Ghost in the Machine and the Haunted City: Racialized Map of Technology in Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist
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This article analyzes how Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist explores themes of technological progress, race, and personhood through the allegorical concept of the “phantom passenger.” Central to the novel is the question of an elevator’s existence in relation to its passenger, a dynamic that raises broader philosophical and racial implications. The “phantom passenger” metaphor encapsulates the novel’s interrogation of being and perception, drawing on Gilbert Ryle’s “ghost in the machine” concept while reconfiguring it within a racial and technological context. Whitehead’s narrative examines the racialized dynamics of post-Civil Rights America, where institutional racism has transformed into subtler mechanisms of exclusion. Fulton’s intuitionist theories, revealed as cryptic critiques of racial inequity, mirror Lila Mae’s struggle with the hidden racial and social hierarchies in the ostensibly colorblind world she inhabits. By connecting the metaphorical “ghost” of elevators to African American invisibility and racial passing, this article argues, the novel critiques the ideological construction of race in modern urban spaces. The figure of the elevator, simultaneously technological and sentient, becomes a window through which Whitehead interrogates the intersections of race, technology, and utopian aspirations. The Intuitionist ultimately positions itself within a tradition of African American literature, echoing the works of Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and W.E.B. Du Bois, as it redefines the ghost as a presence that challenges dominant narratives of progress, rationality, and racial identity in 20th-century America.
Abstract
This article analyzes how Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist explores themes of technological progress, race, and personhood through the allegorical concept of the “phantom passenger.” Central to the novel is the question of an elevator’s existence in relation to its passenger, a dynamic that raises broader philosophical and racial implications. The “phantom passenger” metaphor encapsulates the novel’s interrogation of being and perception, drawing on Gilbert Ryle’s “ghost in the machine” concept while reconfiguring it within a racial and technological context. Whitehead’s narrative examines the racialized dynamics of post-Civil Rights America, where institutional racism has transformed into subtler mechanisms of exclusion. Fulton’s intuitionist theories, revealed as cryptic critiques of racial inequity, mirror Lila Mae’s struggle with the hidden racial and social hierarchies in the ostensibly colorblind world she inhabits. By connecting the metaphorical “ghost” of elevators to African American invisibility and racial passing, this article argues, the novel critiques the ideological construction of race in modern urban spaces. The figure of the elevator, simultaneously technological and sentient, becomes a window through which Whitehead interrogates the intersections of race, technology, and utopian aspirations. The Intuitionist ultimately positions itself within a tradition of African American literature, echoing the works of Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and W.E.B. Du Bois, as it redefines the ghost as a presence that challenges dominant narratives of progress, rationality, and racial identity in 20th-century America.
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