Questions of Identity: Complicating Race in American Literary History

LINDA M. PIERCE Questions of Identity: Complicating Race in American Literary History Too frequently, the topic of "race" in America is read as merely a two-sided issue—majority versus minority—and in an effort to deconstruct the traditional roles of hero and villain assigned to each side, respectively, teachers of literature often simply teverse the role assignments . While this type of reversal is at times warranted and necessary , it leaves little room for explorations of the complexities of race: the ways in which sex and gender can complicate discussions of race, the struggle involved in the process of decolonization, the question of a white cultutal heritage, the way in which race is read within American literary ttaditions, questions of mimicry and colonial ambivalence and the various ways in which people are subject to a specifically racial "gaze." The essays included here explore, complicate and problematize notions of facial identity in America, suggesting that because identity is not formed in isolation, it must be read contextually in order to forge holistic intetpretations. Such intetpretations complicate the issues of race and identity construction in America, offer more comprehensive understandings of self and other, and suggest a methodology with which to negotiate oneself and one's exploration of race, place, and nation . Taken together the essays suggest that it is only by engaging one another in heterogeneous contexts that we can begin to appreciate the complexities of American racial identity formation. This issue offers three perspectives on the theme of race: the first, white Southern heritage reconsidered, takes texts which have tradiArizona Quarterly Volume 59, Number 2, Summer 2003 Copyright © 2003 by Arizona Board of Regents issN 0004-1610 Linda M. Pierce tionally been read as raced, and situates them in the context of whiteness , or white American identity in the late nineteenth century. Specifically , Neil Schmitz focuses on Confederate discourse during and after the Civil War, discourse which has been buried because of its racial implications, and asks readers to consider an approach that explores this discourse alongside its racially implicated context in order to produce a more holistic literary history. Schmitz asks, "Where and how does a respectable Confederate discourse still speak in post-Civil War America? In all its modes and versions, what is not hopelessly compromised by its antebellum and wartime position on slavery?" (24). Petet Schmidt concentrates on conflicted white identity during Reconstruction , reading the split identity of Huckleberry Finn as a depiction of the crisis of whiteness. For both Schmitz and Schmidt, the reconciliation of a "split," ofsorts, is necessary for a comprehensive reading—for Schmitz, it is the split between the Confederate flag and the "asterisk" (denoting its racial implications) which marks it, and for Schmidt, it is the split between Huck's dependence on Jim as it conflicts with his desire to undermine Jim—and both halves of the split must be present in order to reach a more complete and complex understanding of American identities. Both Schmitz and Schmidt are implicitly grappling with the notion of white identity as it struggles with decolonization in the Reconstruction era. The second perspective, complications of black male identification, follows this discussion into the first half of the twentieth century. This section takes texts that have traditionally been read as raced, and situates them in the larger contexts to help complicate African American identity formation. Specifically, Ryan Schneider reads a raced autobiography of W E. B. Du Bois in the context of race and gender, while Petar Ramadanovic reads Richard Wright's Native Son in the literary tradition of classic tragedy. Both Schneider and Ramadanovic acknowledge the contributions that critical readings on race have offered with respect to these two texts, but suggest that contextualizing these readings on race within larger theoretical contexts provides a more holistic picture of the construction of African American identity. The final perspective, heteromorphic identification, provides the capstone argument for this issue: concentrating on formations of black male identity through various readings of mimicry, Hsuan Hsu reads Ellison's Invisible Man as emblematic of our need to read a context Questions of Identity larger than, not limited to, the racial gaze. Like Schmitz and Schmidt's argument that one must read both...