The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and CultureColumbia University Press, 1997 - 289 pages While modern critics have tended to approach black and white perspectives of race in America by considering the two sides separately, Cassuto's timely book brings the two together, reconstructing a dialogue between objectifiers (American Puritans, slaveowners) and objectifieds (Native Americans, slaves). The focus is on literature - from Puritan captivity accounts, fugitive slave narratives, and proslavery fiction to the work of writers such as Melville, Stowe, Douglass, and their contemporaries - but Cassuto also ranges from colonial prodigies to nineteenth-century freak shows and Sambo stereotyping, from horror movies to the Holocaust Museum. The Inhuman Race challenges not so much what we think as the way we think: the way we organize information - and people - into categories. Cassuto thus links the imagination and events of colonial and antebellum Americans directly to our own troubled times. |
Other editions - View all
The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture Leonard Cassuto Limited preview - 1997 |
The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture Leonard Cassuto No preview available - 1997 |
Common terms and phrases
abolitionism abolitionist adventure stories American Puritans American slave analysis animal anomaly antebellum antislavery argues argument Babo becomes belief Benito Cereno Bhabha Bogdan Brown cannibalism captivity narrative chapter Christian Civil Clotel colonial Cotton Mather Covey cultural Delano describes dialectic effort England enslaved escape example eyes Fanon fear fiction freak show Frederick Douglass Fredrickson freedom fugitive slave narrative genre happy slave Hegel's Herman Melville human objectification ideology Indians Ishmael liminal literary literature master master-slave master-slave dialectic Mather Melville's Moby-Dick monsters narrator native Negro nonhuman novel perception person plantation political problem prodigies proslavery Puritan Queequeg race racial freaks racial grotesque racial objectification rebellion resistance result rhetorical Rowlandson Sambo stereotype savage says slave's humanity slaveholders slaveowners slavery social society Southern Stowe Stowe's strategy Sundquist tattooed tension thing tion Tommo Topsy transformation Typee Uncle Tom's Cabin William William Wells Brown