Rewriting

Polytropic Identities

in the Postmodern African American Novel

Notes

Conclusion

1.     The discussed texts are characterized by a “double historicization,” which presupposes a rethinking of “both tradition and of the way in which the tradition is ‘applied’” (Bourdieu 1998, 423).

2.     In “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” Toni Morrison militates for a political dimension of literature: “The work must be political. It must have that as its thrust. That’s a perjorative term in critical circles now: if a work of art has any political influence in it, somehow it’s tainted… The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time” (1984 b, 344-45).

3.     Moreover, to create an opening into new possibilities of exploring identity in relation to race, postmodern black texts have started to construct characters that bridge over racial conflicts such as Rutherford in Johnson’s Middle Passage, Amy Denver in Morrison’s Beloved, and Paul in Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying. The stress here is on a reciprocal acknowledgement of the inherent value of the other with no concern for perpetuating racial antagonism. In this sense, bell hooks’ “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination” can be a useful starting point, as she remarks that in the black imagination whiteness is invested with the same features as blackness in the white imagination (1992, 338).