ABSTRACT
Focusing specifically on the works of Toi Derricotte, Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, Adrian Piper, Judy Scales-Trent, and Gregory Howard Williams, this chapter uses Jacques Derrida's concept of hauntology to consider how these writers engage spectral temporality in order to combat the surveillance and de jure segregation of Black life in the early- and mid-twentieth century. The authors write against the literary figure of the tragic mulatto and the passing narrative as they insist upon visibility in what has been an abject space—subjectivity in abjection—and ultimately reclaim themselves and their familial histories through textual representation.
