{"id":37302,"date":"2014-09-08T20:07:13","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T20:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37302"},"modified":"2014-09-08T20:07:13","modified_gmt":"2014-09-08T20:07:13","slug":"the-penumbral-spaces-of-nella-larsens-passing-undecidable-bodies-mobile-identities-and-the-deconstruction-of-racial-boundaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37302","title":{"rendered":"The Penumbral Spaces of Nella Larsen’s Passing: Undecidable bodies, mobile identities, and the deconstruction of racial boundaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Penumbral Spaces of Nella Larsen’s <\/strong><\/em>Passing<\/strong>: Undecidable bodies, mobile identities, and the deconstruction of racial boundaries<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography<\/a>
\nVolume 13, Issue 3, 2006<\/a>
\npages 227-246
\nDOI: 10.1080\/09663690600700972<\/a><\/p>\n

Perry L. Carter<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of Human Geography
\nTexas Tech University<\/em><\/p>\n

Nella Larsen’s<\/a> 1929 novel, Passing<\/em><\/a>, is a psychological drama centering around two fair-skinned women. One, Clare Kendry, passes as the White wife of a financially successful racist; the other, Irene Redfield, is a \u2018race woman\u2019 living in upper Manhattan<\/a> during the era of the Renaissance Harlem<\/a>. Clare and Irene are undecidables, neither White nor Black, fluid subjects traversing the boundaries of race\u2014passing<\/a>. Passing is an act of insinuating oneself into forbidden spaces by jettisoning former identities. It is as much a transgression of spatial boundaries as it is of racial boundaries. In the novel Clare passes by merely crossing from Black space into White space, and along the way shedding a Black identity for a White one. This paper examines the mobility of identities across racial geographies and how this movement destabilizes notions of race and of raced spaces.<\/p>\n

We encounter the world in our bodies, and through our bodies’ most exquisitely sensitive sense, our skins, we take the world into ourselves. We have made and remade a world where nearly every experience is shaded and shaped by the color of those bodies, the tones of those skins. (Jane Lazarre<\/a>, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: memoir of a White mother of Black sons<\/em><\/a>, 1997, p. 94)…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Penumbral Spaces of Nella Larsen’s Passing: Undecidable bodies, mobile identities, and the deconstruction of racial boundaries Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography Volume 13, Issue 3, 2006 pages 227-246 DOI: 10.1080\/09663690600700972 Perry L. Carter, Assistant Professor of Human Geography Texas Tech University Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, Passing, is a psychological drama […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,6462],"tags":[17855,87,17857,17856],"class_list":["post-37302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","tag-gender-place-culture-a-journal-of-feminist-geography","tag-nella-larsen","tag-perry-carter","tag-perry-l-carter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}