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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 in English _______________ by Ranmali Mary Rodrigo Spring 2013 iii Copyright © 2013 by Ranmali Mary Rodrigo All Rights Reserved iv 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. v . 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. vi 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. vii 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 viii 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. 1 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. 2 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

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