical legacies of
homoeroticism and cannibalism via the recurrent haunting of Nat Turner. In my view, this
chapter is the weakest chapter of this otherwise outstanding study. Chapter 6 returns to the
framework of hunger, consumption and black male sexuality via an interesting reading of
the black male orifice and oral sex scene in Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and includes a
preliminary sketching of a genealogy of the uses of black bodies and body parts as figures
for a ‘politics of interiority’ (p. 212).
The paradigmatic potential of Woodard’s conception of the black male orifice
demonstrates the potential of this work to spur new approaches to the studies of slavery
and critical theory and signals productive future extensions to the epistemology outlined
here to include figures and persons not currently included. It would be fitting tribute to the
author himself to see readers from across the disciplines engage with the provocation and
cognizance of Vincent Woodard’s work.
Rachel van Duyvenbode
The University of Sheffield, UK
q 2015, Rachel van Duyvenbode
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2015.1073964
The Delectable Negro: human consumption and homoeroticism within U.S. slave
culture
VINCENT WOODARD, 2014 (Ed. Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride, foreword E.
Patrick Johnson)
New York: New York University Press
311 pp., ISBN 0 8147 9461 6, £ 55 (hardback); ISBN 0 8147 9462 3, £ 18.99 (paperback)
In his brilliant reading of Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861),
Vincent Woodard argues for a more fluid conception of gender and black consumption in
order to envision ‘new and dynamic’ worlds of ‘possibility’ for black experiences under
slavery (p. 167). Woodard’s study of the archives of consumption – a term used to express
a range of practices including institutionalized hunger, sexual modes of consumption,
seasoning rituals, cannibalism, erotic pleasure, and soul harvesting – aims to do this by
providing a new language and apparatus for thinking about how ‘blacks experienced their
consumption as a fundamentally ... homoerotic occurrence’ (p. 7). Moreover, Woodard’s
reading of black experiences of consumption (through the prism of homoerotic encounters
and gender indeterminacy) emphasizes the possibility of agency for enslaved subjects,
shedding light on hitherto under-theorized acts of resistance. In part, by taking seriously
the enslaved person’s epistemology of cannibalistic practices as actual event rather than
metaphor, Woodard demonstrates his commitment to centereing the integrity of the
knowledge paradigms of enslaved persons, thereby restoring authority to the black
speaker. This important study also compels us to think anew the site of erotic pleasure and
hunger (described by Woodard as auto-consumption) as places for radically transforming
the discourse of black consumption and ‘the politics of interiority’ (p. 212).
This fascinating study, published posthumously with commendable editorial
assistance from Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride, is a tour de force with a
sweeping critical vision ranging from the reading of white cannibalism in transatlantic
literature to legacies of black hunger a propos homoeroticism in the context of 1960s
political insurgence. The range of critical methodologies and texts (including but not
limited to slave narratives, WPA interviews, advertisements, cartoons, neo-slave
narratives, journals, diaries, poetry, and historical fiction) embolden this project but also
threaten its coherence. The introduction to the study situates cannibalism as ‘an originary
framework for the emergence of homoeroticism’ within the economies of the slave trade
and plantation culture (p. 19). The concept of ‘originary framework’ correlates with the
author’s interest in language and philosophy and his wider argument about the failure of
critics to conceptualize the libidinal experience of the enslaved person beyond familiar
binaries of homo/hetero, master/slave, black/white, masculine/feminine, etc. With its
explicit aim to expand our thinking about sexuality in the period of slavery and search for a
language expressive of queer subjectivity, this book will appeal to readers interested in the
intersections of sexuality, language, and gender identities.
In Chapter 1, Woodard ‘establish[es] an interconnection between cannibalism and
chattel homoeroticism’ (p. 25) by attending to Africanist perspectives on the economies of
consumption. Moderating the boundary between literal acts of eating, carving, and
cooking flesh as well as metaphorical acts of ‘seasoning’ the flesh (through violence,
religious conversion and sexual brutality), The Delectable Negro connects institutiona-
lized practices with intimate human relations during the eighteenth century. Following
Woodard’s reading of Equiano’s narrative in Chapter 1, the next chapter explores the
Essex affair and the interplay between sex, honor, and human consumption in the
antebellum period. Chapters 3 and 4 provide sustained original readings of two canonical
slave narratives, drawing attention to the subversive use of hunger and gender
performativity to claim space for a wider epistemology of slave sexuality. In Chapter 3,
Woodard explores Frederick Douglass’s narrative through the lens of hunger in order to
recuperate a ‘latent grammar’ for the ‘unspeakable dimensions of his own [Douglass’] sex
and embodied knowledge’ (p. 104). In contrast to conventional interpretations of
Douglass’s heroic resistance and rhetorical mastery, the author reads for subterfuge,
encoding, and inversions of speech (via a compelling reading of incest) to demonstrate the
‘effeminate values’ and emotional and erotic life (p. 112) concealed within Douglass’s
text. Chapter 4 establishes a correlation between hunger and gender categorization with
particular focus on incest and human consumption in the work of Harriet Jacobs. This
chapter contains a strong and original reading of the character of Luke and provides a
necessary preliminary exploration of the role of white women within economies of power,
sexuality, and gender consumption.
Chapters 5 and 6 turn their focus to the contemporary period and Chapter 5 in
particular marks a shift in tone and methodology away from close textual analysis and
theorization to wider cultural narrative. Woodard explores responses to Styron’s novel The
Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) aiming to illustrate the transhistorical legacies of
homoeroticism and cannibalism via the recurrent haunting of Nat Turner. In my view, this
chapter is the weakest chapter of this otherwise outstanding study. Chapter 6 returns to the
framework of hunger, consumption and black male sexuality via an interesting reading of
the black male orifice and oral sex scene in Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and includes a
preliminary sketching of a genealogy of the uses of black bodies and body parts as figures
for a ‘politics of interiority’ (p. 212).
The paradigmatic potential of Woodard’s conception of the black male orifice
demonstrates the potential of this work to spur new approaches to the studies of slavery
and critical theory and signals productive future extensions to the epistemology outlined
here to include figures and persons not currently included. It would be fitting tribute to the
author himself to see readers from across the disciplines engage with the provocation and
cognizance of Vincent Woodard’s work.
Rachel van Duyvenbode
The University of Sheffield, UK
q 2015, Rachel van Duyvenbode
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2015.1073964
There's something ironic about someone taking something heretofore treated metaphorically, literally for the purposes of verbal masturbation about black men's orifices and homo eroticism, only to have black people interpret his interpretation literally and have have it become factual history in their minds.
Big edit:
Y'all missed the best part of this...
Who they are on the inside:
Black Nonbinary Owned Skate Company Startup organized by Kay Jovah
I got my first skateboard for my 13th birthday and I was hooked on the lifestyle… Kay Jovah needs your support for Black Nonbinary Owned Skate Company Startup
Fundraiser by Kay Jovah : Black Nonbinary Owned Skate Company Startup
archived 6 Aug 2020 21:47:12 UTC
Last edited:
