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The Pennsylvania State University the Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts PASSING, PASSAGES, AND PASSKEYS: POST-CIVIL RIGHTS SATIRISTS UNLOCK THE MASTER’S HOUSE A Dissertation in English By Mahpiua-Luta Deas © 2012 Mahpiua-Luta Deas Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2012 ii The dissertation of Mahpiua-Luta Deas was reviewed and approved by the following: Aldon L. Nielsen The George and Barbara Kelly Professor of American Literature Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee Linda F. Selzer Associate Professor of English Shirley Moody Assistant Professor of English Lovalerie King Associate Professor of English Director of the Africana Research Center Garrett A. Sullivan Professor of English Director of Graduate Studies, English *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. iii ABSTRACT In the post-civil rights era, which is marked by the eradication of legalized racial boundaries, racial passing should be unnecessary and obsolete. Yet contemporary satirists have found satiric portrayals of racial passing to be productive on two levels. On a plot-level, they use passing to interrogate contemporary racial subjectivity and to both explore racial advances and to critique persistent racial inequities. On a structural level, they write fiction that challenges the prescriptive and restrictive aesthetic criteria that they believe African American fiction is required to meet. Ultimately, this fiction offers dynamic critiques of contemporary racial identity and textual production. These authors use satire to examine how the fictional depiction of racial identities/bodies informs, depends on, and dictates the textual body and vice versa. The purpose of the study is to draw on two parallel contemporary literary theories, racial passing and satire, in order to analyze the works of five of the most important and recognized contemporary satiric writers of the post-civil rights generation: Percival Everett, Paul Beatty, Mat Johnson, Trey Ellis, and Adam Mansbach. Each author uses his satiric fiction to enact new, yet distinct, models that challenge what they see as overly prescriptive and limiting ideas of African American fiction. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ Chapter 1: THE CONTEMPORARY DISCOURSES OF RACIAL PASSING REPETITIONS, REVERBERATIONS, RESONANCES, AND RE- WORKINGS IN POST-CIVIL RIGHTS SATIRE ............................................1 The Discourse of Racial Passing ........................................................................2 President Obama and the Cover of The New Yorker ..........................................6 Unprecedented yet Uneven Access to Power and Privilege in the Post Civil Rights Era...........................................................................................7 Triple Duty, Triple Threat: The Evolving Discourses of Passing and Satire ..10 Literary Passing: A Paradigm Shift in Critical Understanding ...................12 Critical Shifts in Understanding of 20th Century Narratives ............................14 Passing for Black in the Post-Civil Rights Era ................................................17 The Evolution of Theories of Humor and Satire ..............................................19 African American Humor and Satire ...............................................................19 Satirical Theory Evolves ..................................................................................20 Formlessness ...............................................................................................27 Open-Endedness and Irresolution ...............................................................28 Historical Specificity ..................................................................................28 Attack ..........................................................................................................28 Militant Disunity .........................................................................................29 Conclusion ..................................................................................................29 The Shape of this Study .............................................................................32 Chapter 2: ONCE YOU GO BLACK, YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK? PASSING FOR BLACK IN BEATTY’S WHITE BOY SHUFFLE ..................................................33 Chapter 3: IF YOU’RE WHITE, YOU’RE ALLRIGHT – IF YOU’RE BROWN STICK AROUND. GENTRIFICATION AS PASSING IN MAT JOHNSON’S HUNTING IN HARLEM .................................................................................................60 Chapter 4: TEXTUAL HEALING: LITERARY PASSING IN PERCIVAL EVERETT’S ERASURE ...................................................................................................79 Chapter 5: LET’S GET IT ON: TEXTUAL, SEXUAL POLITICS OF PASSING IN ELLIS’ PLATITUDES .....................................................................................................97 Chapter 6: I HAVE ONE MIND FOR ME, THE OTHER ONE FOR THE WHITE MAN TO SEE. WHITES PASSING FOR BLACK IN ADAM MANSBACH’S ANGRY BLACK WHITE BOY .....................................................................................110 Chapter 7: CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................129 References ........................................................................................................................150 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Cover of the New Yorker ......................................................................................2 Figure 2. Cartoon from The Washington Post .....................................................................6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the scholarly communities at Temple University and Penn State University, without whom this dissertation would not have been possible. I first became interested in how African American authors engage literary experimentation in their work when completing my M.A. thesis at Temple University. While at Temple University, my M.A. thesis advisor, Dr. Rachel Blau DuPlessis, encouraged me to further pursue my interests in African American literature by pursuing a Ph.D. in English. She knew my scholarly interests would match well with those of Dr. Aldon Nielsen, the George and Barbara Kelly Professor of American Literature, at Penn State University and thus encouraged me to apply there for further graduate studies. I was fortunate my first semester to take a course in African American postmodernism with Dr. Nielsen and it was during that course that this project was first conceived. His expertise in the experimental traditions of African American literature has been enlightening and has pushed my own thinking. As my dissertation chair, Dr. Nielsen’s subject expertise, guidance, and direction have been invaluable. The other committee members, Dr. Linda Selzer, Dr. Shirley Moody, and Dr. Lovalerie King have been equally instrumental during this process. In their courses, I wrote first drafts of chapters of material that deeply influenced this dissertation and their feedback throughout has been keenly insightful. Finally, I would like to thank the members of the two dissertation groups I participated in while at Penn State, both under the direction of Dr. Cheryl Glenn, for their feedback on the early drafts of each of these chapters. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my family and friends whose interest in my project and warm words of encouragement buoyed me at each step in the journey. 1 CHAPTER 1 The Contemporary Discourses of Racial Passing: Repetitions, Reverberations, Resonances, and Re-workings in Post-Civil Rights Satire Racial passing, traditionally defined as a light-skinned African American passing for white, might be considered obsolete in the post-civil rights era.1 The logic of the racial pass—to conceal one’s ‘true’ identity to pass for something they were not in order to enter spaces, gain access, and to secure legal, political, and cultural rights denied to them on the basis of their racial designation—should be unnecessary in the post-civil rights era in which unprecedented civil rights have been extended to African Americans. However, for contemporary satirists, the discourses of passing illuminate the paradoxes and complexities of racial identity and textual production in the post-civil rights era. More specifically, the discourse of racial passing is a way for the satirist to both to articulate the contest over the legitimacy and power inherent in fixed racial identities and racial boundaries and to resist such fixed identities and boundaries. These contemporary African American satirists include Percival Everett, Paul Beatty, Mat Johnson, Trey Ellis, and Adam Mansbach.2 The purpose of the following dissertation is to investigate how 1 Several terms have emerged to name the artists from this generation. Trey Ellis coined “new black aesthetic,” Nelson George “post-soul” and Greg Tate “post-nationalist.” Gayle Wald uses “post-civil rights” and I employ her term throughout. 2 These artists are a part of a larger generation of artists that was first identified in the late 1980s. Village Voice columnist Greg Tate and satiric novelist Trey Ellis each wrote a heady, jubilant manifesto celebrating this new generation of artists. Both Tate and Ellis champion the “new” black identity—middle class, well 2 These artists are a part
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