What, if anything, stabilizes identity in the contemporary novel -A Critical Exploration - Essay Example

What, if anything, stabilizes identity in the contemporary novel?’ -A Critical Exploration Feras Jazieh Jude Davies English Literature 30 2009 Contents Introduction……………………………………………………......…………3 Stereotype in Literature…………………………………………..…………..5 The Issues and Identity …………………………….…….………….5 Background……………………….…..…………………..…………6 Implication …………………………….……………….......………6 Resisting stereotypes …………….….……….………………..……..……..7 Meta-fictional archetypes and the Formation of Identity …………….……7 Percival Everett’s Erasure and the Identity Conundrum….…….……….…8 Race, Ethnicity and Identity in Erasure…………………………………….....11 African-American Double Consciousness in Erasure…………………….13 Margaret Russet and Other Critics on Erasure and Deception of American Idealism Regarding the Black Identity………………………………………………14 Margaret russet on Erasure………………………...11 Other Contemporary Novels………………..……..14 An Attempt to Stabilize identity……….…………..18 Race under Erasure – A theoretical Approach…….20 Conclusion…………………………………………22 Notes……………………………………………….23 Bibliography……………………………………….26 ‘What, if anything, stabilizes identity in the contemporary novel?’ -A Critical Exploration Introduction Percival Everett’s novel Erasure engages with what has been called the postmodern destabilization of identity in ways that also engages with debates in African-American literary studies that go back to modernists Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison. Whereas Hughes insisted on the necessity of engaging the condition of Black identity, Everett sides, as Margaret Russet has argued, with Ellison’s argument that the artistic obligations of the black writer may be served by engaging with formal and generic issues. Erasure thus asks to be read simultaneously as that is and is not grounded in the contemporary condition of Blackness in America. As its narrator Thelonius Monk Ellison states on its opening page, I have dark brown skin, curly hair, a broad nose, some of my ancestors were slaves and I have been detained by pasty white policemen in New Hampshire, Arizona and Georgia and so the society in which I live tells me I am black; that is my race.1 In some sense, then Everett launches a racial satire against the interpolation of African-Americans as ‘black’ by the dominant culture and the continuation of the white priviledge of (quasi) universalism. However, the twist, as Russet notes, in the manipulation of ‘race’ in the formation of ‘black identity’, is that the novel mimics race itself under erasure. Consequently, in the novel, the race-based black identity appears to be in continual destabilization that necessarily goes into conflicts with the dominant white culture’s race-based affirmation of black identity for the African-American minority. However, Everett himself remarkably maintains reticence as to the question whether there is any platform on which the destabilizing identity can regain its lost stability in new form and can go into conflict with the white imposition. The way that Monk reacts to the impositions of the white culture upon his identity clearly demonstrates that the awareness of a race free identity that evolves through these conflicts seems to be the next platform for this destabilization. Monk’s success as a writer under the name ‘Stag R. Leigh’ does nothing but adds to the agony of his defeat in the conflict with forced identity but through this defeat, his race-free identity with increasing awareness is affirmed, as it is realized by Ralf Elision, in the following sentence, ‘If the Negro, or any other writer, is going to do what is expected of him, he’s lost the battle before he takes the field.”2 Everett’s Identity Conflicts with the Dominant White Imposition in Erasure In Erasure, conflicts between identities occur on two levels: first, the conflict occurs between the stereotype-based black identity that the dominant white culture is prone to assign with the African-American and the identity, based on the race, color, and ethnicity that is in the process of gradual disintegration in the postmodern context. It appears that the dominant white culture continuously reminds the oblivious African-American minority of the fact that their identity is black. Second, the conflict occurs between the moral obligations of a black writer –a writer in general- and the obligation imposed by the dominant culture. Here what identity of the African-Americans means for Everett is in obvious contrast with what identity for Hughes is. If the African-American identity appears to be in the process of disintegration in the postmodern context, its reflection in the novel Erasure is certainly the assertion of the moral obligation of an artist to which Everett is committed. When Hughes, to a great extent, seeks the premises and condition of identity, for Everett, identity is what it is within itself. Even if it comes into conflict with its assumed or imposed outer appearance, according to the moral obligation of an artist, a writer whether he is black or white, must adhere to the genuine reflection of the interactions of an individual to his or her surroundings that tends