Going underground : race, space, and the subterranean in the nineteenth-century United States /

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"First popularized by newspaper coverage of the Underground Railroad in the 1840s, the underground serves as a metaphor for subversive activity that remains central to our political vocabulary. In Going Underground, Lara Langer Cohen excavates the long history of this now-familiar idea while se...

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Bibliographic Details
Call Number:Libro Electrónico
Main Author: Cohen, Lara Langer (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:Inglés
Published: Durham : Duke University Press, 2023.
Subjects:
1800-1899
American literature > African American authors > History and criticism.
American literature > 19th century > History and criticism.
African Americans > Intellectual life > 19th century.
Literature and society > United States > History > 19th century.
Politics and literature > United States > History > 19th century.
African Americans > Race identity.
African Americans > History > 19th century.
LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General.
LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 19th Century.
African Americans.
African Americans > Intellectual life.
American literature.
American literature > African American authors.
Literature and society.
Politics and literature.
Race relations.
United States > Race relations > History > 19th century.
United States.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.
Literary criticism.
Online Access:Texto completo
Description
Summary:"First popularized by newspaper coverage of the Underground Railroad in the 1840s, the underground serves as a metaphor for subversive activity that remains central to our political vocabulary. In Going Underground, Lara Langer Cohen excavates the long history of this now-familiar idea while seeking out versions of the underground that got left behind along the way. Outlining how the underground's figurative sense first took shape through the associations of literal subterranean spaces with racialized Blackness, she examines a vibrant world of nineteenth-century US subterranean literature that includes Black radical manifestos, anarchist periodicals, sensationalist exposés of the urban underworld, manuals for sex magic, and the initiation rites of secret societies. Cohen finds that the undergrounds in this literature offer sites of political possibility that exceed the familiar framework of resistance, suggesting that nineteenth-century undergrounds can inspire new modes of world-making and world-breaking for a time when this world feels increasingly untenable."--
Physical Description:1 online resource (ix, 277 pages) : illustrations
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:1478024127
9781478024125

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