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課程簡介
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“Race” continues to color, if not pervade, contemporary cultural expression. The verbal images contained in Benjamin Zephaniah’s poem ‘White Comedy’ express in different ways the extent to which racial domination can permeate a society and the social distance which can separate black people and white people. Almost always the white person or white group has been in a position of superiority, and the black person or group in a situation of inferiority, lesser power or influence, and having to justify themselves. In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote movingly of the resulting sense of duality for black people:
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? . . . the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
Such manifestations of racism are a depressing reminder of the continuing importance of racism as a social and political issue in the contemporary global environment. In recent times racism is very much a vibrant influence on current social and political movements and in some cases on state policies. Questions about race, racism, and ethnicity have become important preoccupations of debate in the social sciences and humanities at the end of one millennium and the beginning of another, to a considerable degree displacing preoccupation with class and other forms of social inequality. W. E. B. Du Bois prophetically observed in 1903 that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and in the islands of the sea”. On the threshold of the twenty-first century, the “color line” remains important in various ways. Socially structured racial inequality and disadvantage persist. Developments in a number of countries have highlighted the power of racial ideas in forging movements and political parties, often with murderous consequences. The outcome of these mobilizations have become clear in some situations, while in others they remain to be seen.
This course is designed to help graduate students obtain a better understanding of the invention or construction of racism through theoretical discourses and narratives in American fiction. In the first half of the semester, we will examine the historical development of the theories of “race” and racism in the cultural context. As the concept of “race” constitutes one of the most powerful ideological formations in history, critical study of “race” is central to contemporary thought. Understanding the ideology of “race,” its formation, effects, and intricate relations with such issues as class, gender, and colonization is among the most forceful challenges facing history and criticism. It is hoped that, through an in-depth exploration of the theories of “race” and racism and their representations in Anglo-American, Afro-American and Asian-American novels, students will realize what Frank Chin means when he says—“Writing is fighting. Life is war.”—and what Frantz Fanon means when he writes: “It is the white man who creates the Negro. But it is the Negro who creates negritude.”
Now that the course is a seminar, it is imperative that students participate actively in class discussions. Also required of Ph.D. students are three oral presentations (two twenty minutes in length and the third half an hour) and a twenty-page term paper. Requirements for M.A. students include two oral presentations (one twenty minutes in length and the other half an hour) and a fifteen-page term paper. Students are encouraged to discuss with the instructor before deciding on the topic of the second oral presentation or the term paper. The paper, due two weeks after the final meeting, may be developed out of the last oral presentation.
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