The Lexicon · Genealogy · 19th Century

DU BOIS, W.E.B.

1868–1963

Double Consciousness (The Sacrament and the Inventory)

Du Bois: the Black American sees themselves through their own eyes and through the eyes of a society that despises them. The split is the condition. Limbo's central sentence — Subject is a sacrament. You are inventory. — is the double consciousness of every artist on every platform. The applicant sees themselves as sacrament and is seen as inventory. We name the split. Naming is not solving. Naming is part of the labor.

Kin

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