Psychic Hold of Slavery

SOYICA DIGGS COLBERT is an associate professor of African American studies and theater and performance studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She is the author of The African American Theatrical Body: Reception, Performance and the Stage. ROBERT J. PATTERSON is an associate professor of African American studies and English at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he also directs the African American Studies program. He is the author of Exodus Politics: Civil Rights and Leadership in African American Literature and Culture. AIDA LEVY-HUSSEN is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of the forthcoming book, How To Read African American Literature: Post–Civil Rights Fiction and the Task of Interpretation.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: “Do You Want to Be Well?”Soyica Diggs ColbertChapter 1: 12 Years a What?: Slavery, Representation, and Black Cultural Politics in 12 Years a SlaveRobert J. PattersonChapter 2: The Fruit of Abolition: Discontinuity and Difference in Terrance Hayes’s “The Avocado”Douglas A. Jones Jr.Chapter 3: Black Time: Slavery, Metaphysics, and the Logic of WellnessCalvin WarrenChapter 4: The Inside Turned Out Architecture of the Post-Neo-Slave NarrativeMargo Natalie CrawfordChapter 5: Memwa se paswa: Sifting the Slave Past in HaitiRÉgine Michelle Jean-CharlesChapter 6: Staging Social Death: Alienation and Embodiment in Aishah Rahman’s Unfinished WomenGerShun AvilezChapter 7: Dancing with Death: Spike Lee’s BamboozledSoyica Diggs ColbertChapter 8: Laughing to Keep from Crying: Dave Chappelle’s Self-Exploration with “The Nigger Pixie”Brandon J. ManningChapter 9: The Cartoonal SlaveMichael ChaneyChapter 10: Trauma and the Historical Turn in Black Literary DiscourseAida Levy-HussenConclusion: Black Lives Matter, Except When They Don’t: Why Slavery’s Psychic Hold MattersRobert J. PattersonSelected BibliographyNotes on ContributorsIndex

"Suggesting that even the violence against blacks that fueled the Black Lives Matter movement is on the slavery continuum, this volume argues that slavery continues to shape the US's fundamental psychology and its systemic racial hierarchy. A postracial US is yet to come ... Recommended" (Choice) "This collection is a timely, fascinating, often brilliant scholarly intervention in matters central both to the range of scholars and artists whose work it discusses and to the field of Black Studies." - Michael Awkward (author of Philadelphia Freedoms: Black American Trauma, Memory & Culture after King) "These intelligent and provocative essays wonderfully show us what a rich array of art forms (films, literature, television, and cartoons) have to say about what slavery has done and undone." - Ashraf H. A. Rushdy (author of The End of American Lynching and A Guilted Age: Apologies for the Past) "[The Psychic Hold of Slavery] is well written and well organized. The proficiency and writing style of the contributors serves to reassure readers that they are among knowledgeable experts in the field… This is a must read book for any African American Studies course." (Horizons in Humanities and Social Sciences)