Uses of the Eccentric: Reading the Political in African and African American Experimental Writing

This dissertation shows ways of reading twentieth and twenty-first century African and African American experimental writing beyond but not against references to topical social justice issues. Focusing primarily on novels but also analyzing essays, short stories, paratexts, and visual art, I argue that the works and practices of Carlene Hatcher Polite, Bessie Head, Renee Gladman, and Dambudzo Marechera, disrupt ways of reading Black literature that fixate on textual political commentary and, as a result, limit the awareness of the aesthetic, philosophical, and political features of this literature. I offer alternatives to such narrow ways of reading Black-authored literature in chapters addressing topics such as Polite’s depiction of desire, Head’s concept of softness, Gladman’s aesthetics, and Marechera’s question about literary uselessness. Ultimately, I contribute to enduring and recently renewed methodological conversations within African and African American cultural studies about the complex relationship between politics and literary aesthetics.