Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, Jul 30, 2020
Impersonator narratives exist at the intersection of literature and history; they serve as interv... more Impersonator narratives exist at the intersection of literature and history; they serve as interventions during flash points in history. Impersonation takes a number of different forms, but in all cases it is contingent on reader reception. There are narrative impersonations in which reader and writer are willing collaborators and in which readers feel little to no discomfort with an author’s assumption of a voice far from his or her public identity; any novel written in first person is in a sense an impersonation. Yet even when author and reader agree that the work is fictional, this compact between fiction reader and writer can become disrupted when readers question the author’s right to assume a specific voice. There are literary hoaxes, which generally (although not always) involve a body of work whose author is supposedly dead (and thus it is impossible for any actual impersonation to take place). The most analytically productive for textual scholars, however, are the most committed impersonators—those who (at least part-time) inhabit the literary personae they have created. For this last group of impersonators, as is true for some of the others, success depends on having a readership with fixed ideas about the identities the impersonator chooses to inhabit. The impersonator succeeds through a deep understanding of stereotypes and, through his or her success, further imprisons his or her readers in caricatured thinking about race and identity. Yet the unmasking of the impersonator offers the possibility of liberation to readers, in that it forces them to consider the preconceptions that led them to believe in these false narratives, no matter how implausible. Impersonation can be a means for its practitioners to escape historical traps, or identities that no longer work for them; it can be a way for practitioners to put a historically understood label (Holocaust survivor, AIDS victim) on their private, uncategorizable pain or trauma. Impersonation is meaningless without the underlying belief in an authentic voice. And these authentic voices are usually from speakers outside the literary canon.
Gentrification literature often focuses on frictions between gentrifiers (often white) and those ... more Gentrification literature often focuses on frictions between gentrifiers (often white) and those being displaced by the process (often low-income people of color). Far less attention is paid to a revealing place-marketing strategy that papers over race politics. Businesses in gentrifying neighborhoods appeal to their customers' sense of nostalgia for a vanished way of life, while eliding racial injustices prevalent in the times they evoke. The process entails reracialization of such sites without reference to the segregatory politics central to their creation: a mode of remaking history, without memory. In larger cities this may not be so evident, since gentrification dynamics are driven by both a sufficiently large share of the population with high disposable incomes, and a well-developed property redevelopment industry with the capacity to unleash real estate speculation. In contrast, smaller cities that have partially gentrified still exhibit incomplete erasure of the past. They provide a valuable window into this process of historical de-and re-racialization. Two such secondary cities are Richmond, Virginia, and Durban, South Africa. Both have histories of legally-enshrined racial segregation, and both are attempting, with varying degrees of success, to recast inner-city neighborhoods as cool, creative places for middle-class residents to live, consume, and produce.
... As Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane write, modernism is "the one art that respon... more ... As Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane write, modernism is "the one art that responds to the scenario of our chaos. ... ... By offering up the expe-rience of illiterate, impoverished farmers as art, by granting the Gudger, Ricketts, and Woods families subjectivity rather than ...
A recent article in the New York Times focused on the possible increase in female gun ownership i... more A recent article in the New York Times focused on the possible increase in female gun ownership in the United States. This “new” phenomenon of women and guns is of course far from new: as early as the 1870s, trapshooting for women was publicized by gun manufacturers as yet another feminine activity, not far removed from shopping or club work. The ultra-feminine Annie Oakley, who in the 1880s became an international star in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, personally taught fifteen thousand women to shoot. By the turn of the twentieth century, gun manufacturers were promoting hunting as a healthful activity for women
There is nothing quite like the experience of being in the beautiful, sunlit special collections ... more There is nothing quite like the experience of being in the beautiful, sunlit special collections reading room on the top floor of Bird Library—especially when one is about to dive into 86 meticulously cataloged boxes of family history. I was there to do research for a documentary about my grandfather, Earl Browder, as well as a joint biography of him and my grandmother, Raissa Berkmann Browder—a task that was almost overwhelming to contemplate. After all, my grandfather Earl Browder was the head of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) during its most influential period—the Great Depression. He coined the slogan “Communism is 20th-century Americanism.” He ran for president twice against Roosevelt and appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1938. In 1946, on Stalin’s orders, he was expelled from the Communist Party for revisionism. During all of these years, he was tracked by both the FBI and the KGB, and in the mid-1990s, the VENONA project was published—a series of KGB cables that...
