Ambiguities of Booker T. Washington’s Subject Position: Strategy of Survival in Up From Slavery
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Up From Slavery (1901), Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, has been controversial, especially in terms of his subject position. Many critics have attacked Washington in that he speaks for whites at the expense of blacks. However, some parts of this work demonstrate that his subject position is for blacks unlike his seeming attitude. Concerning this question, this paper explores the verisimilitude of his identity to illuminate his subject position in the work because this enables us to understand Washington’s ambiguous attitude toward blacks and to whites. In this regard, a close examination of Washington’s relations with his mother, his father and Armstrong is conducted to shed light on the ambiguities in Washington’s subject position in racial relation. This essay especially examines how Washington writes Up From Slavery behind the mask of a trickster who accommodates to reality but manipulates whites in reality. It is fascinating that his subject position is also closely related to the regional as well as racial relations in America, which is demonstrated in his Atlanta Exposition Address. It also closely explores this address, which has multiple layers of meanings in the organic image of a hand. This article ultimately illuminates that he does not surrender but retreats on the field with his own voice, and that he is a supreme manipulator with his own strategy of survival in the racial power structure of Jim Crow America, representing his fluid identity.
Abstract
Up From Slavery (1901), Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, has been controversial, especially in terms of his subject position. Many critics have attacked Washington in that he speaks for whites at the expense of blacks. However, some parts of this work demonstrate that his subject position is for blacks unlike his seeming attitude. Concerning this question, this paper explores the verisimilitude of his identity to illuminate his subject position in the work because this enables us to understand Washington’s ambiguous attitude toward blacks and to whites. In this regard, a close examination of Washington’s relations with his mother, his father and Armstrong is conducted to shed light on the ambiguities in Washington’s subject position in racial relation. This essay especially examines how Washington writes Up From Slavery behind the mask of a trickster who accommodates to reality but manipulates whites in reality. It is fascinating that his subject position is also closely related to the regional as well as racial relations in America, which is demonstrated in his Atlanta Exposition Address. It also closely explores this address, which has multiple layers of meanings in the organic image of a hand. This article ultimately illuminates that he does not surrender but retreats on the field with his own voice, and that he is a supreme manipulator with his own strategy of survival in the racial power structure of Jim Crow America, representing his fluid identity.
참고문헌 (15)
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- Grady, Henry W, "The New South. in Life of Henry Grady", pp.83~93 (1890), Cassell Publishing Company
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- Washington, Booker T, "Up from Slavery in Three Negro Classics" (1965), New York: Avon Books