Reconstituting Americans: Liberal Multiculturalism and Identity Difference in Post-1960s Literature

239 Pages·2011·0.79 MB·English

by  Megan Obourn

Reconstituting Americans
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Reconstituting Americans
Liberal Multiculturalism
and Identity Difference
in Post- 1960s Literature
Megan Obourn
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RECONSTITUTING AMERICANS
Copyright © Megan Obourn, 2011.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the
United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth
Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of
the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan
Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998,
of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above
companies and has companies and representatives throughout the
world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United
States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978– 0- 230– 11247– 6
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Obourn, Megan.
Reconstituting Americans : liberal multiculturalism and identity
difference in post- 1960s literature / Megan Obourn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978- 0- 230- 11247- 6
1. American literature— Minority authors— History and criticism.
2. Multiculturalism in literature. 3. Identity (Psychology) in literature.
4. American literature— 20th century— History and criticism.
5. American literature— 21st century— History and criticism.
6. Citizenship in literature. 7. Liberalism in literature. 8. Cultural
pluralism in literature— United States. I. Title.
PS153.M56O26 2011
810.9'920693— dc22 2011005481
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: August 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Liberal Multicultural Paradox
and Aesthetics of Internal Distantiation 1
1 Psychic Distantiation: Audre Lorde, Traumatic Formalism,
and New Social Movement Identities 25
2 Hybrid Distantiation: Uses of Sexuality in the Fiction
of Arturo Islas 57
3 Inter(national) Distantiation: Jamaica Kincaid,
Reginald McKnight, and the Cosmopolitan Novel 83
4 Academic Investments in Liberal Multiculturalism:
Bharati Mukherjee’s Representational versus
Distantiative Aesthetics 123
Coda: Internal Distantiation in the 21st Century 157
Appendix: Teaching and Research on Bharati Mukherjee’s
Jasmine and The Holder of the World 165
Notes 169
Bibliography 205
Index 221
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Acknowledgments
More people than I can acknowledge here have contributed to my
thinking and scholarship over the course of writing this book including
colleagues, professors, students, and friends both inside and outside
the academic institutions with which I am and have been affiliated. I
am grateful to them all.
This book did grow from my doctoral dissertation. For tremendous
help at that stage I am indebted to George Shulman, Ross Posnock,
Victoria Hattam, Alyson Cole, Aliyyah Abdur-R ahman, Edmund
Fong, Robert Gunn, Tania Friedel, Sigmund Shen, and Tom Jacobs
of the American Literature and Politics reading group; Roy Perez,
Stephanie Hsu, Stefanie Wess, André Carrington and Crystal Parikh
of the Critical Race Analysis reading group; the English department
dissertation group, which included Asad Raza, Thom Heise, Elizabeth
Davis, Tom Jacobs, Michelle Goodin, Robert Gunn, Dave Landreth,
and Will Kenton. Thank you also to the writing group organized by
Phil Harper and made up of Rich Blint, Richard Kim, Aliyyah Abdur-
Rahman, Matthew Gourlay, Jonathan Shaw, and Carmelo Larose for
helping me to think through my use of cosmopolitanism in Chap-
ter 4. I especially need to thank the members of my long-t erm writing
group, Aliyyah Abdur-R ahman, Ifeona Fulani, and Adam Waterman,
who not only read and commented on many versions of many chap-
ters but also helped me to better understand my project as a whole.
Mary Poovey helped immensely with the early stages of the Audre
Lorde chapter. I am also thoroughly indebted to the administrative
staff in the New York University English department Alyssa Leal,
Susan McKeon, Taeesha Muhammad, Patty Okoh- Esene, and Kristen
Elias.
I would also like to thank Patricia Lawler, Lucy Anderson, Beth
Rosenberg, Inge de Taeye, Tania Friedel, Kyung-S ook Boo, Heather
Alumbaugh, Ted Sammons, Rich Blint, Aliyyah Abdur-R ahman, Jea-
nette Price, Tom Jacobs, Ben Turner, and Asad Raza for talking to
me throughout my years in graduate school and beyond about dis-
sertation chapters, writing, school, jobs, and life. Warmest thanks are
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viii acknowledgments
also due George Shulman who provided feedback, outside reading
suggestions, and a fine role model for interdisciplinary work. Thank
you to Annie Lee Jones for being a wonderful writing partner from
whom I have learned so much about psychoanalytic thought and
bravery in academic work. And many thanks of course to my invalu-
able dissertation committee: my advisor, Phil Harper, and my readers,
Cyrus Patell, José Muñoz, Ross Posnock, and Elizabeth McHenry.
To Eugene Poon, who saw me through every stage of the initial con-
struction of this project, thank you.
I am also greatly indebted to all my colleagues at The College at
Brockport. My thanks in particular to Brooke Conti, Alissa Karl, and
Joe Ortiz for their constant academic and personal support. Immense
gratitude to my fabulous advisors Janie Hinds and Jennifer Haytock
for all their help in turning this project from a dissertation into a
book. My thanks to Jean Wyatt for her detailed and insightful feed-
back about the entire project. Thank you to Susan Vasquez for help of
every kind in the department. My sincerest gratitude to James Black
for his outstanding work as a copy editor. Appreciation and love to
Megan and Stephanie Backer-B ertsch and Brian Deuel for getting me
through the final semester of revisions. Thank you to my students,
who inspire me and keep me going, particularly to Anthony Casciano,
an advisee who is also a great reading partner. Infinite thanks to Drew
Lichtenstein for being excited about the project and for constantly
supporting and encouraging me. And as always I thank Candy, Ted,
Erin, and Peter Obourn. You, of course, have my deepest love and
gratitude.
A shorter version of Chapter 1 appeared as “Audre Lorde: Trauma
Theory and Liberal Multiculturalism” in MELUS: The Journal of the
Society for the Study of the Multi- Ethnic Literature of the United States
30, no. 1 (2005): 219– 45. Reprinted here with permission.
A version of Chapter 2 appeared as “Hybridity, Identity, and Repre-
sentation in La Mollie and the King of Tears” in American Literature
80, no. 1 (2008): 141– 166, Duke University Press. Reprinted by per-
mission of the publisher.
Thank you to Norm Magnusson for letting me use his wonderful
piece, “Loss of Innocence,” for the cover. Copyright Norm Magnus-
son, from the collection of Alison and Stephane Gerson.
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4
I n t r o d u c t i o n
The Liberal Multicultural
Paradox and Aesthetics of
Internal Distantiation
S
ince the civil rights and other new social movements of the mid-
to late twentieth century, modes of US citizenship1 have shifted to
incorporate a politicized understanding of social identities. From this
shift emerged what has come to be known as a politics of multicultur-
alism. Though in academia there has been a push to move “beyond”
the logic of multicultural identity politics—t o global, cosmopolitan,
or postnational readings— our everyday understandings of American
citizenship remain steeped in a nationally oriented politics of identity.2
This politics follows a logic of difference in sameness. It is simultane-
ously multiculturalist and liberal individualist, as these ideologies have
been defined by the social and political history of the United States.
Reconstituting Americans makes the case that we should stay with the
questions raised by multiculturalism, that such questions were never
adequately answered, and that shifting the framework away from the
national does not so much answer outstanding questions and para-
doxes as it allows us to cover over them in the push to escape their irri-
tating persistence in every aspect of US cultural and political life. This
book looks at literary representations of post–n ew social movement
US citizenship that reveal to their readers the inherent contradictions
of a liberal multicultural ideology that celebrates the value of “differ-
ence” and “recognition” while simultaneously limiting the ways in
which persons marked as socially “different” can be represented and
addressed as citizens.3
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