Anti-Essentialist Humor in the Satire of the New Black Renaissance
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University of Warsaw Institute of English Studies Kamil Chrzczonowicz OPEN-SOURCE BLACKNESS: ANTI-ESSENTIALIST HUMOR IN THE SATIRE OF THE NEW BLACK RENAISSANCE Doctoral dissertation supervised by dr hab. Ewa Łuczak, prof. UW Warsaw, 2021 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 3 THEORY: HUMOR, RACE, AND IDENTITY .......................................................................... 8 Humor, Irony, and Satire in the American Public Sphere .......................................................... 10 Emotional and Intellectual Dimension of Black Humor ............................................................ 19 (Cognitive) Diversity and The Science of Multiple Subjectivities ............................................ 26 Contemporary Discourse on Race .............................................................................................. 40 The Path to The New Black Renaissance ................................................................................... 52 LITERATURE: ERASURE BY PERCIVAL EVERETT ........................................................ 68 The Forceful Racialization of Art .............................................................................................. 69 Fighting Against the “Racial Optic” .......................................................................................... 81 De-essentializing Black English ................................................................................................. 99 A Need for the Comic Perspective ........................................................................................... 107 CINEMA: JUSTIN SIMIEN’S DEAR WHITE PEOPLE ....................................................... 112 Satirical Taxonomy of Racial Micro-Aggressions ................................................................... 115 Humor and Irony in Race-Related Campus Activism .............................................................. 133 Dear White People in the Context of Black American Film and Comic Tradition ................. 146 Intergroup Contact, Parasocial Relationships, and Race Representation ................................. 158 DIGITAL HUMANITIES: MULTIMEDIA SATIRE BY BARATUNDE THURSTON .... 165 Rewriting Race and Identity through Humor and Technology ................................................ 166 Translating Scholarship into Satire .......................................................................................... 187 Embodying Multiperspectivity ................................................................................................. 197 CODA: REDEFINING BLACK IDENTITY THROUGH HUMOR .................................... 210 Works cited ................................................................................................................................. 221 Dissertation abstracts ................................................................................................................. 236 3 INTRODUCTION This dissertation looks at the satire of three African-American comic authors – Percival Everett (1956-), Justin Simien (1983-), and Baratunde Thurston (1977-) – to analyze how they employ humor to reconceptualize the contemporary understanding of African-American identity. Their work is examined in the context of a new and developing, twenty-first-century idea of racial anti-essentialism: one defined by Thurston as Open-Source Blackness (OSB).1 The subsequent chapters investigate three realms of narrative expression: literature (Everett’s novel Erasure, 2011),2 cinema (Simien’s feature film Dear White People, 2014),3 and digital humanities (multimedia satire of Thurston, 20014-2020).4 The analysis is set against the backdrop of the New Black Renaissance (NBR) – a flourishing of African-American popular art made possible by the cultural and technological changes of the last two decades. Everett, Simien, and Thurston are relatively niche and have not attained the mainstream prominence of some of the most famous historical or contemporary African-American comedians. At the same time, their ex-centric position affords them more leeway for artistic and intellectual experimentation. Everett’s novel Erasure (2001) appears as the first significant, racially anti-essentialist rebellion of a black satirist in the new millennium. It is a book-length protest song: a novelistic declaration of creative independence manifested through narrative complexity, humorous ambiguity, and cathartic irreverence. This dissertation treats Everett as a progenitor of notions that came to fruition in the second decade of the new millennium: ideas of black artistic freedom unconstrained by racial essentialism or institutional gatekeepers. Simien’s film Dear White People (2014) has been chosen as a subject for analysis because it 1 Thurston, Baratunde. How to Be Black. Harper Collins, 2012. P. 221. 2 Everett, Percival. Erasure. U P of New England, 2001. 3 Simien, Justin. Dear White People. Lionsgate, 2015 (originally released in 2014). DVD. 4 Thurston. How to Be Black; ---. “Hacking Comedy.” TEDx Talks (YouTube channel). Published Aug 27, 2014. https://bit.ly/2YYoewX; ---. “An Unconventional Look at the Future of Technology.” Google Developers (YouTube channel). Published 10 May, 2019. https://youtu.be/wPFnprOY7A8; “Comedy Hack Day.” Cultivated Wit. Published Feb. 16, 2016. https://tinyurl.com/ycbxk3jv. 4 gathers and popularizes these ideas in the concise form factor of film comedy. The movie encapsulates multiple issues identified by contemporary race discourse as crucial to young Americans of color; it addresses campus activism, colorblind discrimination, microaggressive behavior, or unconscious bias – and does so with satirical verve and academically-informed argumentation. Simien’s approach is original both in its breadth and execution: it is non- essentializing but self-assured; unapologetic, but open enough to allow for ambiguity inherent in humor. Thurston’s work has been selected for its sheer uniqueness – not only with respect to other black comic authors but also to American satire in general. Thurston calls himself a “futurist comedian” – he is both a practitioner of the art of satire and a theoretician of its development in the Digital Age. What distinguishes him from other comic authors is his ethos of multimodality. Heavily influenced by his digital media and information technology expertise, Thurston envisions an emergence of new, interactive genres of comic texts. What is more, not only does he forecast their appearance, but he also facilitates their creation as the organizer of Comedy Hack Days (2015-), hackathons dedicated to creating new types of satirical software. The three authors analyzed in this study adopt an interdisciplinary approach with regard to their art. As it will become evident, all of them use terms or ideas originating from academic theory, natural sciences, as well as popular and high-brow culture. This dissertation adopts a similar approach with regard to its secondary sources. Consequently, it makes use of scholarship on race, identity, and humor from literary and cultural studies, as well as other disciplines: sociology, neuroscience, moral philosophy, information technology, and others. In the spirit of joining high and low culture – or questioning this binary distinction in the first place – it mixes classically academic sources with what it considers as exemplary work in the realms of journalism, blogging, and podcasting. The comic authors analyzed in this study tackle the phenomenon of multiple cultural, social, and personal identifications contained within a single subjectivity. In order to match 5 their approach with an appropriate methodology, this dissertation sees various scientific disciplines as interconnected. To create an understanding of the world best-approximating reality, disciplines separated by academic institutions – structures necessitating specialization and compartmentalization – ought to maintain a constant dialogue. Just as distinct points of reference coalesce within one individual, findings from separate fields of inquiry can create a unified body of knowledge. By adopting this interdisciplinary methodology, this study aims to arrive at new insights and substantiate the claims on race, identity, and humor offered by the world of cultural studies with ideas and data obtained outside of its usual field of expertise. The concept of Open-Source Blackness (OSB) – a key term for this study – centers around the notion of multiplicity. Its polyphonic core fits well with the open-source ethos defined by the world of information technology; the idea of open-source code, accessible to anyone with the willingness and expertise to modify and redistribute it, translates well into the realm of culture.5 As argued by the Open Organization, a non-profit promoting the open-source approach: “Open-source projects, products, or initiatives embrace and celebrate principles of open exchange, collaborative participation, rapid prototyping, transparency, meritocracy, and community-oriented development. [Open source] is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance.” By way of analogy, OSB claims that the “code” of African- American identity, one readily accessible through language and art, can be freely modified and shared by black individuals. It is a matter of fact that people with certain phenotypical traits cannot choose not to be racialized in America.