Conference Presentations by Ewa Adamkiewicz
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The life journeys of Sonny and his older brother, the two main characters of James Baldwin’s shor... more The life journeys of Sonny and his older brother, the two main characters of James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” from 1957, are very different from each other: Whereas Sonny dropped out of school, fell into drug addiction, and became incarcerated, his older brother became an algebra teacher, started a family, and moved into a nice apartment with his wife and children. These life journeys represent quite contrasting experiences of sociocultural and socioeconomic mobility and immobility in Harlem. However, the two protagonists share an ambivalent relation to their home, which is represented in the story as place of alienation, of hopelessness, of frustrations. What unites Sonny and his older brother is their individual attempt to get away from Harlem.
In his 1948 essay “Harlem is Nowhere” Ralph Ellison similarly describes Harlem as a space of ambivalence and as “the scene and symbol of” African American’s “perpetual alienation in the land of his birth.” The essay discusses personal and institutional conditions of mobility and confines for Black Americans in Harlem. On the one hand, the essay points to Harlem as a space of opportunities and of economic and cultural mobility. On the other hand, it deconstructs the idea of Harlem as ‘Black mecca’ by alluding to exclusions from the colorblind promise of the Declaration of Independence declaring “that all men are created equal.” Ellison describes in particular how Harlem is often talked about as a place of “nowhere,” as a place where people feel displaced, alienated, and unable to move. Thereby he describes tensions arising from dynamics of what I will refer to as (im)mobility, which represent an overarching juxtaposition he attempts to theorize in his essay.
In this conference paper I seek to investigate these theorizations of (im)mobility based on an analysis of Ellison's “Harlem is Nowhere” and apply his theorizations to James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” in order to analyze how notions of (im)mobility in the story shape the protagonists’ experiences. I argue that by analyzing and contextualizing Ellison’s theorization of (im)mobility, applied to “Sonny’s Blues,” we can get a glimpse into cultural involvement with questions of Black existence and experiences of being Black, which are central to the philosophical discourse of Black Existentialism. I define (im)mobility in this project as concept that theoretically connects notions of mobility—that is, the ability to move or be moved physically, metaphorically, or mentally—to the larger philosophical discourse that is concerned with thinking about Black existence and experiences of being Black. That is, the term combines a critical reflection of epistemology, thinking about being, with ideas about moving through this world, and grasps the opportunity to move between this juxtaposition of mobility and immobility.
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Papers by Ewa Adamkiewicz
aspeers: emerging voices in american studies, 2020
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aspeers: emerging voices in american studies
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Since the 1960s, the United States has experienced a rise in heritage and plantation tourism that... more Since the 1960s, the United States has experienced a rise in heritage and plantation tourism that plays a significant role in passing on cultural narratives and constructing memories. In cases of plantation tourism, some narratives are constructed that deny the history of slavery or mention it only as a side effect. This absence of critical engagement commodifies a specific type of nostalgia: white nostalgia. White nostalgia exemplifies an attempt to escape issues of race by downplaying their implications and rejecting the legacy of slavery. Plantation tourism sites tend to celebrate personal narratives depicting the antebellum South as a time and place of union and jauntiness despite the fact that their histories are inseparably connected with slavery. Refusing to engage in critical discussions on slavery, these historical plantation sites can be regarded as comfortable spaces of refuge longing for an uncritical and colorblind—yet unrealistic—past. In this essay, the commodificatio...
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Since the 1960s, the United States has experienced a rise in heritage and plantation tourism that... more Since the 1960s, the United States has experienced a rise in heritage and plantation tourism that plays a significant role in passing on cultural narratives and constructing memories. In cases of plantation tourism, some narratives are constructed that deny the history of slavery or mention it only as a side effect. This absence of critical engagement commodifies a specific type of nostalgia: white nostalgia. White nostalgia exemplifies an attempt to escape issues of race by downplaying their implications and rejecting the legacy of slavery. Plantation tourism sites tend to celebrate personal narratives depicting the antebellum South as a time and place of union and jauntiness despite the fact that their histories are inseparably connected with slavery. Refusing to engage in critical discussions on slavery, these historical plantation sites can be regarded as comfortable spaces of refuge longing for an uncritical and colorblind—yet unrealistic—past. In this essay, the commodification of white nostalgia will be investigated by looking at seven plantation websites, thereby examining how white nostalgia not only distorts the history of the antebellum South but how it sells history without racism and performs memory that distances itself from emotional legacies of slavery.