to shape his or her identity. As Percival Everett comments in this regard, The novelist must accept his or her life as fact, realizing that it makes no difference whether someone proclaims or even believes he or she is dead.3 In the novel “Erasure”, the author primarily has made an attempt to draw the attention of his readers to the double standard that the dominant white culture set for the black writers. The situation of the black authors and, in general, black minority in the white society is something that asserts a position for the black like an antique peace in the museum or an animal with the threat of extinction that is handled with care and has been restricted from its freedom. The black relationship of the black with the white society appears to be that between the owner and the precious owned. The owned never enjoys the freedom that their owners enjoy. White authors take pleasure in the freedom to write anything what they like, a wide range of experiences, while “black writers are expected to write about some single idea of a black experience”4. Everett describes the dilemma of the black identity of an author in the following sentences: “I am a writer. I am a man. I am black man in this culture. Of course, my experiences as a black man in America influence my art; it influences the way I drive down the street. But certainly John Updike’s work is influenced by his being white in America, but we never really discuss that. I think readers, black and white, are sophisticated enough to be engaged by a range of black experience, informed by economic situation, religion (lack thereof) or geography, just as one accepts a range of so-called white experiences.”5 At a time, the novel deals with two identities of Everett that go side by side often appearing into agonizing conflict with each other. On one hand, it is the identity of Monk that embodies Everett individual self, as Monk claims ardently, "I am Thelonious Ellison. Call me Monk."6 On the other hand, it is his identity that the society claims him to be because of his ‘dark brown skin’, ‘curly hair’, ‘broad nose’ and his ancestral history of slavery. Even ‘some people in the society’, as he says, ‘in which I live, describe as being black, tell me I am not enough.’7 This pressing situation fairly pushes him to divide his ‘self’ into what he appears in “My Pafology’ and what he appears outside the ghetto fabulous novel as Monk. The two separate selves of Everett are quite contrary to each other. Monk is the sophisticated, philosophic, and westernizing existence of Everett that is continually denied by his the society in which he lives, because as he says, I am fairly athletic, I am not good at basketball. I listen to Mahler, Aretha Franklin, Charlie Parker and Ry Cooder…I am good at math. I cannot dance. I did not grow up in any inner city or the rural south…My father was a doctor. My brother and sister were doctors. 8 Indeed Stag R. Leigh is a complete foil to Monk’s identity that he yearns for. In addition, the character in ‘My Pafology’ is what the society, in which Monk lives, wants the African-American to be. Monk hates to writes stories that are narrated in the first person taking the writer as the main character. Critic criticizes Monk’s stories as unreadable and boring, telling that his "unreadable, boring" books are "retellings of Euripides and parodies of French poststructuralists".9 Rather the white publishing industries want him to write about the real black life. Also what the real black life means for them is evident in the dark tale of the narrator of “My Pafology”. The real black life are found in the savage tone of the following line, “My name is Van Go Jenkins and Im 19 years old and I dont give a fuck about nobody, not you, not my Mama, not the man. The world dont give a fuck about nobody, so why would I?"10 In the TV show, “Wes Lives in Da Ghetto” it appears that the more vicious and spiteful he is, the more the audience is convinced that he is a real black. Indeed Monk cannot assume the sophisticated and philosophic tone in “My Pafology’ that he can do outside it. Black Stereotypes in ‘My Pafology’ and the Identity Conundrum In Erasure, Percival Everett has attempted to work out the identity through the interactions of the protagonist Monk with his race and ethnicity. Monk wryly introduces himself, "My journal is a private affair, but as I cannot know the time of my coming death, and since I am not disposed, however unfortunately, to the serious consideration of self-termination, I am afraid that others will see these pages."11 To a great extent, his novel reflects a major part of the conundrum of the American identity. On one side of Everett’s dilemma regarding his African-American identity in the US plot there is the American dream of a heterogeneous but harmonious culture, but on the other side, there are seemingly endless barriers to this assimilation of the culture of the minority with the main body of the American culture. Percival Everett’s Erasure attacks the questions surrounding black identity and “acceptable” black art with an aggressive satire. Monk’s, the protagonist who represents the author to a crucial extent, own perception of things around him