Abstract

This article aims at proposing a contemporary view on the condition of black marginality. Based on an investigation of diachronic representations of African-American marginality, the article claims that the equation of nation, culture, language and literature is nowadays an obsolete truth and further argues that, as the present-day mobility of perspective renders any centre relative, the correlative notions of centre and margin prove to be circumstantial and self-effacing. The article then suggests that, in the multiplicity of relative centres, any category of identification, such as race or ethnicity, constitutes just one choice among others and goes on to investigate whether this relativism of perspective could bring about the end of the essential black subject.