In 1990 Toni Morrison delivered the William E. Massey Lectures in the History of American Civilization and the series was revised and published in May 1992 as a slim volume titled Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. The three essays are metacritical explorations into the operations of whiteness and blackness in the literature of white writers in the United States. Toni Morrison takes the position that the existing literary criticism in the United States has provided incomplete readings of its canonical literature and, further, has concealed the politics informing the critical practice itself. She points especially to the politics of the universal, which, as she presents it in Playing in the Dark, ca

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Published 02 July 2004

Citation: Jimoh, A Yemisi. "Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination". The Literary Encyclopedia. 2 July 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2769, accessed 9 February 2010.]