{"id":15973,"date":"2011-09-01T23:54:24","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T23:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=15973"},"modified":"2014-01-16T15:42:07","modified_gmt":"2014-01-16T15:42:07","slug":"in-the-middle-in-between-cultural-hybridity-community-rejection-and-the-destabilization-of-race-in-percival-everetts-erasure-adam-mansbachs-angry-black-white-boy-and-danzy-senna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=15973","title":{"rendered":"In the Middle, In Between: Cultural Hybridity, Community Rejection, and the Destabilization of Race in Percival Everett’s “Erasure”, Adam Mansbach’s “Angry Black White Boy”, and Danzy Senna’s “Caucasia”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Middle, In Between: Cultural Hybridity, Community Rejection, and the Destabilization of Race in Percival Everett’s “Erasure”, Adam Mansbach’s “Angry Black White Boy”, and Danzy Senna’s “Caucasia”<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Howard University
\n2011
\n84 pages
\nPublication Number: AAT 1495397
\nISBN: 9781124728568<\/p>\n

Laura R. Perez<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Howard University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English<\/em><\/p>\n

Cultural hybridity, a term first introduced by post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha<\/a>, has been a shifting and difficult to define concept within academic discourse. My thesis will focus on cultural hybridity as the embodiment of a pluralistic identity that encompasses the characteristics or attributes of more than one culture or race. I will examine three contemporary literary works of racial satire\u2014Percival Everett’s<\/a> Erasure<\/a><\/em>, Adam Mansbach’s<\/a> Angry Black White Boy<\/a><\/em>, and Danzy Senna’s<\/a> Caucasia<\/a>\u2014<\/em>that present culturally hybrid protagonists and explore the ways in which these protagonists are utilized to destabilize race. Furthermore, I will demonstrate the tensions that this destabilization creates through community rejections of each protagonists’ hybridity – tensions that become inherent to hybridity itself.<\/p>\n

My exploration will include an analysis of the protagonists’ hybridity\u2014the ways in which they do not fit into the existing notions of what blackness or whiteness is\u2014and how this hybridity is marginalized by their communities. Following this, I will explicate the protagonists’ responses to their marginalization\u2014their creation of dual identities or alter egos and the racial\/psychoanalytic significance of this process. I will draw upon post-colonial and critical race theory writings, as well as Freudian and Lacanian theory, to frame my analysis. But most importantly, I will draw upon the work of scholars\u2014including Marwan Kraidy<\/a>, Jopi Nyman, Sabrine Broeck<\/a>, Pnina Werbner<\/a>, Peter Burke<\/a>, and Robert Young<\/a>\u2014to theorize hybridity within my analysis.<\/p>\n

Finally, I will examine the novels’ conclusions, during which the protagonists’ dual identities are forcefully merged, and demonstrate the lack of resolution that this merging creates. This examination will reveal that the community rejections of hybridity in each novel are, in themselves, impossible to mediate. Thus, I will prove that each protagonist’s hybrid positioning not only destabilizes race by challenging the concreteness of racial categorizations, but that this positioning, and the community’s response to it, also demonstrates the tensions inherent to hybridity itself.<\/strong> In this way, each text undermines the black-white binary, while also affirming the tensions that result from not willfully engaging in it.<\/p>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n