{"id":8231,"date":"2010-08-10T02:32:18","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T02:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=8231"},"modified":"2015-09-07T21:07:27","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T21:07:27","slug":"building-the-%e2%80%9cblue%e2%80%9d-race-miscegenation-mysticism-and-the-language-of-cognitive-evolution-in-jean-toomer%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cthe-blue-meridian%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=8231","title":{"rendered":"Building the \u201cBlue\u201d Race: Miscegenation, Mysticism, and the Language of Cognitive Evolution in Jean Toomer\u2019s \u201cThe Blue Meridian\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1353\/tsl.2004.0008\" target=\"_blank\">Building the \u201cBlue\u201d Race: Miscegenation, Mysticism, and the Language of Cognitive Evolution in Jean Toomer\u2019s \u201cThe Blue Meridian\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/journals\/texas_studies_in_literature_and_language\" target=\"_blank\">Texas Studies in Literature and Language<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.utexas.edu\/utpress\/journals\/jatsll.html#462\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 46, Number 2, Summer 2004<\/a><br \/>\npages 149-180<br \/>\nE-ISSN: 1534-7303<br \/>\nPrint ISSN: 0040-4691<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1353\/tsl.2004.0008\" target=\"_blank\">10.1353\/tsl.2004.0008<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/faculty.unt.edu\/editprofile.php?pid=1385&amp;onlyview=1\" target=\"_blank\">Stephanie L. Hawkins<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of English<br \/>\n<em>University of North Texas<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jean_Toomer\" target=\"_blank\">Toomer\u2019s<\/a> vision of psychological evolution later realized and racialized in \u201cThe Blue Meridian\u201d (1936) has its precursor in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cane_(novel)\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Cane\u2019s<\/em><\/a> closing chapter, the short drama \u201cKabnis,\u201d and in the figure of Kabnis as a biracial subject struggling to find speech representative of his psychological experience. Kabnis\u2019s ambivalence toward his black ancestry manifests in blood rhetoric that both highlights and undermines the purity of the plantation aristocracy that has contributed to his making. He declares, \u201cMy ancestors were Southern blue-bloods\u2014\u201d; \u201cAnd black,\u201d retorts Lewis, another educated black Northerner. Recognizing the pervasiveness of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=3208\" target=\"_blank\">one-drop rule<\/a> for determining African descent\u2014and the fact that Southerners frequently purged traces of black blood from their genealogical records\u2014Kabnis argues that there\u00a0\u201cAint much difference between blue and black\u201d (108). There is a double recognition here: first, that black ancestry is inherent in the bodies of many who pass for white; and second, that as a&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the article <a href=\"http:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/journals\/texas_studies_in_literature_and_language\/v046\/46.2hawkins.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Building the \u201cBlue\u201d Race: Miscegenation, Mysticism, and the Language of Cognitive Evolution in Jean Toomer\u2019s \u201cThe Blue Meridian\u201d Texas Studies in Literature and Language Volume 46, Number 2, Summer 2004 pages 149-180 E-ISSN: 1534-7303 Print ISSN: 0040-4691 DOI: 10.1353\/tsl.2004.0008 Stephanie L. Hawkins, Assistant Professor of English University of North Texas Toomer\u2019s vision of psychological evolution [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[1996,3478,3477,6655],"class_list":["post-8231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-jean-toomer","tag-stephanie-hawkins","tag-stephanie-l-hawkins","tag-texas-studies-in-literature-and-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8231","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=8231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42586,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8231\/revisions\/42586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}