Outsider Citizens examines a foundational moment in the writing of race, gender, and sexuality--the decade after 1945, when Richard Wright, Simone de Beauvoir, and others sought to adapt existentialism and psychoanalysis to the representation of...
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Outsider Citizens examines a foundational moment in the writing of race, gender, and sexuality--the decade after 1945, when Richard Wright, Simone de Beauvoir, and others sought to adapt existentialism and psychoanalysis to the representation of newly emerging public identities. Relyea offers the first book-length study bringing together Wright and Beauvoir to reveal their common sources and concerns. Relyea's discussion begins with Native Son and then examines Wright's postwar exile in France and his engagement with existentialism and psychoanalysis in The Outsider. Beauvoir met W
Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgments; Chapter One Introduction: Postwar Theories of Identity; Chapter Two Internalizing the White Gaze: The Problem of Violence in Native Son; Chapter Three Sociology and Philosophy: An American Dilemma and the Making of The Second Sex; Chapter Four The Vanguard of Modernity: Richard Wright's The Outsider; Chapter Five Sexual Dialogics: Psychoanalysis and The Second Sex; Chapter Six Identity Undone: James Baldwin and the Destiny of America; Notes; Bibliography; Index