This book examines Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man through the lens of Black spirituality and Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) philosophy, revealing the novel's understudied spiritual and mystical dimensions. Johnson explores how Ellison utilizes fragments of mainstream cultural representations of the Black experience as raw elements for creating an interdisciplinary discourse on Black spirituality that draws from Kemetic ideas of chaos, formlessness, and movement. Through recovering anterior African philosophical traditions, the book furthers contemporary conversations about African American literary theory.

Radically analyzes the spiritual and metaphysical elements in Ellison's work often overlooked by traditional criticism Pairs African American literature and ancient Kemetic philosophy to demonstrate historical continuity in Black thought Offers new frameworks to understand invisibility and formlessness as spiritual metaphors in Ellison's work

Autorentext

Ikea Maria Johnson is Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature and African American Literature at Salve Regina University, USA.

Inhalt

Chapter 1.-Chaos, Materiality, and Black Spirituality.-Chapter 2.- The Factory Hospital and Technologies of Racial Dispossession.-Chapter 3.-Sonic Pathways to Ancestral Memory: Music as Kemetic Spiritual Practice.-Chapter 4.- Ha and the Architectures of Black Collective Life.-Chapter 5.-Rinehart and the Principle of Nun: Chaos as Creative Potentiality.-Chapter 6.-Synthesis and Implications: Kemetic Philosophy as Framework for African American Literary Criticism.-Bibliography.-Index.