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Abstract
This article argues that blues memoirs are an example of life writing in the Anthropocene. Building on ecocritical scholarship which suggests that blues is a neglected source of environmental culture that reframes debates around race, economy, and culture, it asks how blues memoirs offer alternative perspectives on the Anthropocene.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the Humanities Program at the University of Helsinki for its generous support for this research and the Delta Symposium at Arkansas State University.
Notes
1 Gilroy, Darker Than Blue, 120.
2 Mizelle, Backwater Blues, 51.
3 Eakin, How Our Lives, 43.
4 Eakin, How Our Lives, 23.
5 Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography, 214.
6 Murray, “The Omni-Americans,” 58.
7 See McKittrick, “Plantation Futures”; Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene”; Lewis and Maslin, “Defining the Anthropocene”; Latour et al., “Anthropologists Are Talking”; and Moore et al., “Plantation Legacies.”
8 Latour et al., “Anthropologists Are Talking,” 6.
9 Latour et al., “Anthropologists Are Talking,” 6.
10 Woods, Development Arrested, 25.
11 Swanson et al., “Less Than One.”
12 Ellison, “Flamenco,” 25.
13 Moore, “A Few Words,” 3.
14 Hamilton, Defiant Earth, 52.
15 Pulido, “Racism and the Anthropocene,” 118.
16 Parrish, The Flood Year 1927, 7.
17 Parrish, The Flood Year 1927, 7.
18 Parrish, The Flood Year 1927, 126.
19 Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography, 215.
20 Mizelle, Backwater Blues, 30.
21 Povinelli, Geontologies, 30.
22 See Haywood, Negro Liberation; Harney and Moten, The Undercommons; and Baucom, Spectres of the Atlantic.
23 Gan et al., “Haunted Landscapes,” 1.
24 Ellison, “Richard Wright’s Blues,” 129.
25 Mizelle, Backwater Blues, 59.
26 Ruffin, Black on Earth, 136.
27 Ruffin, Black on Earth, 141–142.
28 Ruffin, Black on Earth, 26.
29 Grossberg, “On Postmodernism and Articulation.”
30 Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 81.
31 Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 67.
32 King. Blues All Around Me, 1.
33 Stein and Butler, “Musical Autobiographies,” 118.
34 Stein and Butler, “Musical Autobiographies,” 115.
35 King, Blues All Around Me, 2.
36 King, Blues All Around Me, 161.
37 King, Blues All Around Me, 70.
38 King, Blues All Around Me, 23.
39 Davis, Blues Legacies, 91.
40 King, Blues All Around Me, 9.
41 King, Blues All Around Me, 9.
42 King, Blues All Around Me, 57.
43 King, Blues All Around Me, 57.
44 Back, “How Blue?” 281.
45 King, Blues All Around Me, 35.
46 King, Blues All Around Me, 313.
47 Hamilton, “Theodicy.”
48 Barthes, Camera Lucida, 72.
49 Derrida, The Ear of the Other, 15.
50 Anderson, Autobiography, 78.
51 Handy, Father of the Blues, 150.
52 Dunkel, “W. C. Handy,” 133.
53 Ruffin, “Biophilia on Purpose,” 46.
54 Baker, Blues, 8.
55 Handy, Father of the Blues, 74.
56 Handy, Father of the Blues, 139.
57 Handy, Father of the Blues, 149.
58 Handy, Father of the Blues, 149.
59 West, “Black Intellectuals in America,” 84.
60 Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, 37.
61 Handy, Father of the Blues, 9.
62 Handy, Father of the Blues, 14.
63 Handy, Father of the Blues, 14.
64 Handy, Father of the Blues, ix.
65 Dunkel, “W. C. Handy,” 133.
66 Ruffin, “Biophilia on Purpose,” 46.
67 Dixon and Snowden, I Am the Blues, 1.
68 Dixon and Snowden, I Am the Blues, 36.
69 Dixon and Snowden, I Am the Blues, 40.
70 Dixon and Snowden, I Am the Blues, 3.
71 Dixon and Snowden, I Am the Blues, 3.
72 Gilroy, Darker Than Blue, 141.
73 Guy, When I Left Home, 84.
74 Amner, American Heritage Dictionary, 96.
75 Guy, When I Left Home, 4.
76 Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 34.
77 Dixon and Snowden, I Am the Blues, 214.
78 Dixon and Snowden, I Am the Blues, 214.
79 Dixon and Snowden, I Am the Blues, 214.
80 Dixon and Snowden, I Am the Blues, 2.
81 Gordon, What Fanon Said, 89.
82 Dixon and Snowden, I Am the Blues, 38.
83 Dixon and Snowden, I Am the Blues, 224.
84 Adams, “Become Ocean.”
85 Freud, “Civilization and Its Discontents,” 723.
86 Handy, Father of the Blues, 100.
87 Woodruff, American Congo, 3.
88 Beckert, Empire of Cotton, 274–311.
89 Handy, Father of the Blues, 99.