Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Department of English, 2021.
My dissertation analyzes American literature spanning the 20th century through the lens of classical Critical Race Theory, which is unprecedented in literary analysis work. One nexus between CRT and the literature I examine is the motif of ocularity. Sight, blindness, illusion, masks, and hypervisibility are endemic to the language we use to describe both racialization and justice, and are key concepts at the heart of American antidiscrimination laws. Concepts of faulty sight, competing visions, invisibility, and
"seeing / not-seeing" race also appear throughout the literature I analyze, and make these literary texts fertile ground for my analysis. Specifically, I examine fictional retellings of actual race riots / insurrections / massacres from different historical moments in the 20th century. I start with Charles
Chesnutt’s 1901 The Marrow of Tradition, then turn to Ralph Ellison’s 1952 Invisible Man, and finally examine Anna Deavere Smith’s 1992 Twilight, Los Angeles. Marrow retells the story of the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 based on Chesnutt’s interviews with surviving witnesses, and Invisible Man ends with a riot in Harlem loosely based on Ellison's experience at the Harlem riot of 1943. Twilight is a theatrical production where Deavere Smith performs monologues collected from interviews with community
members following the Rodney King riots of 1992. My dissertation argues that these literary works anticipate, invoke, and rehearse the goals and methodologies of CRT. In these texts, I examine the process of "seeing race" as a cultural process having little to do with actual sight, alongside the concept of "not-seeing race" promoted by the American "color-blind" legal approach to discrimination and the cultural refrain that insists justice should be "blind." I argue that Marrow, Invisible Man, and Twilight, in the spirit of CRT, advocate a more race-conscious approach to achieve racial equality in America - an approach that values voices of color and "counterstorytelling" as a way to push back on systemic racism. I also argue that tracing ocularity, as a way of studying the interwoven subjects of blindness, sight, and concepts of justice, also reveals the large-scale connections between Critical Race Theory and literature. The literature I analyze ultimately communicates many ideas central to CRT, including the idea that color-blindness as a strategy for antidiscrimination cannot work because Americans are woefully unaware of how "seeing race" operates. Essentially, Americans can't un-see race if we don't realize the extent to which racialization pervades and distorts the visual field. Both the literature and CRT suggest a different solution - disruption of the "American Eye" pseudo-sight circuitry by listening to storytelling by those traditionally unheard, and by shifting perspectives into positions previously
unknown, and likely uncomfortable. The goal is not to un-see race at all, but instead to "see" racism more clearly, and simultaneously to value and listen to people who have been undervalued and silenced. As I explain in my chapters on Marrow, Invisible Man and Twilight, one CRT-related message the literature communicates is that Americans need to stumble through confusing twilight spaces of unknown territory in order to truly see.