and his being labeled as a black writer has always left him in a conundrum: While in college, I was a member of the Black Panther Party, defunct as it was, mainly because I felt I had to prove I was black enough. Some people in the society in which I live, describe as being black, tell me I am not enough. Some people, who the society calls white, tell me the same thing.12 It is the society, in which Monk lives, that rigidly defines racial identities and raises barriers to the possible assimilation of the culture of the minority to the dominant culture. The frontiers of the dominant culture does not allow the black authors to reflect the true trend of the culture that he represents, on the ground that “what Monks writes have nothing to do with the “African American experience”13 (whatever it may be), is not “black enough”. With the presentation of Monk’s black experiences in the main body of the American culture that continually claims to be colorblind or at least try to be such, Everett clearly points out the ironical freaks in it. Conflicts grow between the stereotypes of the dominant heterogeneous (advocated) culture and the perpetuating black stereotypes. If it is the deception on Monk’s part to write the parody of the black ghetto novel under a pseudonym, the frontiers of the dominant culture are to be alleged with the same deception. It is due to those frontiers that knowingly or unknowingly perpetuate the gap between the two cultures in the name of heterogeneity. Sean O’ Hagan summarizes this conflict in the following lines: “In despair, he churns out a rushed parody of the black ghetto novel, entitled My Pafology, under the pseudonym Stagg R Lee. “I tighten up my belt and then yank my pants down on my ass….so, why not me?”….when his agent sells it for a huge sum, Monk’s problems really begin.”14 Moreover, Erasure also has attracted controversy for its portrayal of Elision’s complicity with the stereotyping of ‘black culture’ through his novel ‘My Pafology’. Monk’s conflicts with the black stereotypes often appear to shape the identity on a race free self-awareness in the novel. At the this point, the novel, as Russet notes, receives a trend of personal evasion from racial identity.15 Though defying the traditional conforming role with the established stereotypes, characters in novels start to appear in increasing conflicts with these as a primary condition for identity formation. With the greater knowledge of “self” modern characters like Monks are more in conflicts with the established and granted knowledge of the society than the characters in African American literature. Indeed the inextricable relationship between Monk as a writer and the dominant culture reflects the continual clash with values that are inherent in the US society, as Sean O’ Hagan points out, ‘He needs the money badly but every bone in his postmodern body recoils against the notion of perpetuating black stereotypes, particularly black stereotypes written as parody that white publishing houses then find magnificently raw and honest.’16 However, Monk’s reaction to the perpetuation of the black stereotypes is the speech that he made, when the publishing industries suggest him to "forget about writing retellings of Euripides and parodies of French poststructuralists and settle down to write the true, gritty real stories of black life," he reacts ironically "I told him that I was living a black life, far blacker than he could ever know, that I had lived one, that I would be living one."17 Race, Ethnicity and Identity in Erasure Through the literary nightmare that Monk sees the making of his identity, the readers of this metafiction continually are reminded that Monk reality is a mere fictional one. However, when the readers are absorbed in Monk’s fictional identity crisis, they are pushed to question their own identity in the way Monk sees himself. Through Monk’s black experiences, Everett puts his readers confronted with two essential questions: 1. Is the dominant culture really honest enough to believe in these ghetto-fabulous portrayals to represent the true experience of the black minorities? In other words, how far does such view of the frontiers assist to dispense the identity freaks of colorblind and heterogeneous culture? 2. In Kristen’s words, “what is wrong with black artist that they willfully bolster and encourage these destructive archetypes of blacks, especially when some of these artists have never experienced anything close to the circumstances they are substantiating?”18 Now the question that arises here is what the implications of Monk’s experiences in the novel are. In the first place, it has been propounded that the identity the white media ascertains for the black is rather a make-belief notion and the perpetuation of the identity freaks. Ultimately, the identity of the black appears to be in a conundrum that is engendered by the ideals of a heterogeneous but colorblind culture. It can be argued that not all white individuals perceive blacks in a negative way, but with the way the narratives of black life are promoted by the dominant culture in various media, one can never be sure. Though theoretically it is no longer acceptable to portray