Reaching for Opacity: Contemporary Afrodiasporic Literature

My dissertation engages anew with the theme of alterity across a range of contemporary Afrodiasporic literature. Over the last four decades, scholarly debates around the statues of “the other” have led to a number of theoretical approaches, which focus on questions of responsibility, recovery, and recuperation. In contrast, the diasporic literature explored in this dissertation defends a shared opacity as the ground of ethical life, thereby reimagining our relation to distant geographies, lost ancestries, broken inheritances, and shattered subjectivities. Offering readings of writers such as Edwidge Danticat, Fred Moten, M. NourbeSe Philip, Dionne Brand, and Claudia Rankine, this dissertation amplifies the call for a heightened awareness of the way opacity is woven into both our quotidian encounters and collective political life in a manner we cannot simply disown. Each chapter of this dissertation, then, focuses on an aporetic affective state—such as quietude, exhaustion, forgetfulness, and uncertainty—which deactivates or stands in the way of the reader’s desire for immediacy, transparency, and recuperation. In so doing, we discover a diasporic tradition that clamors not for recognition, but for an ethical collectivity grounded in the respect for the opaque other whom we welcome, without masterfully knowing or understanding.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D., English Language and Literature

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctor of Philosophy

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English Language and Literature

Grantor

Cornell University

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Olla, Nasrin

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Crawford, Margo
• Caruth, Cathy

• English literature
• Alterity
• Opacity
• African Diaspora
• Ethics
• African American studies

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7298/6wp1-vb68

Dc Identifier Other

ProQuest Submission ID: 11668
ProQuest Publication ID: 22615309

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ecommons.cornell.edu:1813/67748