Legal fictions : constituting race, composing literature
Type
Book
Authors
ISBN 10
0822355957
ISBN 13
9780822355953
Category
American Law
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Publication Year
2014
Publisher
Pages
xv, 158 pages
Subject
Literature
Tags
Abstract
"In Legal Fictions, Karla FC Holloway both argues that U.S. racial identity is the creation of U.S. law and demonstrates how black authors of literary fiction have engaged with the law's constructions of race since the era of slavery. Exploring the resonance between U.S. literature and U.S. jurisprudence, Holloway reveals Toni Morrison's Beloved and Charles Johnson's Middle Passage as stories about personhood and property, David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as structured by evidence law, and Nella Larsen's Passing as intimately related to contract law."--Publisher description.
Description
Contents:
Introduction : Bound by law : Intimate intersectionalities: scalar recollections ; Public fictions, private facts ; Simile as precedent ; Property, contract, and evidentiary values -- The claims of property: on being and belonging : The capital in question ; Imagined liberalism ; Mapping racial reason ; Being in place: landscape, never inscape -- Bodies as evidence (of things not seen) : Secondhand tales and hearsay ; Black legibility: Can I get a witness? ; Trying to read me -- Composing contract : "A novel-like tenor" : Passing and protection ; A secluded colored neighborhood -- Epilogue : When and where "All the dark-glass boys" enter : A contagion of madness.
Introduction : Bound by law : Intimate intersectionalities: scalar recollections ; Public fictions, private facts ; Simile as precedent ; Property, contract, and evidentiary values -- The claims of property: on being and belonging : The capital in question ; Imagined liberalism ; Mapping racial reason ; Being in place: landscape, never inscape -- Bodies as evidence (of things not seen) : Secondhand tales and hearsay ; Black legibility: Can I get a witness? ; Trying to read me -- Composing contract : "A novel-like tenor" : Passing and protection ; A secluded colored neighborhood -- Epilogue : When and where "All the dark-glass boys" enter : A contagion of madness.
Biblio Notes
Includes bibliographical references (pages 139-144) and index.
Number of Copies
1
