Failing Face of a Nation: The Anxiety of Miscegenation in Ann Petry’s The Narrows
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Racial intermixture and its repression have been one of the most important formative issues in the history of the United States. Unlike the basic idea of racial intermixture, which exists as a historical reality, the term “miscegenation” describes a fantastical or fictional realm of racial anxiety and paranoia in American society. Set in this third wave of racial progressivism, Ann Petry’s The Narrows overtly picks up on the theme of “miscegenation” anxiety. In this imagined dystopia, which in fact, inverts the terms of historical reality, the national fabric of the United States is threatened by black men’s allegedly insatiable sexual desire for white women. This essay examines the relationship between racial stereotypes and the over-determination of plot and character in The Narrows. By rewriting the culturally clichéd and socially scripted narrative of interracial sexual politics, The Narrows insists upon a historicized accounting for contemporary race politics and reconvenes the theme of miscegenation from the terrain of the imagination, or fantasy, to the terrain of political representation.
Abstract
Racial intermixture and its repression have been one of the most important formative issues in the history of the United States. Unlike the basic idea of racial intermixture, which exists as a historical reality, the term “miscegenation” describes a fantastical or fictional realm of racial anxiety and paranoia in American society. Set in this third wave of racial progressivism, Ann Petry’s The Narrows overtly picks up on the theme of “miscegenation” anxiety. In this imagined dystopia, which in fact, inverts the terms of historical reality, the national fabric of the United States is threatened by black men’s allegedly insatiable sexual desire for white women. This essay examines the relationship between racial stereotypes and the over-determination of plot and character in The Narrows. By rewriting the culturally clichéd and socially scripted narrative of interracial sexual politics, The Narrows insists upon a historicized accounting for contemporary race politics and reconvenes the theme of miscegenation from the terrain of the imagination, or fantasy, to the terrain of political representation.
참고문헌 (21)
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