Signs and Cities
Black Literary Postmodernism
293 pages
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6 x 9
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© 2003
Signs and Cities is the first book to consider what it means to speak of a postmodern moment in African-American literature. Dubey argues that for African-American studies, postmodernity best names a period, beginning in the early 1970s, marked by acute disenchantment with the promises of urban modernity and of print literacy.
Dubey shows how black novelists from the last three decades have reconsidered the modern urban legacy and thus articulated a distinctly African-American strain of postmodernism. She argues that novelists such as Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Ishmael Reed, Sapphire, and John Edgar Wideman probe the disillusionment of urban modernity through repeated recourse to tropes of the book and scenes of reading and writing. Ultimately, she demonstrates that these writers view the book with profound ambivalence, construing it as an urban medium that cannot recapture the face-to-face communities assumed by oral and folk forms of expression.
Dubey shows how black novelists from the last three decades have reconsidered the modern urban legacy and thus articulated a distinctly African-American strain of postmodernism. She argues that novelists such as Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Ishmael Reed, Sapphire, and John Edgar Wideman probe the disillusionment of urban modernity through repeated recourse to tropes of the book and scenes of reading and writing. Ultimately, she demonstrates that these writers view the book with profound ambivalence, construing it as an urban medium that cannot recapture the face-to-face communities assumed by oral and folk forms of expression.
“Signs and Cities carefully and forcefully counters a nearly overwhelming tendency within contemporary African American literary culture for both novelists and critics to seek a locus of authentic blackness on which might be grounded a socially progressive cultural politics. Dubey has produced a work of criticism that will fill a crucial niche that most readers of African American literature knew existed but hadn’t yet found a way to articulate, let alone address.”
Phillip Brian Harper, New York University
“In Signs and Cities, Dubey challenges readers to reconsider the significance of literacy and the vernacular in African American literature and theory. She boldly explores key contradictions in black theoretical discourse and examines the connections between African American and postmodern cultural studies. Full of fresh and insightful readings of a wide variety of texts, Signs and Cities consolidates Dubey’s position as one of the most influential critics of both contemporary and African American literatures.”<Valerie Smith, Princeton University
“Signs and Cities is scrupulous in its scholarship, incisive in its criticism, and indispensable reading for everyone who cares about postmodernism, black literature, or American city life”<Jonathan Arac, Columbia University>
“An intelligent extension of work done by hooks and West on African American community, <I>Signs and Cities<I> also offers a critical rereading of Harvey’s and Jameson’s macrotheories of the postmodern around issues of race and urbanity. The questions Dubey explores are pivotal, and her answers should provide a benchmark for future considerations of race and authenticity.”—Choice
“Dubey delivers in Signs and Cities an ambitious remapping of contemporary African American literature that points beyond the vernacular paradigms . . . that have dominated the field.”—Scott Saul, Modern Language Quarterly
"Dubey's approach to the contemporary African American novel in Signs and Cities interweaves sharp critiques of the racial analyses of postmodern theory and urban studies with incisive accounts of persistent contradictions in contemporary African American criticism. Dubey's fresh interpretations proclaim the arrival of African American literary postmodernism as a new paradigm."
"Signs and Cities is an important contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of race and urbanism in the postmodern era. It is a work that should be read by all who have a vested interest in African American studies, literary criticism, or urban studies."
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Postmodern Moment in Black Literary and Cultural Studies
2. Books of Life: Postmodern Uses of Print Literacy
3. Urban Writing as Voyeurism: Literature in the Age of Spectacle
4. Reading as Listening: The Southern Folk Aesthetic
5. Reading as Mediation: Urbanity in the Age of Information
Afterword
Notes
Index
Introduction
1. The Postmodern Moment in Black Literary and Cultural Studies
2. Books of Life: Postmodern Uses of Print Literacy
3. Urban Writing as Voyeurism: Literature in the Age of Spectacle
4. Reading as Listening: The Southern Folk Aesthetic
5. Reading as Mediation: Urbanity in the Age of Information
Afterword
Notes
Index
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Literature and Literary Criticism: American and Canadian Literature
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