Illusory Nature Of Racial Boundary Ellison’s View On Race In Juneteenth

Ralph Ellison is one of the most influential African American writers in American literary history. Invisible Man, his first novel, won the National Book Award in1953. The novel has won mountainous favorable comments from literary critics for Ellison’s masterly craftsmanship in literary composition and, more remarkably, his delicate expression of black culture, life experience, disturbing identity and consciousness. The novel enjoys so high a position that some of the critics even regard it as the most significant work since World War Ⅱ. However, in terms of his political position, critiques vary. Richard Wright, a radical leftist critic, impugns Ellison for his alleged betrayal of his black fellows, as he gives up the mission of protest for the suffering blacks. Other critics hold an opposite view and offer their praise for Ellison’s artistic detachment. He adopts a delicate approach to subverting racial segregation instead of a violent and banal protest or a dogmatic propaganda.Juneteenth, though published recently, has already aroused much critical attention over Ellison’s political standpoint. Ellison holds up his belief in literary composition and attempts to show humanity underlying black culture and consciousness, which has been neglected, consciously and unconsciously, by the white to assert their superiority over the black. Ellison points out that the black are represented as the Other by the white who control the power of discourse. The white divides the two races with a color line, which is defined by biological skin difference. The author of this thesis attempts to analyze Ellison’s view on racial boundary and expound how Ellison’s disclosure of the illusory nature of racial boundary subverts white hegemony and calls for racial pluralism.Chapter One focuses on Ellison’s explication of the black being represented as the Other by the white. With dominating power of discourse, the white depreciate the black as the Other, arbitrarily distorting or neglecting their humanity, culture and consciousness. With the opposing image of the Other, they constitute the identity of Self. The three sections analyze the representation from three perspectives:how the white supremacy smothers human love across races and ends the life of an innocent black man, how the black are unjustly treated and how the white implicitly strengthen a sense of inferiority upon the mind of the nation.Chapter Two analyzes the performances in the novel in order to prove the performativity of racial identity, which subverts the essentialist racial boundary. Identity is not fixed with defined nature, but exists under specific conditions. Identity is "instituted through a stylized repetition of acts." There are two levels of performances in the novel:performance on the stage and that in real life. Performance on the stage of Resurrection Ceremony offers Bliss a new identity-Jesus, which, though limited within the stage, reminds Bliss of the possibility of changing identities through performances; Bliss, in his real life, performs to be a white man and turns himself into a white senator. Performativity of racial identity undermines the essentialist racial boundary constructed by the white.Chapter Three discusses Ellison’s views on how to deal with black-white relations implied in the novel. Ellison expresses his belief in the interrelatedness between blackness and whiteness by employing the symbol of blended color, appeals to both the black and white to embrace pluralism and richness of America for an authentic identity and being-for-itself, and expresses his worry about the danger of exclusivity in American manhood and the existing essentialist racial boundary.The author of the thesis also answers Richard Wright’s denunciation over Ellison by proving Ellison’s implicit but firm standpoint in racial relations. Ellison is speaking for the black in a sophisticated way and educating his readers with his reason and humanism.