In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era ISBN: 9780199851812 Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited Subjects: Political Science;
Iton (Solidarity Blues) examines the link between black popular culture and black politics, the symbiosis between creative artist and political activist in the post-civil rights era. From Cold War era artists and activists (Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry) to Amiri Baraka; from Ella Fitzgerald to Erykah Badu; Dizzy Gillespie to Nas; Richard Pryor to Chris Rock--Iton traces cultural and political developments, engaging with novelists, filmmakers, musicians, standup comedians and visual artists. Always attentive to the dynamics of sexuality, gender and race roles, Iton's work possesses the depth of wide reading in modernist theory and the breadth of wide-open eyes and ears for the popular. Gargantuan sentences coupled with current critical jargon may deter the general reader, but specialists in popular culture, African-American studies, political science and American studies will find Iton's argument that "political intention adheres to every cultural production" challenging, illuminating and groundbreaking. For both lay reader and academician, it may well "compel a revision of our notions of the political." (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Richard Iton is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Northwestern University. He is the winner of the 2009 Ralph Bunche Award for In Search of the Black Fantastic, and the 2001 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award and 2000 Best Book Award on the Social, Cultural, and Ideological Construction of Race from the American Political Science Association for Solidarity Blues: Race, Culture, and the American Left .
