Journal Article

The Character of Race: Adoption and Individuation in William Faulkner’s Light in August and Charles Chesnutt’s The Quarry

Jerng, Mark C

2008

Overview

Several critics notice that Donald Glover and Joe Christmas pose a unique twist to passing: the characters pass as white and pass as black, and ultimately settle, however uneasily, into a black persona.3 Whether or not one decides that Glover and Christmas choose to pass or choose not to pass, pass as white or pass as black, the theme of passing powerfully poses the social construction of race, even as it frames the problem of racial identity in terms of an individual choice.4 Passing privileges racial identity as a problem of being true to oneself, because to pass presumes that one is masquerading as something that one is not. Rathet than exemplifying racial identity as an individual characteristic or even personal choice (passing), Glover and Christmas represent the relational dimensions of racial subjectivity as a negotiation between the other's demand and the self's attempt at integration and individuation.5 Race is usually represented in the logic of categories (the social categories of race, class, gender, etc.) that define persons through distinguishing attributes and specific differences: I am black, not white; I am male, not female, etc.

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subject: American literature / Anxiety / Christmas / Faulkner, William (1897-1962) / Logic / Negotiation / Race / Religion / Self concept / Subjectivity / Theme