Sie befinden Sich nicht im Netzwerk der Universität Paderborn. Der Zugriff auf elektronische Ressourcen ist gegebenenfalls nur via VPN oder Shibboleth (DFN-AAI) möglich. mehr Informationen...
Walcott's "Blues" and the Discourse of Black Male Existence
Ist Teil von
Journal of West Indian literature, 2012-11, Vol.21 (1/2), p.23-41
Ort / Verlag
Barbados: Departments of Literatures in English, University of the West Indies
Erscheinungsjahr
2012
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Alma/SFX Local Collection
Beschreibungen/Notizen
This essay is a discussion of black male belonging in the mid to late 20th century black diaspora, through the site of West Indian poetry, African-American poetry and through the poetics of the African-American art form of the blues. The essay brings together Derek Walcott's 1969 "Blues" and Langston Hughes' 1967 "Backlash Blues," later popularised through a song of the same title, performed by the artiste, Nina Simone. The argument the essay makes is that Walcott's West Indian appropriation of the blues to communicate the phenomenon of black male belonging in the US serves to caution the black community (in the US and elsewhere) against the problem of unrestrained self-indulgence. Although Walcott graphically reveals the outcome of the "blues" to which Hughes and Simone refer, his deployment of it undermines the Afro-American mobilisation and application of the art form and its aesthetics as political weapon. Walcott uses the black male body both as victim/perpetrator of violence in the US and as a symbol of the sexual outsider.