Greetings Everyone!
My new
book, Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft: White Fragility in the Weird
Tales, was recently published by Bloomsbury, the foremost academic
publisher in the United States and in the United Kingdom!
I hope
that all of you will pick up a copy; you can order it online from the
publishers and, of course, from Amazon and other online booksellers around the
world. The book is also available in
bookstores here in the states as well as overseas.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/horror-as-racism-in-h-p-lovecraft-9798765107690/
In two of
his earliest poems, “De Triumpho Naturae” (1905) and “On the Creation of
Niggers”(1912), Lovecraft upends Darwin’s theory of evolution by proposing a
theory of polygenesis, arguing that humans, including the superior types of
humans—white Anglo Saxons—evolved from some type of highly developed quadruped,
complete with pointed ears and a tail, like its distant cousin the monkey. However, Blacks evolved from different, lower
quadrupeds. Thus, since white
Anglo-Saxons and Blacks are not descended from the same quadrupeds, they are
separate species, and therefore, Blacks should not be considered as human
beings.
You can read all about Lovecraft’s theory of polygenesis in Horror as Racism in H. P. Lovecraft, and how Lovecraft uses this theory to insist that Blacks, like monkeys and apes, must be kept separate from humans—they represent, in fact, a threat to the purity of the white race.
JLS
No comments:
Post a Comment