{"id":56964,"date":"2018-10-25T00:35:51","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T00:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56964"},"modified":"2018-10-25T00:35:51","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T00:35:51","slug":"racial-passing-and-double-consciousness-in-philip-roths-the-human-stain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56964","title":{"rendered":"Racial Passing and Double Consciousness in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Racial Passing and Double Consciousness in Philip Roth’s <\/strong><\/em>The Human Stain<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Philip Roth Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 14, Number 1, 2018<\/a>
\npages 55-69
\nDOI: 10.5703\/philrothstud.14.1.0055<\/a><\/p>\n

Dyanne K. Martin<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of English
\nBroward College, Fort Lauderdale, Floirida<\/em><\/p>\n

Philip Roth’s<\/a> nuanced understanding of the issues of race in pre- and post-Civil Rights America offers fresh thinking in a field that perhaps needs to explore new directions. The approach in this article is to use techniques of semiotics<\/a> to assess the subtle cues in the linguist protagonist’s language as his statements move in and out of clarity, ambivalence, and doubleness. I argue that these forms of semiotic doubleness represent the dualities and ironies with which mixed-race people struggle in a society still divided by race.<\/em><\/p>\n

Much has been said about Philip Roth\u2019s<\/a> use of racial passing<\/a> as a trope in his novel The Human Stain<\/em><\/a>. Critics such as Luminita Dragulescu<\/a> and Jennifer Glaser<\/a> argue that the novel represents the complexities of identity performance. Dragulescu, in particular, positions Roth\u2019s use of racial passing as \u201ca terrain of discursive power\u201d (96). Glaser agrees with Dragulescu but adds that Roth\u2019s mixed-race protagonist, Coleman Silk, portrays the traumatic complexities of the mulatto\u2019s<\/a> decision to traverse not just the color line but also the ethnic line. Passing as both white and Jewish, Silk illustrates what Glaser calls the \u201congoing dynamics of racializcd power\u201d in the discipline of critical race theory<\/a>, a theory that is \u201cinherently comparative\u201d (1465). While these critics have engaged important issues in The Human Stain<\/em>, they leave unaddressed Roth\u2019s use of verbal or syntactic ambivalence in relation to the trope of racial passing in his novel. When Coleman Silk in a pivotal scene lashes out that he \u201cdon\u2019t carry no nigger,\u201d he seems, ostensibly, to be making a simple, straightforward statement (Stain<\/em> 117). Yet Silks words are both…<\/p>\n

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

The approach in this article is to use techniques of semiotics to assess the subtle cues in the linguist protagonist’s language as his statements move in and out of clarity, ambivalence, and doubleness. I argue that these forms of semiotic doubleness represent the dualities and ironies with which mixed-race people struggle in a society still divided by race.<\/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":[29040,29041,8110,11553,10836],"class_list":["post-56964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-dyanne-k-martin","tag-dyanne-martin","tag-philip-roth","tag-philip-roth-studies","tag-the-human-stain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56964","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=56964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56965,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56964\/revisions\/56965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}