Chapter 13 - Black Male Studies and Contemporary African American Writing

Summary

The recent work of philosopher Tommy J. Curry in the nascent field of Black Male Studies has brought rigorous attention to racialized misandry, framing Black maleness as a site of racial-sexual victimhood, vulnerability, and violence. This essay deploys Curry’s framework of “the man-not” in order to examine how anti-Black misandry is explored in Ishmael Reed’s Reckless Eyeballing (1986) and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy: An American Memoir (2018). Reed and Laymon each thematize anti-Blackness in the contemporary period specifically through the ontology of anti-Black misandry. The essay outlines the possibilities of a counter-ontological surplus within the abjection of Black manhood, which Laymon describes as the “abundance” designated by Black maleness in an anti-Black world. The essay concludes with a discussion of how Black Male Studies may be understood within recent thought trends regarding Black sexuality and gender studies, as well as within the Ontological Turn in Black Studies.