Book contents
- African American Literature in Transition, 1920–1930
- African American Literature in Transition
- African American Literature in Transition, 1920–1930
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology of Historical Events, People, and Publications, 1920–1930
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Habitus, Sound, Fashion
- Part II Space
- Chapter 4 Going Dutch
- Chapter 5 The Unmaking of the New Negro Mecca
- Chapter 6 Subversions of Boasian Anthropology in Zora Neale Hurston’s Great Migration Fiction and Ethnography
- Chapter 7 W. E. B. Du Bois and the Fluid Subject
- Part III Uplift Renewed
- Part IV Serial Reading
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 7 - W. E. B. Du Bois and the Fluid Subject
Dark Princess and the Splendid Transnational in the Harlem Renaissance
from Part II - Space
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2022
- African American Literature in Transition, 1920–1930
- African American Literature in Transition
- African American Literature in Transition, 1920–1930
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology of Historical Events, People, and Publications, 1920–1930
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Habitus, Sound, Fashion
- Part II Space
- Chapter 4 Going Dutch
- Chapter 5 The Unmaking of the New Negro Mecca
- Chapter 6 Subversions of Boasian Anthropology in Zora Neale Hurston’s Great Migration Fiction and Ethnography
- Chapter 7 W. E. B. Du Bois and the Fluid Subject
- Part III Uplift Renewed
- Part IV Serial Reading
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter argues that in the 1920s, Du Bois’s conception of racial solidarity transitions from being focused upon the US toward the cosmopolitan, transnational, and diasporic. The chapter studies transformations and shifts in Du Bois’s racial theories during this decade. Valdez draws upon John Bryant’s notion of the “fluid text” to interpret Du Bois’s essays as forms of drafting and revising core ideals. Reading the essays published in Du Bois’s collection Darkwater (1920), the essay “The Negro Mind Reaches Out” (1925), and the novel Dark Princess: A Romance (1928), Valdez develops the idea of the “splendid transnational,” a future-oriented program of combating racism and oppression throughout the black diaspora.
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- African American Literature in Transition, 1920–1930 , pp. 177 - 196Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022