{"id":6569,"date":"2010-04-12T03:11:37","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T03:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=6569"},"modified":"2011-06-25T20:08:29","modified_gmt":"2011-06-25T20:08:29","slug":"ambiguity-and-the-ethics-of-reading-race-and-lynching-in-james-w-johnson%e2%80%99s-the-autobiography-of-an-ex-colored-man-1912","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=6569","title":{"rendered":"Ambiguity and the Ethics of Reading Race and Lynching in James W. Johnson\u2019s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www-copas.uni-regensburg.de\/articles\/issue_10\/10_03_text_dexl.php\" target=\"_blank\">Ambiguity and the Ethics of Reading Race and Lynching in James W. Johnson\u2019s \u201cThe Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man\u201d (1912)<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www-copas.uni-regensburg.de\" target=\"_blank\">Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS)<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www-copas.uni-regensburg.de\/articles\/issue_10\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 10<\/a> (2009)<br \/>\nISSN: 1861-6127<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"mailto:carmen.dexl@gmx.de\" target=\"_blank\">Carmen Dexl<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\n<em>University of Erlangen<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_Weldon_Johnson\" target=\"_blank\">James Weldon Johnson<\/a>\u2019s novel <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Autobiography_of_an_Ex-Colored_Man\" target=\"_blank\">The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man<\/a><\/em> (1912) discusses the causes, conditions, and implications of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\">passing<\/a> in a segregated society. The essay argues that the novel\u2019s aesthetics of ambiguity conveys and reflects an ambivalence towards the concept of race. Using theories of <a href=\"http:\/\/nationalhumanitiescenter.org\/director\/harphambio.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Geoffrey Galt Harpham<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/english.fas.nyu.edu\/object\/JohnGuillory.html\" target=\"_blank\">John Guillory<\/a>, it elaborates an ethics of reading race and lynching in <em>The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man<\/em>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;Being of mixed-race heritage and blurring the black\/white binary, the <em>Ex-Colored Man<\/em> as a passing figure personifies this \u201ccategory crisis.\u201d As the living proof of the instability\u2014and hence unreliability\u2014of the category race, the Ex-Colored Man is necessarily ambivalent towards the ontology of racial categories. Apart from his intention to remain anonymous, his and all the other characters\u2019 namelessness throughout the novel further denote a \u201csense of rootlessness\u201d (Andrews xix) in a constantly changing modern society that is paradoxically firmly rooted in exactly these unreliable conceptions of race. His moral dilemma and contradictory attitudes towards himself and society result from being at once an insider and beneficiary as well as an outsider and critical observer of that very social system&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www-copas.uni-regensburg.de\/articles\/issue_10\/10_03_text_dexl.php\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ambiguity and the Ethics of Reading Race and Lynching in James W. Johnson\u2019s \u201cThe Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man\u201d (1912) Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS) Volume 10 (2009) ISSN: 1861-6127 Carmen Dexl University of Erlangen James Weldon Johnson\u2019s novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) discusses the causes, conditions, and implications of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,6,6462,20],"tags":[2746,2748,2747,2749,1307,2750],"class_list":["post-6569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-new-media","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-carmen-dexl","tag-copas","tag-current-objectives-of-postgraduate-american-studies","tag-geoffrey-galt-harpham","tag-james-weldon-johnson","tag-john-guillory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6569","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=6569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}