This Form Is Required at Submission of Your Thesis

THE AMERICAN COLLECTION OF RACE/IDENTITY: AN

EXAMINATION OF AMERICAN-NESS THROUGH

BAUDRILLARD’S LOOKING GLASS

______

A Thesis

Presented to the

Faculty of

San Diego State University

______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

English

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Ranmali Mary Rodrigo

Spring 2013

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DEDICATION

I dedicate this work to the school counselor who told me not to pursue graduate school and to Riche Richardson who told me I should.

. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography. -Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658 On Exactitude in Science from Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, Translated by Andrew Hurley Copyright Penguin 1999.

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

The American Collection of Race/Identity: An Examination of American-ness through Baudrillard‘s Looking Glass by Ranmali Mary Rodrigo Master of Arts in English San Diego State University, 2013

Race/identity in the United States is a problematic structure that remains unresolved although ―things seem better.‖ This paper examines Jean Baudrillard‘s opening chapter of Simulacra and Simulation to explicate and then apply his theory of simulacrum to race and identity in the United States. Baudrillard‘s theory proposes four phases of the perversion and then destruction of the basic reality of an image that then leads to the perpetuation of a hyperreality that is accepted and consumed as real. This hyperreality cannot be subverted nor destroyed because there is nothing real behind it and it envelops the society which it infects. Moving from early American writing to the birth of film and television, this paper explores the interactions of the history of representation, race and identity toward a change in the way Ethnic American, LGBT, and ―Other‖ Literature is discussed and included. Zora Neale Hurston‘s ―What White Publisher‘s Wont Print‖ and Ralph Ellison‘s Invisible Man guide the path to a solution ultimately found in a return to narrative principles of orality as defined by Walter Ong.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

ABSTRACT ...... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... viii CHAPTER 1 THE SIMULACROUS FRAMEWORK OF ―AMERICAN‖ ...... 1 2 BAUDRILLARD, HIS THEORY OF SIMULACRUM AND THE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN SIMULACRUM ...... 10 3 A NATION‘S CAPTIVITY ...... 21 4 THE MOVE TO BLACKFACE AND THE BROADENING OF THE SIMULACRUM ...... 31 5 CONCLUSION: A SUGGESTION FOR CHANGE ...... 41 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 51

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many individuals who contributed to the production of this thesis through their moral support, advice or participation. I am indebted to Professor Michael Borgstrom for his patience, care, thoughtful critique and thoughtfulness in general. It has been a privilege to have had the opportunity to be taught by him in class and now again through the writing process. I sincerely would also like to thank Professor June Cummins and Professor Huma Ghosh. They agreed to support me thorough this journey back to the completion of my thesis. Without their patience and cooperation I would not have reached this moment. I would also like to give great thanks to Trevor Kimbler. Without him the days of staying in and writing would not have happened. He took over my care during the long hours of work and the frustrating fear that I would never finish. He even allowed me to yell when the stress became overwhelming. I would also like to thank my friends who remained my friends through my need to stay in and write and my inability to socialize throughout the duration of my work. My sincere appreciation should also be extended to the Department of English at San Diego State University and all the professors who taught me, the staff who helped to schedule me and the advisors who guided me. Thank you for giving me the tools to make it to the close of this academic portion of my life.

CHAPTER 1

THE SIMULACROUS FRAMEWORK OF “AMERICAN”

Discourse surrounding post-colonial literature, African-American literature, globalization and LGBT rights are unquestionably a part of every university in the United States. Racism has become a bad word with which most people do not want to be associated. A superficial glance at the structure of diversity and representation in the United States might lead one to the conclusion that Dr. Martin Luther King‘s dream has been realized. The signs of change, or the events that show that the ideologies surrounding race and identity are different than they were in 1950, seem indicative of a country that has eradicated the constructions of American1 as white, male, heterosexual and Christian. The category of other seems to be part of the past until events that may alter American society and history arise (i.e., the legalization of interracial marriage). Then, during those events, a conflicting picture of race and identity politics in the United States suddenly flashes and is recognizable even if only for a brief moment. The attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11th leaked the enduring ―us vs. them‖ sense of nationality that resulted in violence against anyone coded as Middle Eastern (i.e., Sikhs, East Asians more generally and any darker skinned people who could not be securely identified as African-American, Latino/Chicano/a). The nomination of a black senator for president let slip suspicions regarding American citizenship for those who identify as first generation and/or who may not be 100% Caucasian. Finally, the legislative move to legalize gay marriage betrayed the sentiment that true equality should belong only to those who code themselves as straight in the United States. These moments, and others like these, expose an internal cellular make-up of America that is unchanged in its base composition of polarity, compartmentalization, fear and then hate.

1 Here and throughout the remainder of this work, American refers to the people and ideologies of the North American continent and in particular, those who have citizenship within the Unites States of America. The time period begins with the Virginia colony in the early 1600‘s and discusses the phenomenon of American identity until the present day.

In 1950 Hurston wrote this, ―yes, and we have come a long, long way since then, but the troubling thing is that there are still too many who refuse to believe in the ingestions and digestion of western culture as yet‖ when she considered the assertion that ―things are better now‖ (1050). Her thoughts, which highlight the image of the ―ingestions and digestions of western culture,‖ succinctly summarize the enduring concerns within secular and academic discourse surrounding race and identity politics in the United States (Hurston 1050). Race and identity, as it refers to the terms themselves as well as the perceived sense of national identity under the title ―American,‖ is something that has been passively consumed whole since its inception in the early Americas. As Hurston observed in 1950 and as it can still be observed today, the ideologies of race and identity are not taken in and broken down (i.e., ingested and digested) by American consumers, thus the inner structure of the framework of race and identity is able to maintain its integrity. In fact, the additions to the existing construction, whether subversive or supportive, have merely assisted in strengthening its base structure of polarity. This self-sustaining, self-regenerative and self-reproducing structured construction of race and identity is the simulacrum of race and identity that falsely passes as the reality of race and identity in the United States. This paper suggests that the history of the construction of race and identity in the United States has not changed from its foundations in the biblically influenced writing produced by early American colonists in and around 1600. The writing produced during this time inadvertently rendered an image of otherness and marginalization that propagated the indestructible structure of polarization. The structure of race and identity in the United States begat sub-categorical polarizations such as the need for other races to fit within the black and white structure or the need to be visible or invisible within each categorical space. These sub-polarizations allowed external changes and edits to occur while preserving and in fact, nurturing, the infrastructure itself. Sub-polarizations can look like a subversive change to the system, but according to a theory of a simulacrum of race, these additions to the original polarized structure is an external change to the system that is made only to the simulacrum which is not real and thus which is unalterable at its core. The simulacrum is a hyperreality born out of a history of ―irreferent images‖ which have been perverted from a basic reality, but which are consequently consumed as reality (Baudrillard). In a simulacrum, all knowledge of the original basic reality, once perverted and

3 masked, is irredeemably lost and only the hyperreality remains. Thus race and the other identities defined against the perverted original is a fiction or a myth as is the language surrounding it. Throughout this paper the term race/identity will be used to refer to the hyperreality of the infrastructure of race and identity. The purpose of this paper however, is not only to reframe race and identity in order to problematize the language and discourse surrounding these ideologies, it is also to suggest a solution born out of the Harlem Renaissance with roots in the application of theory surrounding oral tradition (i.e., orality). However, before a solution can be reached, the origin of a theory of a simulacrum must be known and the theory understood. Once understood, the broader theory can be applied specifically to the structures of the construction of race/identity to reveal a simulacrum of race/identity in the United States. The theory of simulacrum, as applied in this paper, is taken from Jean Baudrillard‘s ―The Precession of Simulacra‖ in Simulacra and Simulation. In this 1981 text, Baudrillard defines simulacrum as a series of phases that distorts or perverts a basic reality. This distortion masks the loss of that reality, which as time passes causes the perversion to become the understood and agreed upon reality or a hyperreality. Finally, this hyperreality masks and eventually destroys any memory of the reality upon which it was built so reality is lost and only the simulacrum of the object or concept remains. When the simulacrum is revealed and one can see it and the potential space around it, then dissection and analysis of the history of the signs of race/identity as well as the dissection and analysis of the current images that represent race/identity can begin. Jean Baudrillard‘s theory of simulacrum begins with the epigraph, ―The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true‖ (1732). Influenced by the work of Jorge Luis Borges, Baudrillard discusses the concept of difference as critical to a theory of simulacrum. Difference is also the basis for the identification of characteristics that categorize Americans as white, Christian and heterosexual or ―Other‖ (i.e., us or them). In terms of simulacrum, difference is a complex term that signifies and functions on many levels within a model of hyperreality. First, difference is the line that defines and then separates the territories around two similar objects or ideas. Second, difference is the symmetrical balance of nature. It is the symbiotic relationship between objects and ideas that rely on one another for definition (i.e., the concept of presence exists because absence exists). Finally, and most critically, difference is

4 a parallel to sameness. Difference is the aberrant society that lives parallel to normative society. Both are thriving places filled with diversity within its own group, but both are intrinsically and simultaneously different, or oppositional, to one another. This is the foundation of the landscape of a simulacrum, ―it is no longer a question of either maps or territory. Something has disappeared: the sovereign difference between them that was the abstraction‘s charm. For it is difference which forms the poetry of the map and the charm of the territory, the magic of the concept and the charm of the real‖ (Baudrillard 1733). So the tracking of the evolution of race/identity in order to apply it to a theory of simulacrum must begin with the arrival of Christian English Refugees on the Eastern shores of the United States. These first Americans colonized the new shores with the privileged expectations that the land upon which they landed was theirs despite the presence of other, non-immigrant peoples (i.e., Native Americans of various tribes). The violent physical battles that ensued between colonists and Native Americans paralleled the ideological battles waged against the perceived other, the Native Americans, through writing. Thus, who was American and who was not American was defined by the oppositional battleground of us versus them. In early America, ―us‖ was white, Christian, and heterosexual (i.e., American) and ―them‖ became anyone who was not white, Christian and heterosexual (i.e., not American). It further evolved into anyone who did not fit into the polarized infrastructure inadvertently designed by the early Americans. However, in the 1600s when the first impressions of colony life were recorded in writing, the ―them,‖ in the ―us vs. them‖ construction, referred predominantly to Native Americans as Africans were mostly invisible at this time (i.e., they were minimally recorded under the general term of ―negroes‖ and without the then typical title abbreviations of Mr., Ms., or Mrs.). Native Americans, or ―Indians‖ as they were named by the colonists, were clearly defined in early writing but re-imagined as savages, heathens, impure and black (by contrast, Puritan Americans, or Americans, were civilized, Godly, pure and white). Much of this language was defined by its documentation in captivity narratives, of which Mary Rowlandson‘s work is best known. The dark, contrasting definitions of Native Americans in the 1600s never quite leaves the American national collective conscious. In fact, the next most visible group to inherit and carry the burden of the images of savagery, heathenism and blackness were African-Americans in the United States.

It is here that the history of race, identity and representation takes a critical and questionable turn. Although the infrastructure of race/identity was defined using reproduced written images of Native Americans, the spectacle and commodification of the constructions of race truly gained momentum through the polarization of blackness as the primary signifier of the word ―race‖ in the United States. Ruminations on this transference of ideological racial structures from Native Americans to African-Americans will be central to the theory being proposed here. Why and how did this transition occur? It may merely have been a function of increasing Native American invisibility due to genocide, disease and a push to the West and increasing African visibility due to the slave trade, increasing populations of European colonists who owned slaves and a growing agricultural society in the U.S. that utilized slave labor. This paper however, pinpoints the moment of the appearance of an African-American in print that bore the legal definition and categorization of ―slave‖ which first occurred in writing in the 1800s (―Arrival of the First Africans‖). Although much of the ideology surrounding race/identity at this time evolved from the representation of ―Indians,‖ words used to describe ―Others‖ carried additional weight under the legal term slave. Instead of just savagery, heathenism, blackness, and inhumanity, property was added to the construction of what would become the foundation of the race/identity infrastructure. African slaves were animate objects that could be bought and sold, but who were incapable of love, relationships, ownership, and intellect. Abolitionists who fought against slavery, inadvertently added to the existing adjectives surrounding race through their depictions of slavery meant to elicit social change in works such as Uncle Tom‘s Cabin. Unfortunately, as the slave trade began to boom, movie making technology, or the ability to record visual images, came into being. This new industry often adapted images from literature and filtered them through the secular eyes of directors and/or producers and their interpretation and translation through marketing. The once static images of race/identity which lived internally and literally unseen within the collective consciousness of early Americans now had a reproducible image of ―Other,‖ or not American, that could walk, talk and move across a screen to be viewed by hundreds at once. The movie was the collective conscious of the privileged American projected onto a screen to be reinforced and consumed together as a new national pastime. Thus, the intersecting history of African-American representation and the history of film, television and visual media systems at large is the pivotal point of a theory of a simulacrum of race.

