Writing Difference: Nationalism, Identity and Literature by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Also in this opening exchange between Slim and the protagonist, are established two symmetrically related thematic/denotative oppositions that persist throughout, and structure, the rest of the narrative. The first consists of a quasi-deconstructive reversal of the black/white opposition whereupon blackness acquires the dignity of privileged signifier. This reversal is primarily contingent upon the successful administration of the second opposition; namely that the material or specular appearance of the protagonist is set up as diametrically antithetical to his verbally articulated (self)-representation. The symmetry in these two structures lies in the way in which the visibly desirable “white” protagonist identifies, through his voiced avowal, with the black counter-Symbolic agenda governing Slim’s narrative universe. Indeed, it is highly consequential that the protagonist is openly welcomed by the white supremacist elite of the ruling order, yet repudiates their corrupt embrace and strives instead to win approval of, and inclusion in, the black underworld. So that despite being a “six-four blond white [man who is a]…dead ringer for Errol Flynn” (Trick Baby, 36), the protagonist cleaves to the titular blackness conferred upon him by the Slimian counter-discourse through constant declarations of his blackness coupled with exaggeratedly performative displays of behavior associated with that register. The explicit installation in the narrative of an hermeneutic antagonism between specular and verbal modes of subject(ive) representation, thus operates as a powerfully subversive instrument for overturning and inverting those binarisms that underpin—what is textually represented as—the white supremacist ontology of dominant discourse. Subsequently, in Trick Baby, Kawash’s above-cited “common sense” logic of passing is also radically upset: unlike the traditional passing narrative which sees the passing body assuming white subjectivity and privilege,[9] the passing figure in Trick Baby takes pains to aver an “authentic” or convincing black identity at the outset of his provocative (mis)conduct on both sides of the color-line.

As discussed above, “common sense” representations of racial identity vis-à-vis the dominant Symbolic order ultimately rely upon the polarization of blackness and whiteness in order to support a particular social and ideological hegemony. This was characteristically so within the spatio-temporal setting in which the narrative is framed (Chicago circa, 1940s-1960s), where the divisive and debasing force of the color-line was keenly experienced by those enframed by the signifier of blackness. Elaine Ginsberg, in “The Politics of Passing,” maintains that post-Antebellum/Abolition situations of racist divisions in American society were not abrogated, but, rather, reformulated to be less visibly overt and in most cases actually exacerbated (7). Indeed, explicating the socio-economic and historical conditions that gave rise at once to the criminal underclass and Black Nationalist movements of the period, Matthew Hughey notes:

After slavery, reconstruction, and Jim Crow, few opportunities existed for legitimate black male social mobility. The combined social forces of poverty, unemployment, family disruption, and isolation from mainstream [white] civic participation still defined the context for many residents in poor, inner-city neighborhoods. These forces effectively disallowed, or at least greatly constrained, social mobility and worked to create…a ‘code of the street’. (36)

What Hughey refers to as the “code of the

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