On Black Men

by David Marriott

Overview

Mutilated, dying, or dead, black men play a role in the psychic life of culture. From national dreams to media fantasies, there is a persistent imagining of what black men must be. This book explores the legacy of that role, particularly its violent effect on how black men have learned to see themselves and one another. David Marriott draws upon popular culture, ranging from lynching photographs to current Hollywood film, as well as the ideas of key thinkers, including Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and John Edgar Wideman, to reveal a vicious pantomime of unvarying reification and compulsive fascination, of whites looking at themselves through images of black desolation, and of blacks dispossessed by that process.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231122276
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	10/04/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	927,424
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David Marriott is lecturer in English at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.

Table of Contents

	List of Illustrations	vi
	Foreword	vii
	Acknowledgements	xvi
I	'I'm gonna borrer me a Kodak': Photography and Lynching	1
II	'Murderous Appetites': Photography and Fantasy	23
III	Black Types	43
IV	Frantz Fanon's War	66
V	Father Stories	95
	Afterword: Either/Or	117
	Works Cited	125
	Index	131

What People are Saying About This

Alan Sinfield

Provocative and original.... A must-read.

— Alan Sinfield, University of Sussex

Hazel Carby

A powerful and searing testimony of the fantasies shaping the lives of black men.

— Hazel Carby, Yale University

Editorial Reviews

Marriott (literature scholar, academic affiliation not provided) offers five elegantly written, insightful essays exploring the symbolic code of black men in the psychic life of culture. Themes examined include photography and lynching; photography and fantasies of black men; black types/stereotypes; an account of Frantz Fanon, a disillusioned black Frenchman who fought in WWII but found himself despised by the French he helped liberate; and stories of black fatherhood. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

A powerful and searing testimony of the fantasies shaping the lives of black men. Marriott's book is invaluable and fills a great need.

Hazel Carby

On Black Men is a haunting, impressive book. With searing honesty, powerful analysis, and justified anger, Marriott tackles many of the fantasies that have fuelled racial hatred in Britain and the United States... Not every reader will agree with Marriott's arguments, but few will read his chapters on lynching and contemporary gang violence without being moved to question what, over time, has hardened into "home truth". On Black Men invites us to give up the cliches and to focus instead on the fantasies that spawned them. This book deserves a very wide audience.

Christopher Lane

On Black Men is a provocative, and original study.

Alan Sinfield