Any television or film screen today still mirrors and reproduces images of race as it was first imagined in the 1600s. In visual media systems2 exaggerated racialized3 figures gyrate across screens. They grin widely with gold encrusted teeth against the backdrop of ―the Ghetto.‖ They gesticulate with exaggerated flair as they sail across the set of a stylish New York apartment and engage in a continuous monologue about fashion or design. They always have accents, dialects, or some humorous way of speaking. Most importantly, deep and complex emotions or expressions of love are not included as part of their thirty minute characters in their televisual world (i.e., videos of mainstream rappers that all marginalize and sexualize women and sitcoms that cannot show the range of human emotion within the time constriction of the medium).4 Today‘s interchangeable caricatures of ethnicity, gender, sexuality and religion are no different in their essence than the shucking and jiving minstrels of the 1920s (i.e., they are no different in their purpose, structure and use than when they were first constructed). Ethnicity has evolved into the full simulacrous landscape of conflict, hyper-sexuality, criminal behavior, laziness, and absence. As the simulacrum evolves, more dimensions of difference (i.e., internal versus external and visible versus invisible) are lost and gained. They function together in a dynamic fictive machine that continues to reproduce, hybridize and destroy race and identity as it reinforces the consumer vehicle of the visual media system. Thus historical attempts to address issues of race/identity have been directed at the simulacrum and not at the problem itself. The Harlem Renaissance began with the move to uplift the race with overly positive simulations of race. These merely reinforced the existing polarized structure of the race/identity system. The simulacrum of race/identity then became hybridized (i.e., perverted or hyperbolized) so that it became an exploited type used to redeem those who are unsuccessfully American (i.e., Sydney Poitier‘s character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a Harvard grad, a doctor, he does community service and he is a perfect human specimen despite his otherness). So what then is the solution? What is the value of invoking Baudrillard‘s theory of simulacrum and applying it to race? Hasn‘t this issue been resolved as exemplified by

2 Any technology based medium used to produce, reproduce and broadcast visual images. 3 The bodies or otherness are assigned a race/identity. 4 As appropriated from Zora Neale Hurston‘s observation of literature in ―What White Publishers Won‘t Print.‖

American teens and adults singing the Korean Gangnam Style and the inauguration of an African-American president? When the real world5 is examined after an understanding of simulacrum and hyperreality has been revealed, tangible markers can be seen which promote the existence of the hyperreal and the loss of reality. When applied to theories of race and identity, the hyperreal construction of race evokes the need to return to the beginning of history or the beginning of the self to find some moment of authentic identity. According to the theory of a simulacrum of race/identity which destroys the reality it masks, this authentic identity is impossible. Yet, even the most modern, progressive race/identity theorists and writers have repeatedly returned to this mythology as an inescapable base for theories in race and identity, ―My real commitment is to autonomy—giving individuals the freedom to elaborate their authentic selves—rather than to a rigid notion of what constitutes an authentic gay identity‖ (Yoshino 93). This quote comes from Kenji Yoshino‘s 2006 text, Covering which explores race and identity by problematizing and then expanding on concepts of passing, visibility and duality. However, within this brilliant and progressive text, Yoshino unknowingly re-inscribes or falls into the traps of addressing the simulacrum of race/identity in identifying the possibility of an authentic self that is free or not influenced by the hyperreality that is unconsciously consumed daily. Yoshino‘s concept of covering describes a complex system where those who fit the codes of ―not American‖ or ―other‖ consciously and unconsciously perform caricatures or roles of race/identity, When gays or racial minorities are caught in the crossfire of covering and reverse- covering demands, it is often because we are caught between two communities. The majority community (straights or whites) makes the covering demand, and the minority community (gays or racial minorities) makes the reverse-covering demand. Recent literature on African-American ‗oppositional culture‘ illustrates this dynamic. In response to white demands that African-Americans ‗act white,‘ some African-Americans have developed a culture of ‗acting black.‘ (147) This construction again assumes that there is an original or object that existed before the covering or reverse covering that waits to be uncovered. I contend that even precise observant theories regarding race/identity, like Yoshino‘s only address or describe the problems or symptoms of the simulacrum that began with the early American constructions

5 Here, and throughout this paper, the ―real world‖ refers to the tangible, daily world in which Americans (i.e., those raised in and who claim citizenship to the United States) work, live and develop/maintain social and familial relationships.

8 of the 1600s. Again, these theories add to the external face of the simulacrum of race/identity but they do not edit the core infrastructure of polarization, and thus categorization, and the search for an authentic self. As long as the answer to the complex demands and consequences of the infrastructure of race/identity in the United States lies in the mythology of authenticity or some original truth, then the simulacrum will continue growing and reproducing unmarred and unstopped. Finally, with the groundwork laid, a solution that begins with the theoretical frame found in two specific works from the Harlem Renaissance period by Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison can be discussed. These texts suggest the answer to the simulacrum is simple, consumer friendly, but self-aware narratives. What is a simple narrative, but a return to the principle of storytelling that arises from the structures of an oral tradition? Hurston and Ellison suggest the mundane narratives of daily human experiences of individuals are the foundations for eradicating the singular narrative of the simulacrum as these simple narratives, grouped together, inherently reflect a complex American experience. This paper wants to add to the discourse that these narratives should primarily be accessible and poignant and they should tell the stories of Americans who are invisible by choice (i.e., Ellison‘s invisible man) or by force (i.e., unrecognized American identities). Walter J. Ong writes, ―All of this is to say that knowledge and discourse come out of human experience and that the elemental way to process human experience verbally is to give an account of it more or less as it really comes into being and exists…‖ (Ong 2275). Ong suggests that orality is live, alterable and interactive whereas writing can become a dead unalterable record. Beginning with Greek philosophers and spoken rhetoric, Ong outlines the basic characteristics of orality (i.e., formula, repetition, and simplicity) and literacy (i.e., cognitive pre-thought, revision, reflection, and record). Orality practiced a dynamic, narrative mode of live storytelling performance that forced author/performer and audience to engage analysis and skills not used in processing the static written word. Orality required improvisation and active interaction. As literacy spread, orality fell to ruin and became associated with a lack of education. Writing and literacy, in some sense, became a form of privilege and difference. Ong believes that media is a secondary form of orality, ―At the same time, with telephone, radio, television and various kinds of sound tape, electronic technology has brought us into the age of 'secondary orality'. This new orality has striking resemblances to the old in its

9 participatory mystique, its fostering of a communal sense, its concentration on the present moment, and even its use of formulas…‖ (Ong 2230). This paper argues that visual media systems are not a secondary orality. Film, television, internet came out of and is a part of writing. Each medium is scripted, archived and un-editable once released to the public (with the exception of internet wiki-type modules that beg the interaction and edits of the user). Instead, perhaps the key to the destruction of the simulacrum is the application of the foundation of the art of oral storytelling to a new genre of written narrative. The simulacrum of orality could use the structures of story-telling forms such as memoir, novel, and short story. It would maintain simplicity of verbiage that allows various levels of literacy to participate in the work. It would be viewed by mass audiences as a transient piece that tells the story of one individual‘s construction of identity that disappears as soon as the text is closed. These texts could be consumed en mass due to their accessibility and root in humanity. Perhaps through the story-telling of those who do not fit into the polarized infrastructure of race or those who do not seek a moment of authenticity but tell the story as they are now enveloped by technology, history, the simulacrum and academic discourse, the polarized structure of the simulacrum will begin to be challenged. The construction of the narrative of ―American‖ may be unable to resist adding a new section for all those who do not fit within the structure of black, white, gay or straight. This may push a system of binaries into a system of circular spectrum that understands race/identity as the intersection of historical representation, literary representation, visual media representation and the individual‘s representation of himself or herself amidst the ever- changing backdrop of hyperreality caused by the juxtaposition of the former concepts.

CHAPTER 2

BAUDRILLARD, HIS THEORY OF SIMULACRUM AND THE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS OF AN AMERICAN SIMULACRUM

Throughout the history of race and identity in the United States, it is assumed that there are facts which preceded the current conversations which were built on older facts which were born of some other facts from even further back that will somehow lead to an original moment of absolute truth. It is a sort of secular faith that began with pre-literate peoples who lived by written Biblical edicts passed down from God to the church then translated back to them through a designated prophet or priest. The biblical edicts, although faith based also prescribed ways to live (i.e., what meats are safe to eat). Belief, faith and knowledge were tangled together inextricably. As a once Puritan Protestant society, Americans come from this same heritage and/or system of Christian faith, belief and knowledge. Although the United States has now expanded to other gods, beliefs, science, and nature, the tangle between veneration and knowledge has not yet been undone thus it is something that complicates what often seems to be the clearest set of facts. The further complication of this religion/knowledge structure is the conflation of fact based knowledge and belief based knowledge. Religious truths and knowledge in general have come to be almost interchangeable terms or one informs the other (i.e., citing the bible as one‘s source for not supporting gay marriage or civil rights). The other important symptom of this religion/knowledge structure is its involvement with faith. One is asked to accept or consume knowledge without questioning its source or its logic as an expression of faith. As this construction is an intrinsic part of the American national identity, even the non-religious secular American may accept knowledge or the facts that fall under a particular subject heading, under the simple assumption that it must have begun with truth. Even in academia (i.e., collegiate and post collegiate level educational institution or educational research environment) the tangle between faith, belief and knowledge exists. One

11 can have faith in a particular theorist and thus builds a knowledge base upon whether or not that particular concept has been proven through experimentation. This can be particularly true in fields within the humanities that may or may not use experimentation or a protocol for proof within their curriculum (likely because it is not applicable to that form of knowledge). In subjects like literature and philosophy, academics use knowledge circulating within their field (which is usually comprised of an agreed upon set of academic ideologies) to comment on academic and/or non-academic work. Theories are proven and disproven through consensus, challenge and defense. Although the systems of knowledge inside and outside of academia are not that dissimilar there seems to be an understood delineation and hierarchy between those with access to knowledge at the collegiate level and above and those with access only to knowledge at the pre-collegiate level. Both seem to be thought of in separate, independent vacuums, but the reality is different. Ideology does not begin and end at the door to the entry of academia thus it is not resistant to systems of passive consumption and belief. The same Americans who were born and raised within the conflated system of faith, belief and knowledge attend colleges and some eventually become the scholars of the future. In essence we are all exposed to and consume the same indigestible portions, bright colors, fast service and sensory overloads of secular knowledge which means all Americans are exposed to the same ideological complications surrounding the history of the United States. The understanding that all self-defined Americans have consumed some level of the same punch is critical to the paper‘s theoretical path. Perhaps this is why Baudrillard contended there is not necessarily an ultimate truth behind systems of knowledge. In fact, he suggests knowledge itself is often an empty sign that masks the loss of reality (i.e., knowledge begins to exist for the purpose of the production of knowledge so there is no longer truth behind it; it is lost). Baudrillard views knowledge and the way it intersects with society as a series of simulacra, or a complex system of simulations, which operate together to create a hyperreal world that sedates its inhabitants into a mechanical and habitual consumption that reproduces the production and idea of knowledge unendingly. One is unable to see that reality has been lost because hyperreality is now reality. Baudrillard believes that there is no truth, but there is the simulacrum. In fact he begins Chapter 1, ―The Precession of Simulacra,‖ of Simulacra and Simulation with an epigraph that he attributes to the biblical chapter of Ecclesiastes, ―The

