In Blackness Is Burning: Civil Rights, Popular Culture, and the Problem of Recognition, TreaAndrea M. Russworm makes a timely and necessary intervention into the problematics of black representation in popular culture and the promise/possibility of equal recognition as citizens and fully participating subjects in the US project of democracy. Demonstrating an impressive command of psychoanalysis, Russworm brings clarity to how black representation and recognition function at the level of ideology. As such, her work compels scholars across many disciplines and fields, including African American studies, political science, film and media studies, feminist studies, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, to ponder how representation and recognition have complicated black political struggle and the responses to black political struggle in the United States from the Civil Rights Era to the present.
Recognizing certain continuities in the affective and psychological registers of how racial stories have been told across decades, Russworm aims to deploy...
University of California Press