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Modernist Writings and Religio-scientific DiscourseNegotiating the Racialized Body: Theories of Spiritual Evolution and the “American Race”

Modernist Writings and Religio-scientific Discourse: Negotiating the Racialized Body: Theories of... [The speaker of Jean Toomer’s long poem “The Blue Meridian” compares the condition of being trapped in the body to being condemned to “a prison system all of wardens” (Collected 59). In his autobiographical work “From Exile into Being,” Toomer pleads for “[a]n end of bondage to the body. An end of the cravings and prejudices that arise when people believe that they and others are their bodies. An end of imprisonment in the little self” (A Jean Toomer Reader 42). A profound mystical experience detailed in that work—in which Toomer claims to become astrally detached from his physical body for several days and to exist in an awareness of cosmic reality— ends with a tragic descent, a return to being “a man in prison… body-bound” (11.51). Startlingly, Toomer pushes the metaphor further in another autobiographical work, “Second River,” by invoking slavery: “Release a man from jail and the man remains caged within himself. Set him free from chattel and wage slavery and he is still imprisoned in himself by inward factors that limit consciousness, paralyze the deep right forces, and bind the spirit.”1 It is one of the contentions of this chapter that in their writings both Mina Loy and Jean Toomer conceptualize the body—specifically, the racialized body—as a kind of trap or jail from which the individual must escape. It is ultimately a psychological prison, however, that uses racial categories to sustain its seductive but illusory existence.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Modernist Writings and Religio-scientific DiscourseNegotiating the Racialized Body: Theories of Spiritual Evolution and the “American Race”

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2010
ISBN
978-1-349-38325-2
Pages
111 –157
DOI
10.1057/9780230106451_4
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[The speaker of Jean Toomer’s long poem “The Blue Meridian” compares the condition of being trapped in the body to being condemned to “a prison system all of wardens” (Collected 59). In his autobiographical work “From Exile into Being,” Toomer pleads for “[a]n end of bondage to the body. An end of the cravings and prejudices that arise when people believe that they and others are their bodies. An end of imprisonment in the little self” (A Jean Toomer Reader 42). A profound mystical experience detailed in that work—in which Toomer claims to become astrally detached from his physical body for several days and to exist in an awareness of cosmic reality— ends with a tragic descent, a return to being “a man in prison… body-bound” (11.51). Startlingly, Toomer pushes the metaphor further in another autobiographical work, “Second River,” by invoking slavery: “Release a man from jail and the man remains caged within himself. Set him free from chattel and wage slavery and he is still imprisoned in himself by inward factors that limit consciousness, paralyze the deep right forces, and bind the spirit.”1 It is one of the contentions of this chapter that in their writings both Mina Loy and Jean Toomer conceptualize the body—specifically, the racialized body—as a kind of trap or jail from which the individual must escape. It is ultimately a psychological prison, however, that uses racial categories to sustain its seductive but illusory existence.]

Published: Nov 24, 2015

Keywords: Racial Identity; Physical Body; Human Race; Mystical Experience; Evolutionary Progress

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