12 simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true‖ (Baudrillard 1732). The book of Ecclesiastes is often referred to as ―The Book of Wisdom.‖ In this chapter ―Ecclesiastes‖ outlines his exploration of all there is to know of life and the resulting advice that stems from his experiences in the world. The book of Ecclesiastes is about knowledge, yet Baudrillard‘s epigraph does not reflect the language patterns and style of the book of Ecclesiastes let alone the bible as a whole (King James Bible). Therefore the reference seems apropos until the reader examines the source of the epigraph, the book of wisdom as it appears in the bible, to discover the quoted text does not exist within that chapter of the Bible. Beyond the stylistic clues provided in the opening quote, Baudrillard also provides a footnote to the epigraph that reveals it is actually Baudrillard himself who penned this post-modern maxim to evoke the idea to be studied, ―simulacrum.‖ The purposeful disjuncture that Baudrillard creates immediately frames his text within the complication that arises from a working example of the ease with which knowledge can be manipulated. Before the text has begun, the tropes or mechanisms of knowledge within academic writing are exposed and highlighted to the reader. Instead of acting as side notes to the ―Precession of Simulacra,‖ the artifice of the epigraph and then the footnote becomes a foreshadow and symbol for the remainder of the text‘s main themes. The sudden self- consciousness of the reader‘s unquestioning consumption forces him or her into a position that requires an active engagement with the text. In breaking the unspoken agreement between consumer and producer of knowledge by manipulating trusted tropes of academic writing, Baudrillard immediately creates a dynamic self-reflexive text that illustrates in itself the principles it tries to describe. Baudrillard purposefully and irreverently changes the formula to awaken the reader and push him or her out of a passive reading. As the author, Baudrillard almost disclaims that moving forward the reader of this text as well as future texts should never merely trust the text or the author. He recreates the role of the reader as one who must be skeptical, questioning, disagreeable and disbelieving. In order for Baudrillard‘s text to work the reader should be uncomfortable and flexible as the author manipulates academic writing to force questions and subvert the essay itself. By creating this constant tension between reader and text and theory/metaphor and example, Baudrillard

13 deepens his definition of simulacrum to one defined by action as he moves into the body of the first chapter. Once inside the body of the text (i.e., the first paragraph) Baudrillard pushes the reader out to another text again using an allusion to Jorge Luis Borges‘ short story, ―On Exactitude in Science.‖ Borges‘ short story, like the opening epigraph, presents an active metaphor that exemplifies, rather than just tells of, the theory of simulacrum. ―On Exactitude in Science,‖ is a conspicuously short fable or parable (i.e., one paragraph in length) that is a blend of mystical realism and extended metaphor. It portrays a mythological empire where science‘s fault is found in its desire for ―exactitude‖ or precision. This exactitude overrides the purpose behind the science and consequently the reality of the object it produces in its work. The tale focuses on cartographers hired by the Empire to create a map of the kingdom. The ambition towards ―exactitude‖ convolutes the purpose of the creation of a map and the cartographers create instead a hyperbolized drawing that fits the exact size of the territory itself. In fact, the map is so large that it can be placed directly over the empire in its entirety, meeting each point within the town at the place it physically and actually resides. The intended map ceases to be a map and instead becomes a different and new object that happens to maintain characteristics of a map despite its hyperbolic size. As time passes, generations lose interest in the project and any memory of the cartographer‘s purpose of exactitude is lost. The thing that is left is the oversized, now decaying, map. Later generations live within, and around, the map-like drawing as it deteriorates onto and into the city without questioning how this dual landscape came to be. The map, which was never a true map, now lies in tatters as part of the landscape, ―The metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction, bearing witness to an Imperial pride and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, rather as an aging double ends up being confused with the real thing‖ (Baudrillard 1732). This is the simulacrum. The metaphor of the cartographer‘s obsession with exactitude which causes him to create a hyperreal map that is not functional as a map foreshadows Baudrillard‘s ultimate argument that knowledge reproduction paired with passive consumption and/or use plus time results in the loss of the real. Once masked or covered, the cartographer is forgotten and the reproduction and the original merge into one hyperreality that becomes a new object. This new object is reproduced again and again and again over

14 time. There is no longer an original version of the object behind the reproduction as each version slowly adds or removes a piece from the system. The simulacrum is the only standing truth or object. Baudrillard shows that the simulacrum is actually an ideological process where an original (i.e., the basic reality) is masked by a reproduced spectacle that simultaneously mimics and hides reality. Once reality is hidden, uncared for, and forgotten it begins to decompose. Reality is lost. It no longer exists, but the mimicking spectacle remains in place of reality. This then becomes hyperreality. Baudrillard uses this imagery of hyperreal life rising from the death of a state or object passing as reality as almost an epilogue to Borges‘ ―On Exactitude of Science.‖ Baudrillard‘s essay begins where Borges left off, Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory—PRECESSION OF SIMULACRUM—it is the map that engenders the territory and if we revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. (Baudrillard 1732- 1733) Baudrillard then takes this metaphorical understanding of simulacrum and he applies it to the transformation of images such as that of the representation of God. He explains the complex metaphors and examples of his opening by breaking the theory of simulacrum into a series of digestible phases that explain the steps of how an image might become hyperreality, ―This would be the successive phases of the image: --it is the reflection of a basic reality --it masks and perverts a basic reality --it masks the absence of a basic reality --it bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum‖ (Baudrillard 1736). Now that the foundation of the theory of simulacrum is set, Baudrillard applies it to real world examples to further illustrate his theory at work and to highlight the specific nuances of the overall structure of the system. He begins with a section entitled, ―The Divine Irreference of Images.‖ This loaded subtitle acts as an ideological umbrella that codes the simulacrum as images which do not represent the things for which they stand (i.e., the map, once perverted, is no longer a map or race, once perverted is no longer representative of race and identity at large). Beneath this umbrella Baudrillard specifies the discussion as he explores the specific differences between simulation and simulacrum. Baudrillard begins with the physical body as metaphor for the tangible object or agent that can create the irreferent images. He examines the phenomena of the psychosomatic that produces observable symptoms that are real to both

15 the onlooker and the patient, ―Objectively one cannot treat him as being either ill or not ill. Psychology and medicine stop at this point, forestalled by the illness's henceforth undiscoverable truth. For if any symptom can be produced, and can no longer be taken as a fact of nature, then every illness can be considered as simulatable and simulated, and medicine loses its meaning‖ (Baudrillard 1734). The primary consequence of the simulation of illness is the potential loss of meaning of the science and knowledge surrounding the subject of medicine. If symptoms can be produced to such a degree of realism that illness becomes real, then one cannot truly know what illness is and who is ill. Thus, this confusion may render the trusted knowledge of medicine moot. The psychosomatic produces treatable symptoms though he or she is not sick. The real has been lost. The simple successful act of the psychosomatic recalls the entire structure of knowledge. The problem here lies in the ability to pervert a basic reality through simulation that creates observable, or ―true,‖ symptoms. In pretending, no real symptoms are produced. The person is acting and thus what is true (i.e., that the person is not sick) remains intact. In simulation, something real is produced and this real thing acts like an original illness, thus it obscures any reality of illness and over time the thing produced is the illness itself which cannot be differentiated as real or not real even upon examination. Again Baudrillard shows that the simulacrum is the new reality. Baudrillard moves the psychosomatic subconscious physical manifestation of simulation to an example of conscious simulation. He considers the military and its conditions for discharge, ―Even military psychology draws back from Cartesian clarities and hesitates to draw the distinction between true and false, between ‗produced‘ and the authentic symptom‖ (Baudrillard 1734). Whether one produces symptoms intentionally or unintentionally the perceived illness remains unchanged (i.e., it is not influenced by the intention). Those experiencing the reality (whether they are producers or consumers) cannot distinguish between what is true or false because they are in the midst of the simulacrum and they produce simulations as they consume irreferent images. Thus when one consciously attempts to subvert through simulation, again the system that once had answers or meaning shuts down as what is true and what is simulated becomes conflated. The militarian who is the simulator of madness is maintaining hyperreality in order to achieve some purpose, but eventually, the purpose is benign and he or she is just maintaining the simulacrum as reality.

The deceiver begins to believe the reality of the created mask. Thus he or she becomes the insanity he or she was attempting to simulate. Both the psychosomatic and the conscious militarian have produced reality through simulation. Next, Baudrillard moves to God, divinity and tangible icons to discuss the way time affects reality produced through simulation. He claims that ―religion and the simulacrum of divinity‖ truly elaborates on the most complex or the highest versions of the simulacrum. From visible simulation to the simulation of faith and ideology, Baudrillard next attempts to show how the intangible easily becomes tangible in the realm of the simulacrum. Today, belief in any god need not be a pure act of faith. The only intangible realities of any god are the principles on which the faith was built. Most religions maintain simulations of god or faith through relics that create nostalgia or memory of the faith that one has in god (i.e., statues, rituals, priests, priestesses and prophets and places of worship). Essentially, Baudrillard suggests religion is the oldest of simulacrums. The devout worship, pray to and have faith in icons such as statues and books which are meant to represent god but which are also venerated as sacred within themselves. Even if the devout know that the object itself is not god they believe it is an extension of god and created by him or her for the purpose of also being held as sacred or part of the truth of that religious practice. Baudrillard explains, If they could have believed that these images only obfuscated or masked the Platonic Idea of God, there would have been no reason to destroy them. One can live with the idea of distorted truth. But their metaphysical despair came from the idea that the image didn't conceal anything at all, and that these images were in essence not images, such as an original model would have made them, but perfect simulacra, forever radiant with their own fascination. (1735) The icons that once simulated gods are in fact the only tangible and visible connections to faith and religion. If the icon is accepted or recognized by the worshipper merely as simulation, then what might simultaneously need to be accepted is the lack of a connection to anything larger than a manufactured object or place. When the difference between the object and the original is lost, and thus the difference between the real and the simulated, then all meaning disappears and the resulting relics of the simulacrum have no meaning behind them. In the next section, ―Ramses, or the Rosy-Colored Resurrection‖ Baudrillard moves and applies the ideology of the intangible becoming tangible objects to connect a theory of simulacrum to accumulation and thus consumption. He also moves from individual examples of simulation and simulacrum to an illustration of the system of simulacrum and how

17 specifically that results in hyperreality. He uses the story of the Tasaday people and the scholars who were anxious to apply the science of exactitude to them, ―Ethnology almost met a paradoxical death that day in 1971 when the Philippine government decided to return the few dozen Tasaday discovered in the jungle, where they had lived for eight centuries undisturbed by the rest of mankind, to their primitive state, out of reach of colonists, tourists and ethnologists‖ (Baudrillard 1736). The Tasaday are a ―discovered‖ people (i.e., they did not exist until ethnographer discovered them) who are shrouded in the notoriety of uncertainty regarding their realness or fakeness. They were known to be a remote tribe in the Philippines that had never had contact with civilization (i.e., any of the surrounding people or cities) until 1971. They were alleged to have maintained a separate language system that did not reflect the languages in the surrounding area. They had a diet that also did not reflect what was common to the region. They also practiced customs vastly different from that of the surrounding people. After much examination of their alleged virginal nature or hoaxed identity, in 1972 they were declared real by the Philippine government and the area in which they lived was declared a preserve to limit and discourage scientists and visitors. The truth of their existence is still unknown but their identity has become the spectacle of whether or not the Tasaday are real or fake. The tale that Baudrillard tells is of ideological colonization. The possibility of the Tasaday as an ―untouched‖ people was an ethnologist‘s dream of finding the original, primitive authenticity of a human. Once discovered, however, their untouched nature was destroyed. The more visitors and ethnologists that visited the site and studied the people resulted in more perversions or edits to the original and alleged authentic people. Like Borges‘ cartographers, the ethnologists search for the most pure human resulted in a tattered wasteland of hyperreality. The Tasaday were absorbed by the media who were fascinated by the spectacle of a real primitive human. They wrote stories, sent reporters and sought to market the image of the untouched people as sold to them by the ethnologists. This resulted in more investigation and the Tasaday were further invaded. By 1976, the Tasaday were so over touched, that it would be impossible to determine whether the hoax was real or fake and thus visitors were banned completely. Those who profited from the Tasaday simulacrum, however, did not want to lose the visitors and the money spent on preservation so a few feet from the site of the Tasaday caves, the Philippine government constructed a replica of them,

(One glances through a peephole at the authentic cave, and then one visits the reconstituted whole.) It is possible that the memory of the original grottoes is itself stamped in the minds of future generations, but from now on there is no longer any difference: the duplication suffices to render both artificial. (Baudrillard 1738) Since discovery, who the Tasaday were cannot be known and who they are now has been designed and applied by ethnologists and the Philippine government. In a sense, the Tasaday do not exist as people. We only know the simulacrum of the spectacle of these supposedly primitive bodies and their caves. Perhaps once real people, the Tasaday were pushed into invisibility and non-existence, ―The Indian thereby driven back into the ghetto, into the glass coffin of virgin forest, becomes the simulation model for all conceivable Indians from before ethnology‖ (Baudrillard 1737). The Tasaday are entombed as Indians in glass coffins as mummies collected within museums all over the world. Thus Baudrillard advances his metaphor to the purpose of the simulacrum‘s end that is the negation and disintegration of reality, We are fascinated by Ramses as Renaissance Christians were by the American Indians: those (human?) beings who had never known the word of Christ. Thus, at the beginning of colonisation, there was a moment of stupor and amazement before the very possibility of escaping the universal law of the Gospel. There were two possible responses: either to admit that this law was not universal, or to exterminate the Indians so as to remove evidence. (1739) The Tasaday were humans studied and displayed as relics so ethnologists could find/create the most pure human to prove that one existed and they did this to the demise of the reality of a group of tangible people who lived in the real world. The Tasaday were recreated as primitive Indians discovered by science and forever preserved by ethnologists within the simulated caves built by a government that wanted to encourage tourism. The simulation and then collection or compilation of artifacts reconstructs the past through scientific study and exactitude as a diorama of history that becomes real history to museum visitors. The discovery is confined under the auspices of protection of the artifact, yet the object‘s true purpose is consumption. Now, simulacrum and the narrative of reality it promotes are tied to both ideological and monetary value. Thus the objects on pedestals or encased in glass within a museum become sacred, protected, and impossible to edit or destroy by the lay people (i.e., not scientists, ethnologists, priests or prophets) who consume them.

