| My dissertation examines the turn-of-the-century rhetoric of “truth” and “objectivity” in relation to the era's obsession with racial definition and categorization. Whether these definitions were based on biology, sociology, psychology or law; whether they opposed or encouraged social equality; and whether they questioned the notion of racial difference itself, they relied almost exclusively on a rhetoric of objectivity. My project attempts to chart how writers of fiction—Charles Chesnutt, W. E. B. DuBois, Frances Harper, Pauline Hopkins, Mark Twain, and Albion Tourgée—borrowed, amended, and rejected these varying notions of truth in order to give their own texts an “objective” authority, particularly as this authority pertained to racial classification.; The claim that turn-of-the-century debates about race hinged on contested definitions of truth is, in itself, no startling revelation. Scholars such as Hazel Carby, George Fredrickson, Kevin Gaines, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Stephen Jay Gould, Susan Gillman, Sandra Gunning, Evelyn Higginbotham and Eric Lott, just to name a few, have in recent decades contributed significantly to the project of documenting and historicizing the racial dynamics of the period. Yet, the unique ways in which writers of fiction marshal the rhetoric of objectivity to defend, resist, edit, or avoid contemporary racial definitions remain largely unexplored. This study examines how different genres, philosophies and methodologies of writing affect writers' conceptions and treatments of racial “truth.” The study also examines how access to privileged literary communities such as publishing houses and magazines influences the negotiation of racial definitions, how the rhetoric of objectivity can be used to manufacture as well as resist established ideologies of racial difference, and how these negotiations adopt and amend contemporary views of gender and class. By looking closely at the genres with which various authors align themselves, I simultaneously demonstrate how different genres often identify competing sites of authority and contrasting conceptions of Truth. |
