Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial’ Self

In this insightful volume, Gates insists that critics focus on the most repressed element of African-American criticism–the language of the text. Incorporating the theoretical insights of critics such as Bakhtin, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, and Bloom, he explores the work of a wide range of African-American writers from Phillis Wheatley to Ishmael Reed and Alice Walker.