Baudrillard‘s final image of the chapter is Disneyland. It is the fully realized hyperreal result of simulacrum and the metaphorical precursor of this paper to the proposition of simulacrum of race and identity. Disneyland is the ultimate hyperreality paired with imagination and the power of consumption. It is also an image that precisely describes the simulacrous state of race/identity in the United States. Real people are gone from the Disney created landscape and only cartoons and puppets remain. The masses come from all over the world to be lulled by baby roller coasters and stare at simulacrums of princesses, animals and monsters. The visitors are the real, paying to consume that which they know is a simulation. It is the ―Happiest Place on Earth‖ and all problems are solved with unreal caricatures. Disneyland is a spectacularized nostalgic past filled with Mylar balloons and simulacrums of the simulacrum. Everything is colorful, exaggerated and tangible to inspire desire, repulsion and consumption simultaneously. It is the perversion of a basic reality, the masking and loss of reality and the perpetuation and reproduction of the simulacrum itself. Disneyland is a hyperreal reality. It is simultaneously all real (i.e., it exists and occurs in the daily world in which we live and work) and all simulation. Americans are sated into consumption of spectacular icons of the simulations that fill every store in Disneyland (i.e., stuffed Mickey Mouse dolls, princess dresses, mermaid pencils and the like). These do not just exist within the park. They leak into the rest of the real world (i.e., outside the park) through off site stores, other parks, television shows and films. Disney also invisibly owns companies that do not bear the Disney name making their simulacrous presence more invasive that anyone can detect. It is both a highly visible and invisible force of capitalism. Within the walls of Disney, simulacrum is inescapable and unstoppable and the simulacrum of Disney is inescapable and unstoppable. It is a dynamic organism of a corporation grounded in nostalgia and Americana that cannot be lost even if Disneyland went out of business tomorrow. Disney itself is now nostalgia and lives within the collective conscious of the American psyche. There is no return to a past that existed before Disneyland. Thus, the simulacrum, if true, does in fact mask and lose reality through the creation of a hyperreality that is endlessly perpetuated and which can never fully be destroyed. It is reality with nothing real behind it so it becomes futile to solve the problems within the simulacrum without finding a solution or counterpoint to the simulacrum itself. What is the antidote to hyperreality? Perhaps it begins with the embrace of the simulacrum through the realization

20 and acceptance that it is the only reality many of us have known and it is the basis for the formation of who we are today.

CHAPTER 3

A NATION’S CAPTIVITY

Thus, at the beginning of colonisation, there was a moment of stupor and amazement before the very possibility of escaping the universal law of the Gospel. There were two possible responses: either to admit that this law was not universal, or to exterminate the Indians so as to remove evidence. –Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard established a system of the perversion of images that resulted in a hyperreal space where fictions are venerated then bought and sold as sacred truths or reality. Upon considering the compartmentalized studies of race and identity theory within academia (i.e., collegiate or post collegiate institutions of study and/or research) and noting the disjuncture with the academic picture of race/identity and the lay picture of race/identity, a fiction or unreality of race and identity seem apparent. Baudrillard‘s theory of simulacrum fit the apparent constructed and unreal nature of race/identity in the which led to the idea that an addition to the simulacrum that grew and gained power itself, might eventually act to overpower the previous messages that had been created. Race and identity in the United States is a hyperreality created through a series of simulations of histories and images via the written word (i.e., history, literature or sociology) and visual media systems. To apply Baudrillard‘s theory to race and identity this paper must begin by identifying the first phase of the simulacrum (i.e., the perversion of a basic reality) at the birth of the representation of race/identity in the United States which coincides with the birth, or beginning of the nation. This paper will begin in the purported reality of the 1600s that was pieced together from early writings, artist‘s rendering and court or law documents. The majority of Americans schooled in the educational system of the United States had their first exposure to early America through the narratives of Christopher Columbus and Thanksgiving when macaroni noodles are pasted to drawings of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Each November children often re-enact the ultimate American symbol of racial harmony, a feast shared by the pilgrims and the ―Indians.‖ Ironically, although there are parcels of truth to the peaceful

22 depictions of harmony, this beloved symbol of equality and sharing is also one of the symbols of the mythology of race/identity in the United States. In the age of Google and through ideological advancement in some curriculums, by the time high school closes many young Americans have become aware that Columbus may have been a tyrannical figure who enslaved and murdered native peoples and that the great and peaceful Thanksgiving feast shared between colonists and native Americans is a fiction. The narrative of the early American colonies that is now understood is that pioneer life was one of hardship, battle and disease for all who lived there including the native people but it is also a life which has been pieced together by historians over time. The fictions surrounding the early Americas were likely garnered from the first theories of historians who collected the artifacts and thus created the picture of race/identity. Using some of these early documents this paper will focus on the first American settlement in Virginia in 1690 in order to try and piece together the story of where race/identity began in the United States. The early years of studies in history used the found writings and drawings from the colonial and pioneering days to piece together a picture of the United States without necessarily considering possible biases based on the producers identity and level of privilege. As time passed modern ethnic and gender theorists pointed to the inaccuracies like the absence of non-white, non-heterosexual, and non-Christian representation in history curriculums throughout the United States. Years of pushing called attention to the problem of bias in regards to the writers of history so addendums were made to the existing text and paragraphs were added to books. This dynamic of race/identity as addendum has endured time and become the reality reflected in the normative organization of textbooks and curriculums at the pre-collegiate level. Teachers then, act as priests or prophets of the historical text and translate or interpret its contents to their students. Some may choose to add more units on diversity while others might not. Thus, although changes to recognition of biases and inaccuracies as present in historical narrative were made, the underlying structure and organization of the narrative remains intact. The structures of race/identity follow historical narrative structures. In the 1600s expressions of race/identity were limited by access to literacy. Thus first person representation is secondary to the first impressions of race made through court records, letters and captivity narratives. These original depictions of race were the beginning of the simulacrum of race and identity in the United States. These

23 were and are the authentic first moments when other races or identities were identified in the United States and it was, as Baudrillard‘s theory describes a perversion to some basic reality and what that basic reality looked like is now impossible to know. The authentic original of race/identity is a simulacrum that dictated race/identity as a polarized structure between white privilege and otherness. Africans were non-existent or nameless objects and Native Americans were savages, heathens, not human and certainly not American. The simulacrum of race/identity was not real, yet it became the accepted reality for the following hundreds of years. Writing in the Jamestown colony in Virginia came in the form of letters, diaries, court documents and census documents. These typically secular and functional forms of writing were the records of early life which were used to build the simulacrous narrative of America accepted and consumed as reality today. As one of the first settlements, the Virginia colony specifically, produced much of the written words used to piece together a picture of early American life (i.e., what they did, who they were, what hardships they endured and what systems of government or law they had). Although forms of writing like shipping records and census lists seem mundane even they reveal the inaccuracies or conflicts in the reporting of race/identity in 1600 America caused by unrecognized privilege and thus bias. The presence of Africans and the role of Native Americans are most relevant at this juncture. In the 1600s Africans first appeared as cargo in a letter by John Rolfe. African-Americans began in obscurity and namelessness. In early Virginia John Rolfe was the official recorder/reporter of daily life and a trusted authority in the Jamestown colony (―John Rolfe‖). Thus when a Dutch ship containing Africans landed on the Virginia colony coast, it was John Rolfe who documented the events in a letter of report to England. He wrote this to Sir Edwin Sandys, a politician and founder of the Virginia settlement of Jamestown, About the latter end of August, a Dutch man of Warr of the burden of a 160 tunes arriued at Point-Comfort, the Camandors name Capt Jope, his Pilott for the West Indies one Mrr Maramduke an Englishman. They mett wth the Trer in their passage lost one another. He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes. (―The Thomas Jefferson Papers‖) Except for this letter no other narrative or record tells anything more about the presence of Africans in the colony in 1619. PBS‘s online journey through slavery Africans in America elaborates, ―It's not clear if the Africans are considered slaves or indentured servants… Records of 1623 and 1624 list them as servants, and indeed later records show increasing

24 numbers of free blacks, some of whom were assigned land. On the other hand, records from gatherings do not indicate the marital status of the Africans (Mr., Miss, etc.)‖ (―Arrival of the First Africans‖). In fact, history typically reports that African-Americans and slavery did not exist until the 1680s when Africans were first associated with the term slave through the written legal binding of lifetime servitude given to a servant by the name of John Punch. Records of early Virginia law show that by 1640 at least one African-American6 in Virginia had legally received the sentence of slavery as punishment for running away from his servitude with two others. Although he ran with two other servants, only John Punch received the burden of slavery. The other servants were not ―negro‖ as reflected in their sentencing, Whereas Hugh Gwyn hath by order from this Board Brought back from Maryland three servants formerly run away from the said Gwyn, the court doth therefore order that the said three servants shall receive the punishment of whipping and to have thirty stripes apiece one called Victor, a dutchman, the other a Scotchman called James Gregory, shall first serve out their times with their master according to their Indentures, and one whole year apiece after the time of their service is Expired. By their said Indentures in recompense of his Loss sustained by their absence and after that service to their said master is Expired to serve the colony for three whole years apiece, and that the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere. (―July 9, 1640‖) The reason for this differentiation from other servants during this time seems unclear, but the recognition of difference is blatantly present. From this point in 1640, laws against ―negroes‖ grew exponentially into the 1800s. In 1705 particularly, a series of laws concerning the treatment of slaves and those in servitude were passed in Virginia (Henning).7 These laws sometimes referred to as the slave codes of 1705, outlined parameters for relationships between white Americans and slaves, what to do if slaves/servants run away and other such details of slave rights. Although this heightened discrimination against one particular race sparked a national debate that yielded slave narratives written by abolitionists, the concern for this paper is the linear movement of the image of African from non-existent to nameless

6 Here African American is used to indicate an African in America settling and pioneering in the United States in the 1600‘s. It does not necessarily indicate that he/she was born in the United States or related to the modern term ―African-American.‖ 7 See pages 252-55; 116-17, 170, 260, 270, 481-82; 3: 86-88, 447-49, 453-54.

