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Chapter 5 - “He Forgot His History”

Ellison’s Naturalist Modernism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2022

Paul Stasi
Affiliation:
University of Albany
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Summary

In Chapter 5, I turn to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Long understood in opposition to Richard Wright’s naturalism, Ellison’s work nevertheless retains its sense of social determination. Equal parts bildungsroman and picaresque, Invisible Man seems to undo every stable category it creates. Dominated by an idea of surplus that is both aesthetic and economic, the hallucinatory logic of Invisible Man represents a book-length dissection of our culture’s naturalization of race. In doing so, it reveals itself to be profoundly ambivalent about the protagonist’s search for his true self, which becomes, in this reading, a mark of his subjection to America’s racial imaginary. Like Beckett, then, Ellison presents a world with little hope, but his protest against catastrophe contains the negative image of a freedom currently impossible to attain.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • “He Forgot His History”
  • Paul Stasi, University of Albany
  • Book: The Persistence of Realism in Modernist Fiction
  • Online publication: 08 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009223126.006
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  • “He Forgot His History”
  • Paul Stasi, University of Albany
  • Book: The Persistence of Realism in Modernist Fiction
  • Online publication: 08 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009223126.006
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.

  • “He Forgot His History”
  • Paul Stasi, University of Albany
  • Book: The Persistence of Realism in Modernist Fiction
  • Online publication: 08 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009223126.006
Available formats
×