AnteBody: Blackmaternal Flesh and the Problem of the Human in American Literature, 1850-Present posits the blackmaternal as a set of communal practices that disavow inclusion in the category of the human. This dissertation departs from traditional approaches to the black mother as a female reproductive subject, and it, instead, re-envisions the blackmaternal as an ongoing aesthetic performance that defies, and exceeds, performances of gender normativity. In so doing, AnteBody unsettles perceptions of who can enact blackmaternity by reframing our understanding of such practices to include a diverse array of figures. Identifying the blackmaternal as a central concern of U.S. American literature, this dissertation traces the development and conceptual changes of blackmaternity from its representation as a singular female figure to its communal performance of gender nonspecific care practices.
Proffering a literary theory of the blackmaternal, AnteBody exposes the violent conditions under which the (un)gendering process of the black body becomes the catalyst for the potential of the flesh. The project illumines the limitations of humanism through its careful examination of the blackmaternal in the literary works of Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Octavia E. Butler. Situated within emerging conversations in Black Aliveness Studies—and Black Literary Studies more broadly—AnteBody calls attention to the ways in which black sentient being is organized around, and carried out by, [a] metaphysics of the flesh that exceeds compatibility with the praxis of being human.