―negro‖ to servant to slave and the fact that this was a condition particular to people who were African or of African descent. While ―African‖ and ―slave‖ were becoming synonymous, depictions of Native Americans were also significantly contributing to the simulacrum of race. Works, such as Mary Rowlandson‘s ―Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson‖ (1670), had authors who were not necessarily writing with the intention of addressing a mass audience or of creating an ideological frame for the representation of race/identity. Writers during this time came from a background of writing personal items such as diaries or letters and records such as those used in court or to report daily events in the early colonies. Mary Rowlandson‘s work represents a departure from these genres of writing and a move toward audience, publication, demand and monetary gain as related to writing and narrative. The captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson has been specifically chosen due to the popularity of her work at the time of its production. Initially written for the purpose of educating her friends and family on the dangers they might face in captivity, Rowlandson‘s narrative of captivity is considered by some to be America‘s first novel. It transcended distribution to family and friends to the general public in both the United States and England. Altogether between 1670 and 1740 Rowlandson published six editions of her text selling over 1000 copies (Derounian). The popularity and consumption of her narrative makes it particularly relevant to the examination of the way in which a basic reality of race/identity was written in the 1600s. In fact, Rowlandson‘s text was advertised and sold using its references to ―heathens‖ and Rowlandson‘s ―cruel‖ treatment by the Native Americans, ―This advertisement is longer than the one appearing in America, and it includes several other sales features. For example, the description of the Indians as ‗Heathens‘ and their treatment of Rowlandson as ‗cruel and inhumane‘ heightens the sensationalism‖ (Derounian 249). Rowlandson‘s work is intrinsic for an examination of early writing to pin point the transition from a lack of identification to an exaggerated characterization of race and identity against the backdrop of the United States‘ movement towards slavery and the abolitionist debates surrounding this movement. So the ―Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson‖ begins in a fashion typical of the time. Rowlandson uses the first sentence of her narrative to establish the inextricable connection between her writing and the word of God, ―The

26 sovereignty and goodness of GOD, together with the faithfulness of his promises displayed, being a narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, commended by her, to all that desires to know the Lord's doings to, and dealings with her‖ (Rowlandson). This invocation of the Bible and the verses that appear throughout is a critical component of literary works and laws during this time. Christianity versus non-Christianity was often the basis for lawful and sanctioned maltreatment of both Native Americans and African- American slaves, And also be it enacted, by the authority aforesiad, and it is hereby enacted, That all servants imported and brought into this country, by sea or land, who were not christians in their native country, (except Turks and Moors in amity with her majesty, and others that can make due proof of their being free in England, or any other christian country, before they were shipped, in order to transporation hither) shall be accounted and be slaves. (Henning 447) The Bible and Christianity were as ideologically authoritative as scholars/academics of today. Thus, Rowlandson begins her narrative by consecrating her work in truth and the side of Christianity. The captivity narrative‘s constant allusion to the Bible also connects the text in its entirety to the overall themes of the holy text. It provides the lens through which the reader should view the secular text before them. Rowlandson‘s main theme and perhaps the theme of captivity narratives at large is that of good versus evil. This is also consequently, central to the base construction of race/identity as a polarity between whiteness and blackness. The good and the evil of Rowlandson narrative of captivity are identified within the first paragraphs as her report or memoir opens en media res to the stark, frightening images of houses aflame and colonists (i.e., Christians) bloodied. The reader enters on the side of the victims of the destruction. Rowlandson then identifies the cause of the chaos by letting the reader see the violence unfold, No sooner were we out of the house, but my brother-in-law (being before wounded, in defending the house, in or near the throat) fell down dead, whereat the Indians scornfully shouted, and hallowed, and were presently upon him, stripping off his clothes, the bullets flying thick, one went through my side, and the same (as would seem) through the bowels and hand of my dear child in my arms. One of my elder sisters' children, named William, had then his leg broken, which the Indians perceiving, they knocked him on [his] head. Thus were we butchered by those merciless heathen, standing amazed, with the blood running down to our heels. (Rowlandson Preface)

The role and character of the midnight attackers is concretized in writing so non-Christians or ―Heathens‖ become inhuman monsters who break apart families with kidnapping and death and who indiscriminately murder ―good‖ men, women and children. Rowlandson‘s vivid imagery does not allow the reader to think about any possibility other than sympathizing with her and her camp. Rowlandson breaks the remainder of the narrative into twenty ―Removes‖ or journeys and before the first remove even begins, the reader knows undoubtedly that the enemy is not Christian and he or she is an indiscriminate and monstrous killer. By the end of the first remove, Rowlandson has named the aggressors ―Indians‖ and ―barbarous creatures.‖ Thus the perversion of Native Americans and race/identity at large begins here in the mid to late 1600s. As Rowlandson moves through her removes she continues to add pejorative adjectives to the description of her captors that contrasts, or differentiates, them further and deeper as she depicts them within their own practices and cultural norms, ―Oh the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell‖ (Rowlandson, First Remove). Native American culture, and not just the individual people who happen to be of that ethnic group, practice norms that resemble a biblical hell of practices wholly oppositional to all symbols of Christianity. According to Rowlandson Native Americans are loud, associated with night, darkness and blackness and they sing and dance hedonistically. Although Rowlandson does let some humanity slip into her portrayal of Indians in later removes (i.e., they have children, their people are also attacked and they are also fighting for survival) her constant loud and hyperbolic admonitions of them do not allow the reader to focus on the contradiction within the characterizations. By the harrowing tale‘s end, Native Americans are the undeniable villain. Like the Tasaday of Baudrillard‘s ―Precession of Simulacra,‖ Indians are entombed in the simulacrum of heathenism and savagery started by Rowlandson and later perpetuated by the film genre, the Western. Thus in 1619 as the first instance of writing that depicted an ethnicity other than whiteness gained popularity, the first phase of simulacrum was achieved. Again, at this time in history most knowledge came irrefutably from the bible. The inextricable connection between religious faith and knowledge in the 1600s concretized the representations of race/ethnicity as factual and irrefutable. Religion was tied to early law thus it was widely accepted by those who associated themselves with Christianity and the right

28 side of the law. Although this option was afforded only to those who were white or could pass as white. As time passed in American history and the original documents that trace our heritage were collected by historians and museums and placed inside temperature controlled glass boxes for preservation, the relics of history became revered and sacred as Baudrillard observed in Simulacra and Simulation--―The Precession of Simulacra,‖ The West is seized with panic at the thought of not being able to save what the symbolic order had been able to conserve for forty centuries, but out of sight and far from the light of day. Ramses does not signify anything for us, only the mummy is of an inestimable worth because it is what guarantees that accumulation has meaning. Our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past in plain view. To this end the pharaohs must be brought out of their tomb and the mummies out of their silence. To this end they must be exhumed and given military honors. They are prey to both science and worms. (1739) According to Baudrillard history needs to be consumed in public so that the shared fiction recreated within museum walls can become universal and impenetrable. Of course history does edit itself when society pushes and scientists and historians assert that an error has been made as more documents are found. Unfortunately the found documents of race reveal the same narrative of people as objects who were bought, sold and murdered under the auspices of divine right, protection and American progress. Even the early instances of writing from a first person Native American or African came through the filter of a conversion to Christianity and the filter of language taught to them by the colonizer. All of these documents and representations framed by those of the original colonies, and thus the original polarities, were encased within museums and institutions nationally to be consumed both for educational purposes and for profit. Work in studies of ethnicity, gender and sexuality have been extensive and valuable but they have continuously and singularly addressed the simulacrum of race/identity as if it is the reality of it. Thus underlying prejudice and discrimination remain vibrant and study of race remains polarized, and it then becomes compartmentalized. Brilliant theorists have detailed the problems of race within their communities but the brilliance remains predominantly for the benefit of a specific group and it is often stuck within the walls of academia. For example, bell hooks speaks to the transgressions in representation of African- American women and Robert Takaki outlines the history of Asian-Americans adding their

29 narrative histories to the fabric of the American race/identity territory. Yet, theorists like these seem to continually address the categories of race/identity as they have been defined by the inauthentic early coding of race. They write or speak directly to one or another within the diasporas of race/identity, yet they may not as often speak to and about the larger problematic system of the simulacrum specifically. The infrastructure of race/identity in The United States is a category that does not fit within these spheres. The full answer lies in the willingness to identify and accept that Americans have been consuming a simulacrum is one of categories. This underlying and constant structure has dictated and continues to dictate the way in which even scholars and historians have constructed discourse to subvert and address the problems of race and identity in America. The underlying and constant structure created in the early Americas is that of ―us vs. them.‖ The latter category has come to be occupied by many types of ―others.‖ The infrastructure of race/identity truly flourished as a system of black vs. white which evolved from the depictions of both Native Americans and Africans as it intersected with changes in slavery law, abolitionist rhetoric and the overall growth and eventual union of a nation. Native Americans as the ―evil‖ of a biblically styled narrative were absorbed by Africans and added to their already negated construction as nameless or slave. Just as with Baudrillard‘s ethnologists, truths that can be traced back through history take on an increasing sense of validity and sacredness as they near the origin. The knowledge and ideology surrounding subjects that are time-worn like religion, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and politics have a layer of personal experience that signifies them as important to an individual‘s personal history. Each of these subjects represents a system of belief passed from generation to generation and thus each carries with it connections to familial ancestry and thus truths. Subjects like religion and ethnicity thus inspire reverence and veneration and perpetuation because they represent not the thing itself but time, family allegiance, religious belief, personal experience, and national allegiance. Although the subjects of religion, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and politics should be viewed as complex issues, often times, due to their affiliation with feelings of family and identity they becomes a matter of right and wrong. A subject such as race in the United States is the example for a polarized and polarizing sacred subject matter that does not seem to advance beyond the existing patterns of discourse, belief systems or legislation. Race/identity and religion began intertwined.

Then, through the spectacularization of the debate over slavery and the resulting wars, race/identity also became tangled with nation, state and regional ideologies. When nation and religion become involved, familial influence is always present. Race and identity in the United States lives in the center of this tangle thus it often lives on the highest of sacred pedestals. The fervor surrounding opinions regarding race/identity mimics the blind faith of the religiously devout that causes belief without examination. It is time to look back and unpack the history of race and identity and the discourse surrounding it as a simulacrum in order to truly see that there is no authentic original of race/identity different than that of the fictional construction of polarity and negation. When one looks back to the first American writings a sacred authentic self for non-white, non-heterosexual, non-Christian people was not recorded therefore it cannot be found. All American bodies (i.e., white, heterosexual, Christian and those who are not) were designed by the first observations of those with the access and the ability to write (i.e., white, heterosexual, Christian and those who are not). Even by the time of the Harlem Renaissance the normativity of representation from those whose race/identity was othered was accepted, race/identity still remained within the parameters of the simulacrum of race/identity and so the hyperreal perversion of images was allowed to continue unmarred.

CHAPTER 4

THE MOVE TO BLACKFACE AND THE BROADENING OF THE SIMULACRUM

The image of race in visual media systems began with blackface. It is the precise metaphor through which to view chapter four which examines the modern intersection of the history of race and the media as part of a theory of a simulacrum of race/identity. We began with the basic perversion of an image through the history and early writing of the United States. The connection between the privilege of literacy, Christianity and whiteness were realized. Here the images of race/identity advance in perversion and become entangled with an infinite system of reproduction, consumption and wealth. This chapter applies Baudrillard‘s third and fourth phases of the simulacrum to race/identity, ―--it masks the absence of a basic reality --it bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum‖ (1736). The time span between 1848 and the civil rights period in the 1960s represent an embattled and transformative period of race/identity in the United States. During this period the civil war began and ended,8 Jim Crow laws were passed,9 and film and television were created and popularized. The United States was in a time of social and technological upheaval that rapidly added to, and further perverted, the polarized infrastructure of the simulacrum of race/identity as established in the 1600s. The additions to the simulacrum did not just come in the form of negative representations of race/identity it also came in the form of unsuccessful attempts to subvert the simulacrum that merely subverted the symptoms, again leaving the infrastructure intact. In fact, as the details of equal rights and segregation were fought and the Harlem Renaissance writers wrote prolifically both creatively and theoretically, the images of race/identity maintained their principle functions as either oppositions to whiteness or negations to it (i.e., invisibility). From about 1705 and the invocation of slavery as a

