Racial Discourse and Cosmopolitanism in Twentieth-Century African American...

Racial Discourse and Cosmopolitanism in Twentieth-Century African American WritingAuthor(s): Tania Friedel\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge\nISBN-13: 9780415543088, 978-0415543088\nSynopsis\nThis book engages cosmopolitanisma critical mode which moves beyond cultural pluralism by simultaneously privileging difference and commonalityin order to examine its particular deployment in the work of several African American writers. Deeply influenced and inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois, the writers closely examined in this studyJean Toomer, Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes and Albert Murrayhave advanced cosmopolitanism to meet its own theoretical principals in the contested arena of racial discourse while remaining integral figures in a larger tradition of cosmopolitan thought. Rather than become mired in fixed categorical distinctions, their cosmopolitan perspective values the pluralist belief in the distinctiveness of different cultural.