Abstract
This paper considers Claude McKay’s Romance in Marseille through two emerging fields of study: “Afropessimism,” and anthropological theories of the “liminal hotspot.” It suggests that McKay’s novel functions as a critique of positive Harlem Renaissance images of diasporic movement by highlighting how racial “blackness” functions as a system for rejecting people of colour from the benefits of modernity and sovereign rights-bearing status in an expanded temporal and spatial frame. To explore this hypothesis, it turns to new anthropological work on the liminal hotspot as a site of sustained, unresolved, transition, reading the affectivity of diaspora as a negative one in McKay’s work that places an unsustainable pressure on ritual and performative stylisations and renders them untenable as forms for cultivating a sovereign condition.
| Original language | English |
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| Journal | ENGLISH LANGUAGE NOTES |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Apr 2021 |