8 The American civil war began in 1861 and ended in 1865. 9 The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965.

32 condition of blackness, the infrastructure of the simulacrum of race/identity became the spectacle of battle between blackness and its supporters and whiteness and its supporters. All other ―others‖ (i.e., other ethnicities, gay Americans, and other religiously affiliated Americans) receded into varying degrees of invisibility. This invisibility through lack of marketability and lack of spectacle undulated per group throughout the years post-civil rights as political battles and popular television, film and literature became more diverse in its representation and particular producers rose to success or consumption by large audiences (i.e., Amy Tan, John Waters, Steven Spielberg, etc.). Yet, although diversity would increase it would predominantly remain within the polarized parameters, or rules, of the simulacrum of race/identity. The simulacrum of race identity, throughout this time of change and growth, truly gained momentum in the concealment that any reality surrounding racial representation had been irrevocably lost. It was during this time period that American consumers became lost in the hyperreality of race/identity. It is critical, then, to track the evolution of the image of race (i.e., the struggle between blackness and whiteness) in visual media systems as it intersected with politics surrounding race/identity during this time.10 Donald Bogle‘s text Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks examines the archetypes of blackness that have occupied media spaces since 1903, The year was 1903. The mechanic-turned-movie-director was Edwin S. Porter. The twelve-minute motion picture was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And the new dimension was Uncle Tom himself…After the Tom‘s debut, there appeared a variety of black presences bearing the fanciful names of the coon, the tragic mulatto, the mammy, and the brutal black buck. All were character types used for the same effect: to entertain by stressing Negro inferiority. (3-4) Bogle‘s archetypes can certainly be seen throughout the history of both television and film, but his suggestion that the purpose of these caricatures is for entertainment and it is the willful need to stress the inferiority of the ―Negro‖ is inaccurate if a theory of a simulacrum of race/identity is true. What his summation does not recognize is the symbiosis between whiteness and blackness, the tension between the two, as essential to the polarized

10 The focus will be on race specifically and blackness even more specifically because during the time period between 1705 and the civil rights movement, slavery shifted the American focus to the spectacle of the battle surrounding slavery, which was a battle between African Americans and White Americans starting in 1705 when slavery was specifically applied to ―Negroes.‖

33 infrastructure, or core, of the simulacrum of race. Whiteness, just as blackness, was created by years of representation in writing and film although on the side of privilege. The marginalization of races and subjectivities outside of this foundational polarized structure are made invisible by the structure of the predominant representation and symbiosis of both whiteness and blackness as a polarized framework. In contemporary representation, other races often are eventually even forced or choose to identify with the spectrum of caricatures of whiteness or of blackness in order to rise to visibility (i.e., the transformation of Rita Hayworth from Rita Cansino; Nericcio). Thus in examining the history of film and television the symbiotic organic machine of the simulacrum of race/identity (i.e., a term that should call to mind the construction of all American identities in inextricable interaction) should be the frame for all arguments within this paper. So, in the early 1900s, during the birth of film, which begat television in about the 1930s literature and narrative were adapted to the screen (i.e., the existing canonical frame of literature was absorbed into the burgeoning structure of film). Representation of race/identity in popular writing and literature led to its representation on film. Uncle Tom‘s Cabin is an example of a work made into multiple film adaptations yet none achieved the abolitionist goal of the written text. Each, in fact, helped to create the archetypes of blackness of which Bogle speaks. By 1910, some short films which featured all black casts were beginning to come into existence, yet they also, maintained the archetypes and in the end, since they fell outside of Hollywood, they were compartmentalized into race movies rather than becoming part of the options within the general movie landscape. Although these race films employed African-American actors they would cast for color (i.e., lighter skinned women were cast as the tragic mulatto, dark skinned women were the mammy, etc.). Again when attempts at subversion seek to respond to the symptoms of the simulacrum, such as black actors are not employed, then only additions are made to the external simulacrous mass and the polarized core dictating the rest remains untouched. This may be the reason that despite the end of the civil war, the emancipation of all slaves, the presence of the NAACP and the work of abolitionists D.W. Griffith‘s Birth of a Nation was released and embraced by thousands. As Rowlandson‘s captivity narrative wrote the bodies of race/identity into the simulacrum, D.W. Griffith, in conjunction with Thomas Dixon Jr. the author of ―The Clansmen: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan,‖ spectacularized these bodies and entrapped them within a

34 burgeoning capital driven industry. The simulacrum, once tied to film realized Baudrillard‘s theory that the simulacrum masks the loss of reality causing the simulacrum to become real. As time passes the cartographer‘s art is forgotten and, once trapped the within the screen, the spectacle of the simulacrum, or race/identity, can literally be bought and sold. Not only is the simulacrum of race trafficked outside of the halls of academia, as time passed film scholars sang Griffiths praises, ―It [Birth of a Nation] altered the entire course and concept of American moviemaking, developing the close-up, cross-cutting, rapid-fire editing, the iris, the split screen shot, and realistic and impressionistic lighting‖ (Bogle, African-Americans or Toms, Coons 11). Birth of a Nation is the birth of film and the re-birth of the simulacrum as a technological and mechanical organism. Interestingly, Griffith‘s chosen narrative structure mimics many of the effects of Rowlandson‘s harrowing tale of captivity. The three hour silent epic film with an intermission tells the story of good versus evil in the strife of the civil war landscape. Like Rowlandson, Griffith begins with an invocation to the literary spirits of the bible and Shakespeare. Unlike Rowlandson, Griffith includes this filmic epigraph to venerate his work against the powerless NAACP protests to the film‘s content. Griffith‘s preface is entitled, ―A Plea for the Art of the Motion Picture.‖ It states, ―We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do deman; as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of virtue—the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word—that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare‖ (Birth of a Nation). The film depicts a Southern family and a Northern family tied by kinship and a heroine in love with the wrong side during a time of war. The Southern family lives in an untouched North Carolina town which according to the film is still at peace because the emancipation proclamation had yet to be signed. This film begins pre-war and then imagines the takeover of American society by African-Americans once the Emancipation Proclamation is signed. The savior or hero of the film is the Ku Klux Klan. They ride in by the hundreds and restore order to America. They even stand outside the voting booths as African-Americans vote in order to ensure they vote correctly. The crowd rejoices and this plate is shown, ―Dare we dream of a golden day when the bestial War shall rule no more.‖ The final images begin. The first of two scenes fills half of the camera shot with a pile of dead bodies while the other side of the screen shows clawing and shouting people undulating in an animalistic desperation to

35 be saved. The second scene imposes a figure of Jesus onto a scene filled with literal whiteness. People dance around freely draped in gauzy white togas dancing slowly and joyously. The true focus of inclusion of D.W. Griffiths three hour film in this paper is not the narrative plot, which follows the long and winding epic journey of KKK heroism. What is most striking about this film is its reception by audiences in 1915. Just as Rowlandson‘s captivity narrative, Birth of a Nation enjoyed extreme success at the time of its release. The film does not use metaphor, symbol, or other narrative tropes to be suggestive about themes and the ultimate moral. Birth of a Nation uses the spectacle of the simulacrum (i.e., the spectacle of the polarization of whiteness and blackness) to gain a visibility and popularity by audiences. Griffith not only manipulated spectacle to exploit the ideology and images in the film, but he also used spectacle in his use of filmic tropes and the marketing/advertising of the film. On the eve of Birth of a Nation‘s first pre-viewing, Griffith released an advertisement, An ad in the Riverside Enterprise of December 30 heralded The Clansman as 'the greatest of all motion pictures' and said it was made by D.W. Griffith, 'the world's foremost motion picture producer', and that it would be accompanied by a seven- piece orchestra.8…Although the theater usually charged a dime, seats would be offered at 20 and 30¢. In Riverside, Griffith first demonstrated his gift at publicity. His ads claimed that the film had taken 'six months' to shoot, had cost $500,000, and featured 25,000 soldiers, 50 companies of cavalry, and 25 batteries of artillery. (Lennig 119) According to interviews with both Griffith and Dixon, both were aware of the power of the medium and their goal to ―write history by lightening‖ (Lennig 122). It is important now to broaden the picture and view the simulacrum of race within visual media systems as well as within the world of writing. Booker T. Washington and James Weldon were writing during this time and it was the eve of the Harlem Renaissance. In the time period surrounding the release of Birth of a Nation African-Americans had definitively begun writing about their own experiences in their own words. They had also formed the NAACP and entered into the American political arena (i.e., Booker T. Washington). Socially, this progress was significant. In terms of the image of race, however, writing, like the visual media, continued to unknowingly support the simulacrum of race. During the Harlem Renaissance, about1919 to the 1930 (Gates and McKay) narrative, theory, racism, visual media systems and the civil rights movement all began to collide. Just as other

36 forms of subversion, the Harlem Renaissance simply edited the hyperreality of race without addressing the reproducing system of the simulacrum. In response to the simulacrum of blackness shrouded in slavery, idiocy, thievery, carnality, etc., the writers and critics of Harlem began their attack by attempting to create a unified body of African-American Literature which could be used to uplift or subvert the negative icon of blackness born from the base constructions of Early American battles and slavery that the years before had brought, Each was dedicated to social and political progress and uplift for black Americans and to the development of literary and artistic traditions of which the typical readers might be proud. Du Bois and the Crisis took the lead in calling for a cultural renaissance among blacks that would prove the genius of black America to the greater world, and especially to white Americans, who presumably would be moved to treat blacks with greater justice and compassion. (Rampersad 931) Writers attempted to create works that adhered to newly imagined, distinctly African- American ideologies of language, truth, identity and racial propaganda. They sought a new categorical bucket for the African-American image (i.e., not negative but positive). Again one aspect, or symptom, of the simulacrum is addressed for some visible and external advances, but the core of the hyperreality remains strong. The second piece of DuBois‘ concern as well as that of most writers at the time of the Harlem Renaissance was the search for truth, reality or authenticity as a means to racial justice. It is the mythology of origin that hopes that beneath the created icons the real version of the self exists (i.e., the myth of the icons of god as explored in the ―Precession of Simulacra‖). Throughout Criteria of Negro Art, Du Bois points to ―Truth‖ as a link to freedom and justice, ―The apostle of Beauty thus becomes the apostle of Truth and Right not by choice but by inner and outer compulsion. Free he is but his freedom is ever bounded by Truth and Justice; and slavery only dogs him when he is denied the right to tell the Truth or recognize an ideal of Justice‖ (757). By capitalizing the ―T‖ in truth, Du Bois suggests the importance and centrality of a ―true‖ image. He assumes the existence of a true black image that exists somewhere in the recesses of American history far beneath the years of construction through the privilege of those who are not African-American. According to the model of the simulacrum, this search is futile, ―When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality; of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity. There is an escalation of the true

37 and lived experience…a strategy of the real, neo-real and the hyperreal whose universal double is a strategy of deterrence‖ (Baudrillard 1736). Birth of a Nation and others hoped this ―Truth‖ may be the answer to overturning the violence and slavery historically used to define blackness in the collective conscience of the United States, but of course they could not account for the idea that all of the history of race was and has been built on an empty mask of savagery. The 1920s-1940s saw internal opposition to the critical traditions set forth by the pioneers of the Harlem Renaissance. In further attempts to find and shape a more realistic picture of an authentic origin Langston Hughes loudly disputed the fledgling principles of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes believed instead that the vision of black uplift Du Bois and his counterparts put forth had been manipulated and defined by the influences of white money that funded much of the writing movement, The Negro artist works against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstanding from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites. ‗O be respectable, write about nice people, show how good we are,‘ say the Negroes. ‗Be stereotyped, don‘t go too far, don‘t shatter our illusions about you, don‘t amuse us too seriously. We will pay you,‘ say the whites. (1315) Unknown to Hughes, a predominantly white burgeoning Hollywood industry was funding negative imagery as well. Again, gains were made externally, but the simulacrum remained unmoved internally. Hughes mocked the optimistic aims of the Harlem Renaissance that strove to create positive images of African-Americans that could erase historical images of servitude and death. A theory of simulacrum does befit this portion of Hughes idea in that once the spectacle has been created it is alive in memory, nostalgia, and all the stores that still sell its wares (i.e., if Disneyland was lost tomorrow, the memory would live on for generation until it was reproduced anew and metamorphosed). Hughes further highlighted the point that critics and writers of the Harlem Renaissance were concerned with creating an image of blackness that would fit or be accepted by a white audience (i.e., an image that would not discomfort or inconvenience white audiences). He makes this criticism in order to suggest that what is really needed is a cohesive black identity that exists outside of a viewing audience (Leitch 1311) which assumes that at the moment in which he writes a black identity within the real world community of individual did not exist. A claim such as this reveals that Hughes, although brilliant, also lived within the simulacrum and so could not see that he was ascribing to the symptoms of racial construction himself.

