{"id":63471,"date":"2022-03-20T02:02:35","date_gmt":"2022-03-20T02:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63471"},"modified":"2022-03-20T21:10:35","modified_gmt":"2022-03-20T21:10:35","slug":"suspect-proof-paranoia-suspicious-reading-and-the-racial-passing-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63471","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSuspect-Proof\u201d? Paranoia, Suspicious Reading, and the Racial Passing Narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSuspect-Proof\u201d? Paranoia, Suspicious Reading, and the Racial Passing Narrative<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

American Literary History<\/a>
\nVolume 34, Issue 1, Spring 2022<\/a>
\npages 272\u2013282
\nDOI: 10.1093\/alh\/ajab089<\/a><\/p>\n

Sin\u00e9ad Moynihan<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of English
\nUniversity of Exeter<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

This short essay considers racial passing<\/a> narratives in relation to the \u201cpostcritical turn,\u201d highlighting the proliferating reappraisals of the practices of \u201csuspicious\u201d or \u201csymptomatic\u201d reading in literary studies and the extent to which passing narratives offer an opportunity to test some of the claims of this body of scholarship. The utility of the passing narrative for this critical project lies in its persistent, self-conscious foregrounding of reading practices. Revisiting passing narratives in light of postcritique reveals that symptomatic reading is not a monolithic practice; rather, there are multiple ways of reading suspiciously. Moreover, and more importantly, passing narratives disclose that what has now become an orthodoxy in postcritique\u2014that attitudes such as \u201cparanoia,\u201d \u201csuspicion,\u201d and \u201cvigilance\u201d profoundly limit \u201cthe thickness and richness of our aesthetic attachments\u201d\u2014ignores contexts, like that of a passer in a white supremacist society, in which such strategies are not a choice but are essential for survival (Felski 17). The key question posed herein is: What forms of privilege enable a reader to relinquish her attachment to paranoia, suspicion, and vigilance; to opt for openness rather than guardedness, submission rather than aggression (21)? Narratives of racial passing provide one answer to that question.<\/p>\n

Read the entire article in HTML<\/a> or PDF<\/a> format.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

he key question posed herein is: What forms of privilege enable a reader to relinquish her attachment to paranoia, suspicion, and vigilance; to opt for openness rather than guardedness, submission rather than aggression (21)? Narratives of racial passing provide one answer to that question.<\/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":[903,33288,26237,33290,333,898,897,1340,33289,33291,8313,330,91,1305,33287,3355,1307,33292,488,33285,87,2336,33286,6642,3433,490],"class_list":["post-63471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","tag-american-literary-history","tag-amy-robinson","tag-anne-anlin-cheng","tag-carolyn-see","tag-charles-chesnutt","tag-charles-w-chesnutt","tag-charles-waddell-chesnutt","tag-danzy-senna","tag-donna-seaman","tag-erika-renee-williams","tag-eve-kosofsky-sedgwick","tag-frances-e-w-harper","tag-frances-harper","tag-gayle-wald","tag-heather-love","tag-hershini-bhana-young","tag-james-weldon-johnson","tag-jeff-zaleski","tag-langston-hughes","tag-merve-emre","tag-nella-larsen","tag-ralph-ellison","tag-rita-felski","tag-sinead-moynihan","tag-willard-savoy","tag-william-faulkner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63471","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=63471"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63475,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63471\/revisions\/63475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}