mammies and uncle Toms in any from of media, it is rather unfortunate that commercial publishers and distributors still support such projects and affirm the dominant culture’s ideals of “real blackness”.19 This becomes a double jeopardy for the black writers because it leaves them torn between commercial successes and reinstating the stereotypes, they set out to resist. As Monk expresses it in the following sentence, "The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it"20 Everett’s metafiction tells not only the story of the self-erasure of his racial identity as an artist but also it sets the race-based affirmation of identity. There is a significant attempt from the Everett’s side to view reality from a perspective that is different from how reality is presented in the earlier novels. As this new perspective tends to introduce the readers with the new concept of reality, it tends to the affects the establishment of identity of the readers. As Everett compels his readers to accept the reality in fictions somehow temporarily, meanwhile these readers are also convinced that the reality they have believed is the mere fictional reality. They cannot decide what they can expect from everyday reality. Rather Everett’s meta-fiction imposes the responsibility of expecting the outcomes from the everyday reality on the shoulders of the readers.21 He gives a start to the formation of identity but never concludes in what identity is, or should be. In the contemporary novel, Meta-fictional archetypes play a crucial role in forming identity on the part of either the protagonist or the readers. One of the primary features of the meta-fictional archetypes is that they inspires leads the protagonist and therefore their readers to question their own reality. As reality changes with the changes of perspective, identity remains in a state of change. African-American Double Consciousness in Erasure To a great extent, the novel Erasure deals with the theme African-American double consciousness. Paradoxically double voiced satirical attack of the author revolves around the African American neo-realism and Eurocentric post structuralism. Monk is also aware of this mask, ‘I would not be economically oppressed because of writing a book that fell in line with the very book I deemed racist. And I would have to wear the mask of the person I was expected to be.’22 Monk and his interactions with the surroundings seem to expound that his culture and the popular American culture what he intends never allow him enough legroom to from an identity of his own. Constantly his identity is in the state of erasure. With the satirical touch, Monk represents the life of an African American artist who suffers the psychological alienation from his siblings, colleagues, and acquaintances because of his intellectual distance that is stimulated by the double consciousness, which the African American has been inflicted by the dominant culture. This African-American artist is flooded “periodically with flashbacks to his childhood fascination with woodworking and fly-fishing with his father”23. These flashbacks help the readers to take a peek into the origins of his existential angst. Inspired by the favoritism of his father this artist grew an artistic difference that contributed a lot to alienate him for the rest of his ethnicity. However, as he stands aloof from his minority, it necessarily does not mean that he does not properly represent the identity crisis, which the minority faces. He represents the minority that shares the well and woe of the main body of the US society. His gynecologist sister is murdered by an antiabortionist, his brother got divorced, and his mother is suffering from the Alzheimer. These all are indicative of the erasures taking place in his identity based the stereotypes of his society. As Bell comments on the point of erasure, “Monk with the responsibility of moving from Los Angeles to the District of Columbia to care for his mother, whose health and authentic identity are being rapidly erased by Alzheimer’s.”24 Finally, he summarizes the identity issue in the novel, The story-within-a-story structure and style of the paradoxically double-voiced satirical attack in Erasure on African American double consciousness, African American neo-realism, Eurocentric post structuralism, and popular culture in the United States are both a clever and crude imaginative construction of the disturbing socialized ambivalence and identity crisis of the implied author and protagonist of the novel.25 Margaret Russet and Other Critics on Erasure and Deception of American Idealism Regarding the Black Identity Margaret Russet points out a key idea in Everett’s novel: “Everett unhinges ‘black’ subject matter from lingering stereotypes of ‘black’ style, while challenging the assumption that a single or consensual African-American Experience exists to be represented.”26 In Erasure, Everett severely criticized the double standard of the US society that it assigns for the white writers and the black writers. He seems to propound that this double standard set for the writers based on their ethnicity is more of the deception than its idealistic value. As Robinson says, “The public