{"id":44313,"date":"2015-11-28T15:53:38","date_gmt":"2015-11-28T15:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44313"},"modified":"2015-11-28T15:53:38","modified_gmt":"2015-11-28T15:53:38","slug":"watch-me-go-invisible-representing-racial-passing-in-mat-johnson-and-warren-pleeces-incognegro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=44313","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWatch me go invisible\u201d: Representing Racial Passing in Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece\u2019s Incognegro"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWatch me go invisible\u201d: Representing Racial Passing in Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece\u2019s <\/strong><\/em>Incognegro<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

South Central Review<\/a>
\nVolume 32, Number 3, Fall 2015<\/a>
\npages 45-69<\/p>\n

Sin\u00e9ad Moynihan<\/strong><\/a>, Senior Lecturer
\nUniversity of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

This essay examines the potential of the graphic novel<\/a> as a vehicle to explore one of the most enduring tropes in American culture: racial passing<\/a>. As what Hillary Chute<\/a> and Marianne DeKoven<\/a> term a \u201chybrid project,\u201d graphic narrative has the potential to pose \u201ca challenge to the structure of binary classification that opposes a set of terms, privileging one.\u201d Since passing narratives are themselves devoted to unsettling binaries \u2013 racial binaries \u2013 this essay considers the marrying of the graphic novel and the passing narrative in Mat Johnson<\/a> and Warren Pleece’s<\/a> Incognegro<\/em><\/a> (2008). How, in other words, can what Scott McCloud<\/a> terms \u201cthe art of the invisible\u201d (comics) depict what Joel Williamson<\/a> memorably calls \u201cinvisible blackness\u201d?<\/p>\n

The essay is particular interested in two aspects of Incognegro\u2019s<\/em> hybridity, one of which relates content, the other to form. First, in terms of content, the collaborators make several significant revisions to the comic book\u2019s signature character, the superhero, amalgamating the conventions of the superhero story with those of passing narratives in order to destabilise some of both genres\u2019 most telling assumptions. Second, in terms of formal devices, this essay examines the particular combination of visual and textual vocabularies deployed in Incognegro<\/em> to portray the ambiguously-raced subject, comparing it to the ways in which such subjects have been racially-encoded in more conventional literary and cinematic narratives of passing. Ultimately, this essay considers whether Incognegro\u2019s<\/em> hybrid properties offer new political possibilities for the narrative of racial passing.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cWatch me go invisible\u201d: Representing Racial Passing in Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece\u2019s Incognegro South Central Review Volume 32, Number 3, Fall 2015 pages 45-69 Sin\u00e9ad Moynihan, Senior Lecturer University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom This essay examines the potential of the graphic novel as a vehicle to explore one of the most enduring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[2355,6642,22087,22088],"class_list":["post-44313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-mat-johnson","tag-sinead-moynihan","tag-south-central-review","tag-warren-pleece"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44313","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=44313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44314,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44313\/revisions\/44314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}