Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T23:01:52.444Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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
Get access

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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • “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
×

Save book to Dropbox

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 Dropbox.

  • “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
×

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
×