The Black Shoals

Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies

In The Black Shoals Tiffany Lethabo King uses the shoal - an offshore geologic formation that is neither land nor sea - as metaphor, mode of critique, and methodology to theorize the encounter between Black studies and Native studies. King conceptualizes the shoal as a space where Black and Native literary traditions, politics, theory, critique, and art meet in productive, shifting, and contentious ways. These interactions, which often foreground Black and Native discourses of conquest and critiques of humanism, offer alternative insights into understanding how slavery, anti-Blackness, and Indigenous genocide structure white supremacy. Among texts and topics, King examines 18th-century British mappings of humanness, Nativeness, and Blackness; Black feminist depictions of Black and Native erotics; Black fungibility as a critique of discourses of labor exploitation; and Black art that rewrites conceptions of the human. In outlining the convergences and disjunctions between Black and Native thought and aesthetics, King identifies the potential to create new epistemologies, lines of critical inquiry, and creative practices.

©2019 Duke University Press (P)2022 Audible, Inc.

Evocative work; dodgy pronunciation

The constant mispronunciation of philosopher names and academic terminology was extremely distracting.

Better to just read the book yourself.

Do not listen if you have scholarly interest in this book.

The book is an excellent contribution to the fields of Black and Indigenous Studies, but the reading of it was very poor. The reader mispronounced so many words, put pauses in unnecessary places, and had an odd cadence that made it difficult to follow the train of thought in the writing.