Hughes not only believed in the need for a cohesive black identity outside of an audience, he also believed that this identity should be one that included poverty or a working class status. He contends the upper class African-American is connected, or more precisely, more akin to whiteness, ―And so the word white comes to be unconsciously a symbol of all the virtues…One sees immediately how difficult it would be for an artist born in such a home to interest himself in interpreting the beauty of his own people…He is taught rather not to see it, or if he does, to be ashamed of it when it is not according to Caucasian patterns‖ (Hughes 1314). Again all of Hughes‘ assertions are true and reflective of life within the hyperreality of race, but they do not problematize the simulacrum of race/identity as a whole. As Du Bois bled into Hughes the 1940s arrived as did the advent of television. The visual image of race/identity moved from outside the home to inside the home. The images could now be not only associated with a national consciousness, but also memories of home and time spent with family. The sacred money generating box launched its initial broadcasts in the 1940s and by the end of the 1950s it was increasingly a staple in American homes. Following the simulacrous pattern of the early days of writing and film, television initially rendered black as minimal or invisible and thus the visual tide shifted backward. In writing, however, Richard Wright expanded on Hughes‘ sentiments and began exploring ideologies of propaganda combined with, what is now termed, urban realism (i.e., a depiction of the black urban street culture that flourished at this time), ―Wright, in effect, rose to execute his own blueprint by rejecting what Locke saw as the ‗decadent aestheticism‘ of Harlem Renaissance writers and by turning to the ‗nourishing‘ formula of Marxism and social protest‖ (McDowell and Spillers 1320). Again, the previous constructions of blackness are rejected only to be replaced by a new oppositional ideology that makes only external gains. Wright‘s, almost militant, stance influenced many other artists during the time and thus a new dimension was added to the diagram of the identity of blackness, ―The opinion widely shared, then as now, was that Wright‘s Native Son had single-handedly birthed and shaped a new agenda, establishing for African-American writing a center of gravity that combined a gritty urban realism with a ‗lyrical‘ naturalism that documented the harsh realities of urban living for black Americans‖ (McDowell and Spillers 1321). Although these edits moved toward an improved and more diverse portrayal of blackness, each accidently created a new archetype through the

39 adherence and commitment to locating that single authentic figure of blackness that should stand for the whole. Of course, since all manifestations of change were enacted within the confines of a larger structure of polarity each new version of black identity was infected with old caricatures (i.e., militant could be attacking, vengeful or savage; poor could be slave). It is important to point out one more significant detail here. During this time period of blackness as militant, poor and ―gritty,‖ the image of the black woman does not seem a part of the authentic black figure so thus the archetype deepens to blackness as male (i.e., the caricatures of Asian men might be seen as not male in contrast to the caricature of blackness when trying to fit other subjectivities into the polarized frame of the simulacrum). At this juncture, the conversation must return to the visual media system and in particular the television boom of the 1950s. The 1950s and the prevalence of television in homes cast blackness within the consumptive framework of market value. Eric Watts and Mark Orbe in ―The Spectacular Consumption of ‗True‘ African-American Culture: ‗Wassup‘ with the Budweiser Guys?‖ unknowingly identify the principle of the simulacrum of race in their studies of television, Rather than being organized around the exchange of goods based upon actual use values, the spectacle establishes mass consumption as a way of life. When sign value replaces use value as the foundation of being in this fashion, human beings need no longer be concerned with discovering the essence of Dasein11, for ‗true‘ nature of one‘s being is up for grabs; it can be fabricated through appearances. (227-228). The complexity of African-American people was bereft, not only in television, but also within the critical field. The search for an ―authentic,‖ blackness continued to erase or mask the presence of real people who are black and so the phases of simulacrum continued. Michael Awkward concurred And, like West, I want to insist upon the necessity of viewing all categories of human organization that originated in a Caucacentric (that is, Caucasian- centered), phallocentric past—race, gender, class and even the binary ―theorist‖ and ―non-theorist‖—as ‗phenomena to be interrogated, and thereby [not] foreclose[ing] the very issues that should serve as the subject matter to be investigated‘. (9)

11 Dasein is a German word which literally means being there often translated in English with the word existence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasein.

The historical search for the authentic black figure in African-American Literature and media has led to the current state where blackness is a simulacrum that replaces the multiplicitous non-reality of an individual‘s identity as a black member of his or her community. The missing reality of race that has led to the current hyperreality of race must be accepted. Today images have become a corporate commodity which can be mass produced as an authentic item thus generating interest through the nostalgia for the belief in authenticity. If one purchases blackness or other identities via clothing, music, or cars as marketed through associate by films and television programs then the item purchased, in a sense, provides that deeply sought stamp of authenticity. In the current literary and visual media landscape all archetypes of race/ethnicity are available for purchase. These purchases act as masks that allow the consumer to wear ―Other‖ identities that reflect their own sense of identity, or desired identity, as influenced by their personal experience and interaction with the symptoms of the simulacrum, ―The differences found among cultures provide a resource of the new and the unfamiliar that is particularly valuable because those differences can be projected as ‗authentic‘ even as they are commercially manufactured‖ (Watts and Orbe 228). Thus the items commercially manufactured and highly sold are the current visible identities that have some access and privilege. If one cannot be easily bought and sold within the capitalist system of the simulacrum of race/identity then one is render invisible by degrees of distance from ultimate visibility in visual media systems and literature. To be visible one must flatten oneself to fit into the two dimensional caricatured structure that evolved from either whiteness or blackness. For example, person can be visible as black or white, but not as identifying as biracial. A person can be Asian, but not Korean or Indian. A person can be gay or straight, but not bisexual. These, as well as other categories, wax and wane as additions are made to the simulacrum that temporarily push an identity from obscurity to visibility. One can also choose to move to visibility by strategically choosing the categories that fit best into the simulacrum.

CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION: A SUGGESTION FOR CHANGE

But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge— which gives rise to profound uncertainties—that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind. -Salman Rushdie

Ralph Ellison in Invisible Man begins his novel plainly, ―I am an invisible man‖ (3). Ellison‘s invisible man is both a universal invisible man and the specific narrator of the text. Ellison seems to begin his work at the beginning, in the 1600s when conversations about race and identity was invisible. Ellison‘s invisibility is universal as indicated by the missing article ―The‖ from the title. Everyone is invited to follow with him though his removes detailing his harrowing experience with the symptoms of the simulacrum of race/identity. Ellison leaves the text open for interaction and engagement. His narrator does not provide a clear description of what he looks like nor does he describe the stature of his body. Throughout the body of the action of the novel the title character is written to maintain the illusion of a nonspecific ―any‖ black man. The reader is perpetually unsure if the character is speaking in the present, in imagination or in memory. The reader is often made to be disoriented just as in Baudrillard‘s ―Precession of Simulacra‖ forced consumers to remain aware and flexible throughout their reading. The invisible author seems to speak directly to the origins of the simulacrum of race/identity with the first appearance of Africans written by the early records of the Puritans, ―20. And odd negroes‖ (―The Thomas Jefferson Papers‖). Ellison‘s Invisible Man gives voice to the circumstance of invisibility both past and present, ―No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me‖ (3). Ellison differentiates himself from literary and film

42 depictions of invisibility or subjectivity. He invokes the contrast of ―flesh, bone, fiber and liquids‖ to venerate his authenticity (Ellison 3). The novel reads as if it was written with an awareness of the simulacrum and the goal of creating a depiction of the circumstance of being lost within a hyperreality. The novel closes with a summation of the simulacrum of race/identity as well as the inkling of a suggestion for a way to move forward and beyond the simulacrum, ―And now I realized that I couldn‘t return …to any part of my old life. I could approach it only from the outside…I could only move ahead or stay here underground. So I would stay here until I was chased out…The end was the beginning‖ (Ellison 571). To apply Baudrillard, one might see, ―The end was the beginning,‖ as Ellison‘s proposed solution to the simulacrum. The invisible man seems to understand the emptiness of finding an authentic self or the solution in the past. This end, the realization of the whole system is the beginning of finding a solution. He can choose to be visible and live among the simulacrum or stay invisible until he is forced to participate in the simulacrum by the imposition of others. In the end, the solution may be found in a replication of the construction of the beginning. The solution to the simulacrum may lie within the replication of the simulacrum itself. While Ellison‘s novel provides the metaphoric definition of the simulacrum of race as well as a metaphoric solution, Zora Neal Hurston outlines the theoretical details more directly in ―What White Publishers Won‘t Print.‖ Published in the Negro Digest in 1950, ―What White Publishers Won‘t Print‖ sketches the framework for a theory of simulacrum and it also offers a solution. The frame begins with the history of polarity in the discourse of ideology, ―I have been amazed by the Anglo-Saxon‘s lack of curiosity about the internal lives and emotions of the Negroes, and for that matter, any non-Anglo-Saxon peoples within our borders, above the class of unskilled labor‖ (Hurston 1159). Hurston‘s primary focus throughout the essay is the ―lack of curiosity about the internal lives and emotions‖ of black Americans as well as the human diversity within the group (i.e., the existence of those who do not fit into the archetypes of the simulacrum) (1159). Hurston seems to indirectly oppose Hughes‘ assertions that a true black identity outside of a viewing audience should be working class or reflect an experience of poverty. Hurston requires that not only the class of ―unskilled labor‖ should be seen. Other classes above that should also be recognized as part of the diaspora of blackness. Hurston also seems to not seek to re-inscribe the convention of whiteness within the infrastructure of

43 polarity. Instead of communicating to the reader an active or purposeful exclusion of the internal emotions of African-Americans by ―Anglo-Saxons‖ she describes the motive as passive. It is a ―lack of curiosity‖ and not an aggressive decision to employ the ―Negro‖ as negative for the purpose of entertainment as observed by Donald Bogle (African-Americans or Toms, Coons). In the opening lines of ―What White Publisher‘s Won‘t Print,‖ like Ellison, Hurston seems to be attempting to address the simulacrum and its symptoms rather than just addressing the designated compartments of race or gender or ethnicity or religion as it was understood at the time. Hurston identifies the ―irreferent‖ image of race as she builds toward a suggested solution, ―A college-bred Negro still is not a person like other folks, but an interesting problem, more or less‖ (1159). She elaborates on this example with the retelling of an anecdote of a ―particularly bright slave.‖ His master, who is ―more intellectually curious‖ than most, teaches the slave Latin and mathematics. The master realizes that his unlikely student has achieved a level of mastery of both subjects that would rival that of any slave- owner. He invites a neighbor to see this spectacle. The neighbor observes and admits the talents of the slave and responds with this final summation, ―It is all an aping of our culture. All on the outside. You are crazy if you think that it has changed him inside in the least. Turn him loose, and he will revert at once to the jungle. He is still a savage, and no amount of translating Virgil and Ovid is going to change him. In fact, all you have done is to turn a useful savage into a dangerous beast‖ (Hurston 1159). Although the neighbor is faced with a Black American who falls outside of the caricature of slave all he can see or wants to see is the icon of his beliefs about race, slavery. Again, in terms of purpose, Hurston does not paint the neighbor as malicious rather he simply explains the impossibility that this slave can be anything more than a slave. Unlike Baudrillard, Hurston occupies the role of the ―observed‖ rather than the observer. Where Baudrillard pointed to the way in which a psychosomatic dismantles meaning, Hurston shows that the simulacrum cannot be undone. Although the slave of her tale had achieved a real accomplishment and not a simulation, the consumer of the simulacrum could not see the reality in front of him because he believes so staunchly in hyperreality. At the core of Hurston‘s move toward a solution she looks directly into the core of the simulacrum of race/identity and illustrates sees is clearly,

