Seizing the Word makes available for the first time a comprehensive
reading of the work of W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), a pivotal
figure in the intellectual life of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century America. As a historian, journalist, novelist,
poet, and social and literary critic, this extraordinary man
profoundly influenced our understanding of the African-American
experience. Following his initial discussion of Du Bois's earliest
writing, Keith E. Byerman posits The Souls of Black Folk (1903) as
a master text that established the tropes of double-consciousness
and the veil for which Du Bois is known, and incorporated the
various genres through which he voiced his understanding of the
world. The remainder of the study discusses Du Bois's works as
elaborations of the master text within and against the contemporary
discourses on history, art, and self. Throughout Byerman examines
the connections between the personal and intellectual aspects of Du
Bois's life to reveal the intense engagement with moral and
ideological issues found even in texts that Du Bois represented as
"objective." At the same time, in order to present some of the
complexity and conflict that runs through Du Bois's work, Byerman
identifies the tensions and patterns in Du Bois's writing that
cross disciplines or genres. Instead of focusing on one aspect of
Du Bois's career, Seizing the Word attempts a more synthetic
approach, primarily by examining Du Bois in terms of contemporary
literary and cultural theory, most notably Lacan's Law of the
Father and Erikson's work on identity. The analysis is thus
informed by notions of language as power, discourse as site of
conflict, and self and race as cultural constructs rather than
unitary essences. In addition Byerman draws on much recent work in
minority discourse, feminist theory, and studies in autobiography.
According to Byerman, the guiding notion is that Du Bois's writing
is always engaged in a confrontation with an existing discourse
that Du Bois challenges through charges of arbitrariness and
corruption, deconstructs, and then rebuilds in his own terms.
Moreover, Byerman argues that Du Bois's career exhibits a clear
pattern of the interaction of the personal, the intellectual, and
the political. He repeatedly projects himself or those analogous to
himself as heroic figures in battle for truth and justice against
professional, personal, or ideological antagonists. All his major
work, regardless of discipline or genre, offers a vision of this
struggle.
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