Re-embodiment of Racial Identity in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man
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Published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man became one of James Weldon Johnson’s chief claims to fame as an African American writer. Delineating the narrator’s geographical mobility and race passing as analogy, Johnson’s narrative explores the narrator’s experience of loneliness and alienation in a prejudiced American society. In terms of Jacques Lacan’s “mirror stage,” the narrator’s relation to the other colored people is figured as a spectator who observes those other blacks. He shapes his unstable racial identity by gazing at others who are marked as black, and he never succeeds in his attempts to find his racial identity within the country’s laws and customs. I argue that race is not and cannot be embodied as an authentic expression of being. In contrast with previous works about passing, Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man presents passing for white as the result of cultural alienation and detached racial loyalties. This novel is not only a convincing analysis of social conditions between black and white Americans, but also the ironic portrait of a tragic mulatto who searches for, but never finds, his true identity.
Abstract
Published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man became one of James Weldon Johnson’s chief claims to fame as an African American writer. Delineating the narrator’s geographical mobility and race passing as analogy, Johnson’s narrative explores the narrator’s experience of loneliness and alienation in a prejudiced American society. In terms of Jacques Lacan’s “mirror stage,” the narrator’s relation to the other colored people is figured as a spectator who observes those other blacks. He shapes his unstable racial identity by gazing at others who are marked as black, and he never succeeds in his attempts to find his racial identity within the country’s laws and customs. I argue that race is not and cannot be embodied as an authentic expression of being. In contrast with previous works about passing, Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man presents passing for white as the result of cultural alienation and detached racial loyalties. This novel is not only a convincing analysis of social conditions between black and white Americans, but also the ironic portrait of a tragic mulatto who searches for, but never finds, his true identity.
참고문헌 (21)
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