In the Year of the Pig (1968) and Hearts and Minds (1974)—the first an Academy Award nominee, the... more In the Year of the Pig (1968) and Hearts and Minds (1974)—the first an Academy Award nominee, the second an Academy Award winner—are the two best-known Vietnam War documentaries of their time. They are works that could hardly be more different—one a cool, intellectual take on the origins and then-current state of the war, and the second a highly emotional appeal to end the war. By viewing them together it is possible not only to connect the dots between the contrasting intellectual and filmic traditions from which each emerged, but also to see, through the viewpoints of each film, how radically the image of the American soldier in Vietnam had changed between 1968 and 1974—and why, politically speaking, this view mattered so much to both war opponents and war proponents
Drugs. Sex. Revolutionary violence. From its first pages, Susan Stern\u27s memoir With the Weathe... more Drugs. Sex. Revolutionary violence. From its first pages, Susan Stern\u27s memoir With the Weathermen provides a candid, first-hand look at the radical politics and the social and cultural environment of the New Left during the late 1960s.The Weathermen--a U.S.-based, revolutionary splinter group of Students for a Democratic Society--advocated the overthrow of the government and capitalism, and toward that end, carried out a campaign of bombings, jailbreaks, and riots throughout the United States. In With the Weathermen Stern traces her involvement with this group, and her transformation from a shy, married graduate student into a go-go dancing, street-fighting macho mama. In vivid and emotional language, she describes the attractions and difficulties of joining a collective radical group and in maintaining a position within it.Stern\u27s memoir offers a rich description of the raw and rough social dynamics of this community, from its strict demands to smash monogamy, to its sometim...
<p>Impersonator narratives exist at the intersection of literature and history; they serve ... more <p>Impersonator narratives exist at the intersection of literature and history; they serve as interventions during flash points in history. Impersonation takes a number of different forms, but in all cases it is contingent on reader reception. There are narrative impersonations in which reader and writer are willing collaborators and in which readers feel little to no discomfort with an author's assumption of a voice far from his or her public identity; any novel written in first person is in a sense an impersonation. Yet even when author and reader agree that the work is fictional, this compact between fiction reader and writer can become disrupted when readers question the author's right to assume a specific voice.</p> <p>There are literary hoaxes, which generally (although not always) involve a body of work whose author is supposedly dead (and thus it is impossible for any actual impersonation to take place). The most analytically productive for textual scholars, however, are the most committed impersonators—those who (at least part-time) inhabit the literary personae they have created.</p> <p>For this last group of impersonators, as is true for some of the others, success depends on having a readership with fixed ideas about the identities the impersonator chooses to inhabit. The impersonator succeeds through a deep understanding of stereotypes and, through his or her success, further imprisons his or her readers in caricatured thinking about race and identity. Yet the unmasking of the impersonator offers the possibility of liberation to readers, in that it forces them to consider the preconceptions that led them to believe in these false narratives, no matter how implausible.</p> <p>Impersonation can be a means for its practitioners to escape historical traps, or identities that no longer work for them; it can be a way for practitioners to put a historically understood label (Holocaust survivor, AIDS victim) on their private, uncategorizable pain or trauma. Impersonation is meaningless without the underlying belief in an authentic voice. And these authentic voices are usually from speakers outside the literary canon.</p>
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, Jul 30, 2020
Impersonator narratives exist at the intersection of literature and history; they serve as interv... more Impersonator narratives exist at the intersection of literature and history; they serve as interventions during flash points in history. Impersonation takes a number of different forms, but in all cases it is contingent on reader reception. There are narrative impersonations in which reader and writer are willing collaborators and in which readers feel little to no discomfort with an author’s assumption of a voice far from his or her public identity; any novel written in first person is in a sense an impersonation. Yet even when author and reader agree that the work is fictional, this compact between fiction reader and writer can become disrupted when readers question the author’s right to assume a specific voice. There are literary hoaxes, which generally (although not always) involve a body of work whose author is supposedly dead (and thus it is impossible for any actual impersonation to take place). The most analytically productive for textual scholars, however, are the most committed impersonators—those who (at least part-time) inhabit the literary personae they have created. For this last group of impersonators, as is true for some of the others, success depends on having a readership with fixed ideas about the identities the impersonator chooses to inhabit. The impersonator succeeds through a deep understanding of stereotypes and, through his or her success, further imprisons his or her readers in caricatured thinking about race and identity. Yet the unmasking of the impersonator offers the possibility of liberation to readers, in that it forces them to consider the preconceptions that led them to believe in these false narratives, no matter how implausible. Impersonation can be a means for its practitioners to escape historical traps, or identities that no longer work for them; it can be a way for practitioners to put a historically understood label (Holocaust survivor, AIDS victim) on their private, uncategorizable pain or trauma. Impersonation is meaningless without the underlying belief in an authentic voice. And these authentic voices are usually from speakers outside the literary canon.
Gentrification literature often focuses on frictions between gentrifiers (often white) and those ... more Gentrification literature often focuses on frictions between gentrifiers (often white) and those being displaced by the process (often low-income people of color). Far less attention is paid to a revealing place-marketing strategy that papers over race politics. Businesses in gentrifying neighborhoods appeal to their customers' sense of nostalgia for a vanished way of life, while eliding racial injustices prevalent in the times they evoke. The process entails reracialization of such sites without reference to the segregatory politics central to their creation: a mode of remaking history, without memory. In larger cities this may not be so evident, since gentrification dynamics are driven by both a sufficiently large share of the population with high disposable incomes, and a well-developed property redevelopment industry with the capacity to unleash real estate speculation. In contrast, smaller cities that have partially gentrified still exhibit incomplete erasure of the past. They provide a valuable window into this process of historical de-and re-racialization. Two such secondary cities are Richmond, Virginia, and Durban, South Africa. Both have histories of legally-enshrined racial segregation, and both are attempting, with varying degrees of success, to recast inner-city neighborhoods as cool, creative places for middle-class residents to live, consume, and produce.