The answer lies in what we may call THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF UNNATURAL HISTORY. This is an intangible built on folk belief. It is assumed that all non-Anglo-Saxons are uncomplicated stereotypes. Everybody knows all about them. They are lay figures mounted in the museum where all may take them in at a glance. They are made of bent wires without insides at all. (1160) First Hurston recognizes that the ―answer‖ can only be found in and around the simulacrum itself which she names aptly the ―American Museum of Unnatural History.‖ She defines the ―unnatural‖ museum as an ―intangible‖ built from ―folk belief.‖ It is not real and it evolved from the perverted history of a system of belief rather than fact. This created caricatures of race/identity as a symptom. The final critical component of the race/identity simulacrum or the American Museum of Unnatural History is that it is filled with ―figures‖ that are mounted on walls to be consumed by the public. Hurston specifically uses the word ―glance‖ here to indicate the act of consumption as passive, transient and un-invested. Again, she seems to implicate the ―lack of curiosity of the Anglo-Saxon‖ (1159). Like Ellison, Hurston makes the distinction between the external identity made of a wire frame that is hollow inside and by contrast the reader can assume the internal self then is of, ―substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids‖ (Ellison 3). The figures in the museum do not show the emotions or internal lives of the people they depict and for Hurston, this is the core of the matter than sustains the simulacrum of race/identity. Race/Identity in the United States is an empty organically undulating mechanical object. It does not represent anything other than a false construction of itself. An authentic racial self does not exist and cannot exist until a new model of simulacrum is created. But before she begins elaborating on her suggestion for a solution she continues to un-root the layers of the Simulacrum. Now that Hurston has truly defined the simulacrum of race, she expands it to include ―minorities‖ in the examination of the ―typicals‖ that are captive within her Museum of Unnatural History. She renders all ―Others‖ visible for at least a moment, ―The American Indian is a contraption of copper wires in an eternal war bonnet with no equipment for laughter‖ (Hurston 1160). She moves on to the African-American ―The American Negro exhibit is a group of two. Both of these mechanical toys are built so that their feet eternally shuffle, and their eyes pop and roll‖ (Hurston 1160). Hurston then broadens further, ―The whole museum is dedicated to the convenient ‗typical.‘ In there is the ‗typical Oriental, Jew, Yankee, Westerner, Southerner, Latin and even out-of-favor Nordics like the German‖ (Hurston 1160). The ―typicals‖ are the stereotypes of today and the ―miniaturized units, form

45 matrices, memory banks and command models…‖ of Baudrillard‘s simulacrum.12 In identifying the presence of many ―types‖ of people as mounted within the unnatural museum she has allowed the reader to glance upon the now two-dimensional image of the simulacrum. She continues and uncovers the way in which the American simulacrum of race/identity is intertwined with capital gains. The buying and selling of ―typicals‖ as tied to the visual media system literally determines visibility and invisibility. Both Hurston and Ellison saw the beginnings of this. Throughout her essay, Hurston points to the choices of ―publishers and producers‖ who seek opportunities to exploit only the spectacle of race/identity or create it, Publishing houses and theatrical promoters are in business to make money. They will sponsor anything that they believe will sell. They shy away from romantic stories about Negroes and Jews because they feel that they know the public indifference to such works, unless the story or play involves racial tension. (Hurston 1160) The tension of race/identity is the core infrastructure of the simulacrum. This sentiment is still true for the visual media systems of today except the impact is immeasurable. The media has become a primary and trusted source of knowledge that has spread into every home in The United States. It accesses all levels of literacy and socio-economic statuses. Media is a tool that was designed as a vehicle for advertising thus it has always been linked to money. The simulacrum‘s entry into the technology world truly groomed the stereotypes of old so that they sometimes seem to be ―representations‖ of race instead of the simulations of the simulacrum. Money however, has merely added a glossy finish to the hyperreality penned in the 1600s and it has allowed the ―typicals‖ of ethnicity, gender and sexuality to evolve with the time. Now, a ―typical‖ is visible on screen if they are black or white, male or female and gay or straight. If one falls in between these categories, then one is not ―typically‖ seen (i.e., Indian, biracial, and polyamorous to name a few). Also, the parameters for visibility become even more complex in that a person might be internally invisible, but they edit the simulacrum of their identity in order to become visible through one or multiple categories. Today‘s hyper-real media saturated society is made of the positive and negative spaces

12 ―The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models— and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times‖ (Baudrillard 1333).

46 created by the three components of identity that define each person in the United States. The first component of self-identification in terms of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual identity is the understanding of the way in which the world views the person. Although they might be African-American (i.e., both their mother and father were African-American) others read them as white and they are treated with specific sets of behaviors associated with this judgment which creates a unique identity experience. The next component of defining oneself is the way one defines him or herself internally. The final component of identity formation is the individual‘s experience or understanding of the simulacrum of identity (i.e., the Korean American woman who believes that discrimination is a thing of the past). In identifying the self a person must decide either consciously or subconsciously whether they can access visibility, when they will access it and how. President Barack Obama is a perfect public example. At the point at which he decided to become a politician he had to identify as either black or white, male and heterosexual amongst a host of other conditions that would make him both visible and consumptive. Other categories can also be placed within a polarized framework in order to heighten the components of visibility such as attractiveness and religion. The addition of categories would likely depend on the person or group one was trying to define. Polarities such as ethnicity, gender and sexual identity relate to one another and together determine the level of invisibility or visibility associated with that identity. So then what could be the solution for such a tangled, complex construction of race that is self- perpetuating and that resists attacks at its core? Hurston‘s suggestion is simple, The exceptional as well as the Ol‘ Man rivers has been exploited all out of context already. Everybody is already resigned to the ―exceptional‖ Negro, and willing to be entertained by the ‗quaint.‘ To grasp the penetration of western civilization in a minority, it is necessary to know how the average behaves and lives…For various reasons the average, struggling, nonmorbid Negro is the best-kept secret in America. His revelation to the public is the thing needed to do away with that feeling of difference. (1162) Although Hurston limits her call to the ―Negro,‖ I suggest it is necessary to know the ―average, struggling, nonmorbid‖ lives of the invisible (1162). Those that are typically visible are those that fall easily into the polarities of various identity categories (i.e., black and white, male and female, gay and straight). At this time in American history, amidst the massive consumption of technology, one can see both African-American shows and White

American shows on any given night on television. Bookstores are filled with authors from all backgrounds both within the United States and beyond. The simulacrum has expanded to externally simulate diversity although only particular narratives rise to fame and the majority those do not highlight invisibility. When an invisible narrative (i.e., a narrative produced by a person who does not easily fit into the polarized simulacra of race/identity) rises to visibility he or she is often quickly relegated back to invisibility by being placed within a larger grouping to which he or she does not fit. A new simulacrum must be created that wholly represents a new framework for race/identity. In order to accomplish this, the narrative must adhere to Hurston‘s condition of the ―average, struggling and nonmorbid‖ human. He or she, like the early writers and filmmakers must disseminate their message spectacularly as if teaching by lightning. In Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Walter J. Ong looks at the history of the evolution of oral cultures to literate cultures. He discusses the ideological shifts that had to occur and the way in which literacy changed the perception of knowledge (which is the time and society which began the simulacrum of race). Briefly we discussed that the early writers who were the recorders and storytellers of the 1600s had access to writing and literacy when comparatively Native Americans and Africans at the time were still predominantly oral cultures or they did not have access to literacy. This difference in the processing of words created some large gaps both ideologically and cognitively. In thinking about the theory of a simulacrum of identity that plagues Americans Ong made this interesting observation of orality and literacy that can be applied here, ―Writing, moreover, as will be seen later in detail, is a particularly preemptive and imperialist activity that tends to assimilate other things to itself even without the aid of etymologies‖ (179). Ong is referring to language, but this rumination on words parallels our earlier observation that early writing wrote the bodies of ethnicity, but perhaps not maliciously. One can never eradicate the influence of the simulacrum. It is in all knowledge streams since it precedes knowledge trusted as time worn facts. The simulacrum of identity began with early writing. Even if one understands and ascribes to academic theories surrounding race, those discourses still only address the symptoms of the simulacrum. It does not recognize that the whole system is false. Addressing the symptoms only edits and morphs the components of the perversion of a basic reality. It does not change the fact that the simulacrum is based upon a fictive blank.

However, if the falsity of the whole is recognized (i.e., it is accepted that the knowledge that has guided the discourse surrounding American identity is and has been false) then a solution can finally be considered. It is impossible to erase a simulacrum since it is the accepted reality. One cannot erase the memory of Disneyland even if you destroyed the parks. Its branding is everywhere and nostalgia for the stories of Disney lives within all who experienced it as an intrinsic privilege of childhood. It would take generations to replace the hyperreality of Disney with a new simulacrum as powerful and saturating as that original. Identity is the same, but it has been branding itself upon the American landscape for far more years than Disney. It might take time to forget the previous model, but a new simulacrum would likely be the most successful solution because it would use Baudrillard‘s theory to take the basic reality of hyperreality, pervert it or change it to the point of simulation and then use that simulation to mask the existing caricatures of ethnicity, gender and sexual identity with representation of average people who have real emotions and expressions of humanity. The new simulacrum would cease to be a simulation since it would finally be masking that which is true. Over time as this truth reproduced and spread, it would destroy the caricatures of old as well as the discriminatory systems of hate that it maintained. So a solution can begin with Hurston and Ellison‘s suggestion that the narratives of the internal lives of the ―other‖ will shatter the simulacrum before it. The perversion of the current reality, however, must lose the difference between an original American and an ―other.‖ The conversation can be reframed using the mediums used to maintain the previous simulacrum. It can be redefined as the difference between orality and literacy. In Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Walter J. Ong examines the social and cultural evolution linked to the move from a predominantly oral civilization to a literate one. He defines both a primary and secondary orality and he notes the way in which the evolution away from orality irrevocably altered the way that thought is processed and presented, ―Writing, commitment of the word to space, enlarges the potentiality of language almost beyond measure, restructures thought, and in the process converts a certain few dialects into ‗grapholects‘…Writing gives a grapholect a power far exceeding that of any purely oral dialect‖ (Ong 179). Many of the early cultures who wielded the power to colonize possessed this power of literacy. It can then be assumed that perhaps this contributed to the recognized difference between ―civilized‖ and ―uncivilized‖ cultures. Literacy allowed Rowlandson to

49 not only report her experiences but it also enabled her to reproduce the reports endlessly so their message could be distributed beyond her immediate audience without any rebuttal or push back from the people who she represented in her writing (i.e., Native Americans). They not only did not have the power of literacy, they also did not have social or political power in the community. Ong defines primary orality as a culture that does not use writing or print to pass knowledge. Secondary orality for Ong is, ―of present-day high-technology culture, in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television, and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print‖ (234). I argue instead that media systems are simply an extension of literacy. The oral component is present in the media, but it is all carefully scripted and written. The performer is even reading the script from a teleprompter. It truly does not seem to reflect the history of oral cultures. The structure of television, film, radio and other media systems are based upon careful statistical and audience demographics in order to pointedly determine what audiences want to see paired with what products. I, rather, perceive a modern secondary orality as a return to storytelling formats whether visual or aural (oral tradition that can come in the written form). Oral tradition had to uphold certain characteristics because of the limits of the medium. People of the time were unable to write things down so simple narratives and plots were important. The stories had to be told at a language level that could engage and entertain the average person. It couldn‘t be a niche subject. It was a part of humanity to pass down information through story-telling. This might be the way to the solution Hurston suggests. If the invisible others use story-telling tropes to become visible, their internal lives will stand beside the simulations of America-ness that have stood inaccurately for race/identity throughout the years. This new style will be used by the invisible specifically to create a new simulacrum. These stories could be consumed en mass by the public and academics would identify and create a cohesive genre for this invisible group that would be placed all together on the same shelf. These new texts of race/identity would seek to represent an individual‘s experience. They would all follow a similar pattern of simple storytelling form. The invisible would become visible through narrative. The new simulacrum would then become a genre of identity that speaks honestly about the range of experiences of ―Americans‖ in terms of identity. These narratives, because of their simplicity and their ease of consumption will begin to mask the caricatures and labeling of old. A new space will be

50 created in between the stories and the false history of the past. This empty space will not be made of negation it will be made of occupation. The more samples that are gathered, the clearer the picture of identity formation in the United States would be. We would be creating a true bank that could then be examined for patterns and contrasts in order to concretely define the terms and solidify a baseline. There are already some authors who did this and who do this: Heddon Tuttle, Jhumpa Lahiri and Danzy Senna. These are a few authors who have texts that could begin the American collection of race/identity, an examination of Americaness. If we can fill this shelf and add it to the bookstores and the curriculums it will allow us to actually see where we are now, where we were then and then we will be able to see clearly, where we can go next instead of re-living history generation after generation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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