defer complete authority to a black writer, who may not feel comfortable speaking authoritatively about entire group of people.”27 If the portrayal of particular experience of a particular minority by a proper representative is considered to be authentic and honest, a novel like Fuck appears to be the deceptive guise, which Monk writes under the pseudonym of Stagg Leigh, of the white community. The identity of Monk as Stagg Leigh is sheer deception on the white publishing industries. A novel like Fuck receives huge appraisal in Modern American society, but this is the same novel written by a black writer who has been denied by the same industries earlier. Monk himself evaluates his situation, The fear, of course, is that in denying or refusing complicity in the marginalization of “black” writers, I ended up on the very distant and very “other” side of a line that is imaginary at best. I didn’t act as an act of testimony or social indignation (…) and I did not write out of so-called family tradition of oral storytelling. I never tried to set anybody free, never tried to paint the next real and true picture of the life of my people (…) But the irony was beautiful. I was a victim of racism by virtue of my failing to acknowledge racial difference and by failing to have my art defined as an exercise in racial self-expression.28 According to Harvey Green, this relationship between the readers and a book is reminiscent of the “pre-industrial society’s superstitious, cautious relationship with the wilderness”. 29 Amid this identity crisis of a writer, Russet hits on the crux of the question: “When can we say with confidence that a work of fiction has, or has not, met this obligation (dealing with racial themes)?”30 Under the apparel of idealism, what prevails in the publishing industries is the pursuing for extremity of culture and language. One of the several assumptions of this authenticity of a literary work dealing with racial theme is that it must go heavy on the culture. As Robinson asserts, “Here a certain kind of language determines authenticity, so the work that includes the most cultural eccentricities, no matter how stereotypical or insignificant, is deemed the more authentic.”31 Bernard Bell opines somewhat in a different manner from Margaret Russet. To some extent, he also disapproves Everett’s position against the ideals and assumptions to view the black community. In the novel, it is evident that Everett is convincing enough to challenge the assumptions about authority and stereotypes through the actions of Monk. Bell is inclined to consider the charge of racism as the legacy of the history, as he substantiates his opinion in the following: Contrary of the popularity in the academics of anti-essentialist arguments by postmodern critics, the authority, and agency identities of most African Americans emanate most distinctively and innovatively from the particularity of our historical struggle against slavery and its legacy of anti-black racism in the United State.32 Most of Bell’s criticisms are led on Everett’s political allegation. Even then, both Bell and Everett can be considered as complementary to each other. They speak of the same, concluded almost the same, but they approach from two different ways. Indeed, they are not the polar opposite of each other. As Robinson says, “Everett feels little connection to this common experiments posited by Bell, while Bell’s comments point to a felling of disappointment in Everett’s political stance. Both sides offer convincing arguments.”33 Conclusion Ultimately, Everett is obsessed with the conflict between the identity that the white society imposes on his black ethnicity and his self that emerges from the ruin of his blackness in the postmodern context. This conflict forces him to the doubling his self in the novel. But his double selves are not final resort that he opts for his new. His black identity is under continual destabilization and erasure but its affirmation is in somewhere else. It is evident that Monk does not succumb to his Pseudo identity that brings him huge success as a writer. Monk did not quit once he received the success. Rather the meta-fictional structure that he employed in the novel is a continual of the fact that the reality described in “My Pafology” reflects the black, but it is the reflection in the mirror of an artist who is the sole decider to shape the reflection. Everett also asserts that the real identity lies in his readers’ reflection and the identity what Monk chases after throughout the novel is affirmed in his increasing self awareness that emerges through his conflict with the white ideals for black identity. The identity issue in the contemporary novels including Everett’s Erasure occupies the decomposing part of the African American identity. In these novels when the race-based and ethnicity-based identity perpetuates the freak between the main body of the dominant culture and the culture of the minority, authors decry these discriminations. One of the striking features of Everett’s Erasure is that the novel “collapses the relation between race and writing into precisely the kind of label that both Everett and his character resist”.34 Notes Read More