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Chapter 10 - Passing

from Part IV - Reconfigurations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2022

John Ernest
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
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Summary

The essay focuses on the uses and significance of the trope of passing, as both theme and literary strategy, in African American fiction from the 19th to the 21st century. Passing as a theme pushed the boundaries of arbitrary, but operative, racial dichotomies, while passing as a literary strategy enabled radical experimentation with novelistic conventions. African American writers revised the tragic mulatta and mulatto characters by articulating a black-centered racial imaginary that infused the trope of passing with profound political and literary relevance. Deploying the high visibility of all-but-white characters as a screen to introduce new figures in American literature, they advanced a far from monolithic understanding of blackness that foregrounded its intraracial diversification and intersection with gender and class. African American writers adopted the trope of passing in order to expose the sociopolitical construction of “race,” unsettle prevailing racial epistemologies of blackness, popularize a more complex racial imaginary, and teach self-consciously critical modes of reading literature and, by extension, reality. Through a diachronic approach, the essay shows how the trope of passing was repurposed in different literary-historical periods and how it retains its relevance as a malleable literary strategy of cultural and political intervention.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Passing
  • Edited by John Ernest, University of Delaware
  • Book: Race in American Literature and Culture
  • Online publication: 26 May 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108766654.015
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  • Passing
  • Edited by John Ernest, University of Delaware
  • Book: Race in American Literature and Culture
  • Online publication: 26 May 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108766654.015
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Passing
  • Edited by John Ernest, University of Delaware
  • Book: Race in American Literature and Culture
  • Online publication: 26 May 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108766654.015
Available formats
×