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Conference Presentations by Ewa Adamkiewicz
In his 1948 essay “Harlem is Nowhere” Ralph Ellison similarly describes Harlem as a space of ambivalence and as “the scene and symbol of” African American’s “perpetual alienation in the land of his birth.” The essay discusses personal and institutional conditions of mobility and confines for Black Americans in Harlem. On the one hand, the essay points to Harlem as a space of opportunities and of economic and cultural mobility. On the other hand, it deconstructs the idea of Harlem as ‘Black mecca’ by alluding to exclusions from the colorblind promise of the Declaration of Independence declaring “that all men are created equal.” Ellison describes in particular how Harlem is often talked about as a place of “nowhere,” as a place where people feel displaced, alienated, and unable to move. Thereby he describes tensions arising from dynamics of what I will refer to as (im)mobility, which represent an overarching juxtaposition he attempts to theorize in his essay.
In this conference paper I seek to investigate these theorizations of (im)mobility based on an analysis of Ellison's “Harlem is Nowhere” and apply his theorizations to James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” in order to analyze how notions of (im)mobility in the story shape the protagonists’ experiences. I argue that by analyzing and contextualizing Ellison’s theorization of (im)mobility, applied to “Sonny’s Blues,” we can get a glimpse into cultural involvement with questions of Black existence and experiences of being Black, which are central to the philosophical discourse of Black Existentialism. I define (im)mobility in this project as concept that theoretically connects notions of mobility—that is, the ability to move or be moved physically, metaphorically, or mentally—to the larger philosophical discourse that is concerned with thinking about Black existence and experiences of being Black. That is, the term combines a critical reflection of epistemology, thinking about being, with ideas about moving through this world, and grasps the opportunity to move between this juxtaposition of mobility and immobility.
Papers by Ewa Adamkiewicz
In his 1948 essay “Harlem is Nowhere” Ralph Ellison similarly describes Harlem as a space of ambivalence and as “the scene and symbol of” African American’s “perpetual alienation in the land of his birth.” The essay discusses personal and institutional conditions of mobility and confines for Black Americans in Harlem. On the one hand, the essay points to Harlem as a space of opportunities and of economic and cultural mobility. On the other hand, it deconstructs the idea of Harlem as ‘Black mecca’ by alluding to exclusions from the colorblind promise of the Declaration of Independence declaring “that all men are created equal.” Ellison describes in particular how Harlem is often talked about as a place of “nowhere,” as a place where people feel displaced, alienated, and unable to move. Thereby he describes tensions arising from dynamics of what I will refer to as (im)mobility, which represent an overarching juxtaposition he attempts to theorize in his essay.
In this conference paper I seek to investigate these theorizations of (im)mobility based on an analysis of Ellison's “Harlem is Nowhere” and apply his theorizations to James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” in order to analyze how notions of (im)mobility in the story shape the protagonists’ experiences. I argue that by analyzing and contextualizing Ellison’s theorization of (im)mobility, applied to “Sonny’s Blues,” we can get a glimpse into cultural involvement with questions of Black existence and experiences of being Black, which are central to the philosophical discourse of Black Existentialism. I define (im)mobility in this project as concept that theoretically connects notions of mobility—that is, the ability to move or be moved physically, metaphorically, or mentally—to the larger philosophical discourse that is concerned with thinking about Black existence and experiences of being Black. That is, the term combines a critical reflection of epistemology, thinking about being, with ideas about moving through this world, and grasps the opportunity to move between this juxtaposition of mobility and immobility.