“Safe in the Eye of the Storm”

A 20th Century Adaptation of Safe Slave Spaces in Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist

Abstract

This essay explores body and building interplay in The Intuitionist as a social commentary on the lack of safety for black women in contemporary cities. To illustrate the danger the black female body experiences, Whitehead adopts from the antebellum trope of safe slave spaces. The contemporary safe spaces in the novel mimic the inherent problem of antebellum spaces and therefore offer only limited protection. While the text’s solution proposes the black box, a space that decomposes the body into immateriality, an evaluation of the cost exacted on the female black body reveals that the black box is ultimately a damning critique of the lack of safety afforded black women in 20^th century urban space. Because the body is integral to the black experience, my reading identifies the text’s solution not as the one overtly presented, but one mentioned in passing: the taxi dance hall, a space that allows free movement of the black female body.