"Yes, Pain, But What Else?: Racial Liberalism And Late-Style Morrison” with Melanie Abeygunawardana

"Yes, Pain, But What Else?: Racial Liberalism And Late-Style Morrison” with Melanie Abeygunawardana
November 15, 2022
10:30am-11:45am
Plimpton Room, Barker 133

This event is open to Harvard affiliates. 
Please reach out to Professor Thomas Conners at thomasconners@fas.harvard.edu for the required reading for this event.

Abstract: This essay argues that the dynamic between surface feeling and visceral flesh in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child (2015) exposes the affective logic of liberal racism. By veering away from strong emotions and the liberal subject, Morrison highlights the administratively "neutral" violence of the colorblind carceral state and the gendered subjects it unevenly targets.

Melanie Abeygunawardana is Brown University’s Pembroke Center 2021-22 Shauna M. Stark '76, P'10 Postdoctoral Fellow. She is a scholar of contemporary Asian American and African American literature working at the intersection of affect studies, critical race theory, and literary studies. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania with a certificate in Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies. Her current book project examines how Black and Asian authors in the United States engage liberalism’s failures to remediate structural racism in the post-Civil Rights era. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Representations, n+1, and the Routledge Companion to Queer Literary Studies.