Literatures of the United States: Hegemonic Propriety and Postracial Racialization
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ABSTRACT Title of Document: INAPPROPRIATE(D) LITERATURES OF THE UNITED STATES: HEGEMONIC PROPRIETY AND POSTRACIAL RACIALIZATION Amanda Dykema, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Directed By: Professor Sangeeta Ray, English Department The rise of multiculturalism and its impact on the U.S. academy reached its peak at the end of the twentieth century. Since then the rhetoric of liberal multiculturalism that valorized diversity has largely given way to a neoliberal multiculturalism that celebrates postracialism as a means to dismantle the institutional programs and critical discourses that took racial difference as their starting point. Yet the racially inflected demarcations between positions of privilege and positions of stigma that have historically characterized the U.S. nation-state remain intact. In this context, how do we read race in contemporary literature by U.S. ethnic writers when celebrations of colorblindness dominate public discourse? As a repository for what Foucault has called subjugated knowledges, minoritized literatures hold the potential to de-naturalize the neoliberal status quo, critique the academic discourse that surrounds it, and engage with the political economy within which it is produced. This project argues that the institutional work of disciplining minority subjects— once openly performed by racialization in a way no longer possible under neoliberal multiculturalism—has been continued in part by political, social, and economic forces I group under the umbrella term propriety. I expose how the designation “appropriate” becomes a prerequisite for political recognition and representation, analyzing representative political texts that are fundamental to contemporary definitions of minority subjects alongside national and literary-critical genealogies of discourses of difference. I argue that attachments to values and forms explicitly identified as “appropriate” conceal and maintain race-based hierarchies characteristic of U.S. national identity formation. In response, I theorize inappropriateness as a category of political and literary representation for exploring questions of visibility and enfranchisement central to the national narrative of the United States. Inappropriateness is a political and aesthetic movement that deploys subjects and forms often denounced as improper to the contemporary era. Inappropriate aesthetic works are those which attempt to distinguish difference from “diversity,” influence minority subject formation, and shape knowledge production in ways that are counter to the objectives of neoliberal multiculturalism. Four chapters establish a taxonomy of the ways inappropriateness operates: formally, corporeally, nationally, and historically. INAPPROPRIATE(D) LITERATURES OF THE UNITED STATES: HEGEMONIC PROPRIETY AND POSTRACIAL RACIALIZATION By Amanda Michelle Dykema Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Advisory Committee: Professor Sangeeta Ray, Chair Professor Kandice Chuh Professor Randy Ontiveros Professor Zita Nunes Professor Christina Hanhardt, Dean’s Representative © Copyright by Amanda Michelle Dykema 2014 Acknowledgements This dissertation would not exist without the generous and critical interventions of a number of people, to whom I owe so much. From the start, Kandice Chuh has believed my idea that inappropriateness had something to tell us about the contemporary moment—and that belief, along with her rigorous and inspiring reading practices, shepherded this project into being. Sangeeta Ray has been an amazing professional, institutional, and theoretical mentor. Randy Ontiveros encouraged me in this work at every opportunity. Zita Nunes has embodied generosity and kind attention. Jonathan Auerbach has been a kind and relentless truth-teller. Christina Hanhardt provided crucial feedback and enthusiasm for this project. And I’m only here at the finish line because of those who got me started, especially Mary Brown and Lara Vetter. Thanks are due as well to those friends and colleagues who read and responded to sections of this dissertation in process. To begin, my fellow conference presenters and generous respondents: Christopher Eng, Emily Artiano, Eva Hageman, Roderick Ferguson, Crystal Parikh, and Mimi Thi Nguyen. My dynamic writing group partners, Liz Smith and Courtney Chatellier, helped me tackle this project one section at a time and kept me on track. I need to thank my Lilly friends, who reminded me why thinking and feeling matter—especially Devin Byker, Joel Scott Davis, Kristen Gaylord, Brian Hamilton, and Rachel Schneider Vlachos. At Maryland, I want to thank members of the Arts and Humanities Theory Colloquium, especially Orrin Wang, Katie Stanutz, and Jamison Kantor, and from the publication workshop, Maggie Ray, Porter Olsen, Elise Auvil, and Natalie Corbin. ii And here, to thank my dear friends who help me to work and to know when to quit work for the day, I feel the need to switch to present tense. Nancy Stewart, my first friend at Maryland, reminds me that dogs and television are life’s real pleasures. Nate Underland provides a keen ear and eye for improving my writing and mixes the best cocktails. Douglas Ishii teaches me by example how to make and keep academic friends, how to read widely, how to acknowledge the pleasures and the pains of scholarship, how to take risks. Sarah Sillin proves that cleverness and kindness are not mutually exclusive; her generosity and fierce friendship keep me sane; and if I have any goodwill remaining with my professional readers, it is because Sarah reads the shitty first drafts. Briana Brickley has read, heard, and cheered nearly every word of this project over the past five years and still claims me as her school soulmate. She is my practice audience for every idea and she refines them all via the workings of her brilliant mind. Traubert, you lived up to our bargain and made it until the dissertation was finished—now I simply ask that you live forever. And thanks to Josh, of course and always. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv Introduction: Inappropriate(d) Literatures of the United States: Hegemonic Propriety and Postracial Racialization ....................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Representation and the Real: Realism as Inappropriate Form ................... 37 Chapter Two: Embodied Knowledges: Synesthesia and the Archive in Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth .......................................................................................................... 105 Chapter Three: Adopting National Identity: The Necessary Gestures of Proper Citizen- Subjects ........................................................................................................................... 156 Chapter Four: Making Literary History: The Improper Accounts of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Flight.......................................................................................... 216 Epilogue .......................................................................................................................... 279 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 289 iv Introduction: Inappropriate(d) Literatures of the United States: Hegemonic Propriety and Postracial Racialization “At the threshold of this new millennium, we encounter once again W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘problem of the color line,’ but this time in more duplicitous and seductive guises. No doubt racism as practice/ideology has undergone a tortuous metamorphosis in the twentieth century. But what has not changed, and has instead become more egregious, is the existence of a determinate racial polity called the United States of America.” - E. San Juan, Jr.1 “I am more interested in exploring the ways in which racisms take on the form of other things, wrap themselves around heated issues, descend upon political pulse points, appear as reasoned judgments, beyond sentiment, as they penetrate impassioned bodies.” - Ann Laura Stoler2 “Hegemony works at leveling out differences and at standardizing contexts and expectations in the smallest details of our daily lives.” - Trinh T. Minh-ha3 Introduction Within a week of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, United States Department of Justice lawyers drafted legislation that would become the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. The final version, authored primarily by Attorney General John Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh, incorporated provisions from earlier House and Senate bills. It was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26th, 2001, and quickly became the most (in)famous piece of United States legislation of the last twenty years. Despite the Act’s continuing notoriety, sustained through various legal challenges and Congressional reauthorizations, the Patriot Act’s acronym has almost entirely superseded public use or knowledge of the law’s full title.4 One of its source bills, H.R. 1 2975, had been provisionally titled To Deter and Punish Terrorist Acts in the United States and around the World, to Enhance Law Enforcement