--- product_id: 40451526 title: "In the Wake: On Blackness and Being" price: "150.38 DT" currency: TND in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.tn/products/40451526-in-the-wake-on-blackness-and-being store_origin: TN region: Tunisia --- # In the Wake: On Blackness and Being **Price:** 150.38 DT **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** In the Wake: On Blackness and Being - **How much does it cost?** 150.38 DT with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.tn](https://www.desertcart.tn/products/40451526-in-the-wake-on-blackness-and-being) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake." Activating multiple registers of "wake"—the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness—Sharpe illustrates how Black lives are swept up and animated by the afterlives of slavery, and she delineates what survives despite such insistent violence and negation. Initiating and describing a theory and method of reading the metaphors and materiality of "the wake," "the ship," "the hold," and "the weather," Sharpe shows how the sign of the slave ship marks and haunts contemporary Black life in the diaspora and how the specter of the hold produces conditions of containment, regulation, and punishment, but also something in excess of them. In the weather, Sharpe situates anti-Blackness and white supremacy as the total climate that produces premature Black death as normative. Formulating the wake and "wake work" as sites of artistic production, resistance, consciousness, and possibility for living in diaspora, In the Wake offers a way forward. Review: One of the most important books of its time--searing, eloquent, impeccable. - In the Wake stands at the thematic and methodological crossroads of Black literary, visual and queer studies and philosophy. Its evocations are so haunting and yet so seared into present/time, that they parallel Coltrane, part a complex and lush lyric/line that one can follow if focused, partly a brilliant engagement that’s operating just at the outer edges of one’s intellectual reach because of the ways in which it plays/with inherited forms that aren’t capacious enough to contain their subjects and expression. Like Coltrane, Sharpe plays and fractures form in the wake of Black life, insisted upon, as she puts it, in the face of imminent and immanent Black death and “in the residence time” inhabited by our ghosts and our Gods. In the Wake makes path-breaking methodological interventions, arguing not for inter- or multi-disciplinarity, but asserting, rather, that “we must become undisciplined.” Sharpe addresses the making and unmaking of (narrative, memory-laden, cross-temporal) afterlives of enslavement marked by continuous and connected traumas and argues for a “new mode and method,” one she models to luminous effect. Sharpe’s curatorial practice is both so broad in Diasporic time and place and so precise in the rich and resonant tones of the archival notes she plays, that it both engages multiple (visual, performance, print, family) archives and moves past them to sit with the quotidian ruptures that were lodged but (so often) not logged. Sharpe’s thinking about “The Ship: the Trans* Atlantic” is a Diasporic and cross-disciplinary tour de force in a book that itself is a hallmark achievement. Sharpe manages to give voice to that which is beyond language, beyond border and nation, beyond human worth, beyond a grammar that can contain this expression. The work stuns in how it holds so many ideas and objects of analysis together with such eloquence and force. Christina Sharpe accomplishes a rare thing: it is beautifully, lushly written academic prose that’s impeccably curated, deeply historical, and also both philosophically precise and evocative. This is a rare feat in a field that returns to her subject again and again because language and form are not expansive enough to hold (to invoke her term) the questions such an existential dilemma as Black diasporic wakefulness. Such a signal achievement will be read and taught widely. Review: Nourishing - This is a book for the intellect, the spirit, and the soul. It' a challenging and liberating read. Christina Sharpe shares a gift. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #47,072 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #10 in Black & African American Literary Criticism (Books) #137 in African American Demographic Studies (Books) #159 in Black & African American Biographies | | Customer Reviews | 4.8 out of 5 stars 317 Reviews | ## Images ![In the Wake: On Blackness and Being - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81LSmfH1x+L.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ One of the most important books of its time--searing, eloquent, impeccable. *by P***N on January 19, 2017* In the Wake stands at the thematic and methodological crossroads of Black literary, visual and queer studies and philosophy. Its evocations are so haunting and yet so seared into present/time, that they parallel Coltrane, part a complex and lush lyric/line that one can follow if focused, partly a brilliant engagement that’s operating just at the outer edges of one’s intellectual reach because of the ways in which it plays/with inherited forms that aren’t capacious enough to contain their subjects and expression. Like Coltrane, Sharpe plays and fractures form in the wake of Black life, insisted upon, as she puts it, in the face of imminent and immanent Black death and “in the residence time” inhabited by our ghosts and our Gods. In the Wake makes path-breaking methodological interventions, arguing not for inter- or multi-disciplinarity, but asserting, rather, that “we must become undisciplined.” Sharpe addresses the making and unmaking of (narrative, memory-laden, cross-temporal) afterlives of enslavement marked by continuous and connected traumas and argues for a “new mode and method,” one she models to luminous effect. Sharpe’s curatorial practice is both so broad in Diasporic time and place and so precise in the rich and resonant tones of the archival notes she plays, that it both engages multiple (visual, performance, print, family) archives and moves past them to sit with the quotidian ruptures that were lodged but (so often) not logged. Sharpe’s thinking about “The Ship: the Trans* Atlantic” is a Diasporic and cross-disciplinary tour de force in a book that itself is a hallmark achievement. Sharpe manages to give voice to that which is beyond language, beyond border and nation, beyond human worth, beyond a grammar that can contain this expression. The work stuns in how it holds so many ideas and objects of analysis together with such eloquence and force. Christina Sharpe accomplishes a rare thing: it is beautifully, lushly written academic prose that’s impeccably curated, deeply historical, and also both philosophically precise and evocative. This is a rare feat in a field that returns to her subject again and again because language and form are not expansive enough to hold (to invoke her term) the questions such an existential dilemma as Black diasporic wakefulness. Such a signal achievement will be read and taught widely. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nourishing *by K***R on May 20, 2023* This is a book for the intellect, the spirit, and the soul. It' a challenging and liberating read. Christina Sharpe shares a gift. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Poignant and Timely Gift *by A***R on June 27, 2017* Sharpe's In the Wake accomplishes the necessary and difficult work of "sitting in the room with history" and of developing a useful and novel methodology for practicing the same ('wake work'). Working through literary, visual, and personal texts, she develops and theorizes four interrelated terms ("the wake"; "the ship"; "the hold"; and "the weather") for describing and engaging facets of Black life. Both accessible and theoretically rigorous, the care with which Sharpe set down these words comes through with every sentence. It is truly a gift. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.tn/products/40451526-in-the-wake-on-blackness-and-being](https://www.desertcart.tn/products/40451526-in-the-wake-on-blackness-and-being) --- *Product available on Desertcart Tunisia* *Store origin: TN* *Last updated: 2026-07-06*