... As Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane write, modernism is &quot;the one art that respon... more ... As Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane write, modernism is &quot;the one art that responds to the scenario of our chaos. ... ... By offering up the expe-rience of illiterate, impoverished farmers as art, by granting the Gudger, Ricketts, and Woods families subjectivity rather than ...
A recent article in the New York Times focused on the possible increase in female gun ownership i... more A recent article in the New York Times focused on the possible increase in female gun ownership in the United States. This “new” phenomenon of women and guns is of course far from new: as early as the 1870s, trapshooting for women was publicized by gun manufacturers as yet another feminine activity, not far removed from shopping or club work. The ultra-feminine Annie Oakley, who in the 1880s became an international star in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, personally taught fifteen thousand women to shoot. By the turn of the twentieth century, gun manufacturers were promoting hunting as a healthful activity for women
There is nothing quite like the experience of being in the beautiful, sunlit special collections ... more There is nothing quite like the experience of being in the beautiful, sunlit special collections reading room on the top floor of Bird Library—especially when one is about to dive into 86 meticulously cataloged boxes of family history. I was there to do research for a documentary about my grandfather, Earl Browder, as well as a joint biography of him and my grandmother, Raissa Berkmann Browder—a task that was almost overwhelming to contemplate. After all, my grandfather Earl Browder was the head of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) during its most influential period—the Great Depression. He coined the slogan “Communism is 20th-century Americanism.” He ran for president twice against Roosevelt and appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1938. In 1946, on Stalin’s orders, he was expelled from the Communist Party for revisionism. During all of these years, he was tracked by both the FBI and the KGB, and in the mid-1990s, the VENONA project was published—a series of KGB cables that...
In the Year of the Pig (1968) and Hearts and Minds (1974)—the first an Academy Award nominee, the... more In the Year of the Pig (1968) and Hearts and Minds (1974)—the first an Academy Award nominee, the second an Academy Award winner—are the two best-known Vietnam War documentaries of their time. They are works that could hardly be more different—one a cool, intellectual take on the origins and then-current state of the war, and the second a highly emotional appeal to end the war. By viewing them together it is possible not only to connect the dots between the contrasting intellectual and filmic traditions from which each emerged, but also to see, through the viewpoints of each film, how radically the image of the American soldier in Vietnam had changed between 1968 and 1974—and why, politically speaking, this view mattered so much to both war opponents and war proponents
Drugs. Sex. Revolutionary violence. From its first pages, Susan Stern\u27s memoir With the Weathe... more Drugs. Sex. Revolutionary violence. From its first pages, Susan Stern\u27s memoir With the Weathermen provides a candid, first-hand look at the radical politics and the social and cultural environment of the New Left during the late 1960s.The Weathermen--a U.S.-based, revolutionary splinter group of Students for a Democratic Society--advocated the overthrow of the government and capitalism, and toward that end, carried out a campaign of bombings, jailbreaks, and riots throughout the United States. In With the Weathermen Stern traces her involvement with this group, and her transformation from a shy, married graduate student into a go-go dancing, street-fighting macho mama. In vivid and emotional language, she describes the attractions and difficulties of joining a collective radical group and in maintaining a position within it.Stern\u27s memoir offers a rich description of the raw and rough social dynamics of this community, from its strict demands to smash monogamy, to its sometim...
<p>Impersonator narratives exist at the intersection of literature and history; they serve ... more <p>Impersonator narratives exist at the intersection of literature and history; they serve as interventions during flash points in history. Impersonation takes a number of different forms, but in all cases it is contingent on reader reception. There are narrative impersonations in which reader and writer are willing collaborators and in which readers feel little to no discomfort with an author's assumption of a voice far from his or her public identity; any novel written in first person is in a sense an impersonation. Yet even when author and reader agree that the work is fictional, this compact between fiction reader and writer can become disrupted when readers question the author's right to assume a specific voice.</p> <p>There are literary hoaxes, which generally (although not always) involve a body of work whose author is supposedly dead (and thus it is impossible for any actual impersonation to take place). The most analytically productive for textual scholars, however, are the most committed impersonators—those who (at least part-time) inhabit the literary personae they have created.</p> <p>For this last group of impersonators, as is true for some of the others, success depends on having a readership with fixed ideas about the identities the impersonator chooses to inhabit. The impersonator succeeds through a deep understanding of stereotypes and, through his or her success, further imprisons his or her readers in caricatured thinking about race and identity. Yet the unmasking of the impersonator offers the possibility of liberation to readers, in that it forces them to consider the preconceptions that led them to believe in these false narratives, no matter how implausible.</p> <p>Impersonation can be a means for its practitioners to escape historical traps, or identities that no longer work for them; it can be a way for practitioners to put a historically understood label (Holocaust survivor, AIDS victim) on their private, uncategorizable pain or trauma. Impersonation is meaningless without the underlying belief in an authentic voice. And these authentic voices are usually from speakers outside the literary canon.</p>
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