IMPLODING THE MEANING OF IDENTITY IN PHILIP ROTH’S THE HUMAN STAIN
Keywords:
African-American, Ethnicity, Identity, Language, Philip Roth, RaceAbstract
The multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and racially mixed nature of contemporary American society is accountable for a troubled history of ‘identity.’ Identities are shaped on the basis of race, ethnicity, language, class, and gender, all of which are still paramount and alive in the US. Identity has often demarcated between the ruler and the ruled, the oppressor and the oppressed, the white and the black, the male and the female, often subjecting the latter in the relationships to a prejudicial treatment and identifying it as the ‘other.’ The demarcation questions the fixed, coherent and stable nature of ‘identity’ based on monolithic categories, thereby, necessitating a redefinition of interpretive patterns and existing theories of identity. In Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, Coleman Silk is intent on keeping his disadvantaged African-American identity a secret from all, including his wife and their four children. He, for the most part of the book is seen as deconstructing and challenging his existing Negroid origin. His desire for purification and for freedom convinces him to pass as white. This paper studies the complexities of contemporary identity where individuals are caught hanging tantalizingly between the 'given' group identity and the 'chosen' self identity.
References
George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, 6, 5.
Gyanendra Pandey, A History of Prejudice: Race, Caste, and Difference in India and the United States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 15.
“Identity,” Merriam- Webster Dictionary. 11th ed., 2011. 5“Identity,” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, MerriamWebster Online <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/id entity> (5 Nov. 2017).
D. Kellner, “Popular Culture and the Construction of Postmodern Identities,” in Modernity & Identity, eds., S. Lash and J. Friedmen, Oxford: Wiley- Blackwell, 1992, 141.
Chris Weedon, Identity and Culture: Narratives of Difference and Belonging, New York: Open University Press, 2004, 3.
Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Identities, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, 1.
Lydia Moland, “Grasping the “Raw I”: Race and Tragedy in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain,” Expositions 2, no. 2 (2008): 190.
J. Weeks, “The Value of Difference,” in Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, ed. J. Rutherford, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990, 88.
K. Mercer, “Welcome to the Jungle: Identity and Diversity in Postmodern Politics,” in Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, 43. 14Philip Roth, The Human Stain, New York: Vintage Books, 2000, 98.
Tim Parrish, “Becoming Black: Zuckerman’s Bifurcating Self in The Human Stain,” in Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author, ed. Derek Parker Royal, London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005, 214.
Mark Maslan, “The Faking of the Americans: Passing, Trauma, and National Identity in Philip Rothʼs The Human Stain,” Modern Language Quarterly 66, no. 3 (2005): 375.
Brett Ashley Kaplan, “Reading Race and the Conundrums of Reconciliation in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain,” in Turning up the Flame: Philip Roth’s Later Novels, eds., Jay L. Halio and Ben Siegel, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005, 181.
Elizabeth Martínez, De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century, Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1998, 239.
William G. Tierney, “Interpreting Academic Identities: Reality and Fiction on Campus,” The Journal of Higher Education 2002,
Mark Shechner, “Roth’s American Trilogy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth, ed., Timothy Parrish, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 153.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, New York: Random, 1997, 200.
Dean Franco, “Being Black, Being Jewish, and Knowing the Difference: Philip Roth’s The Human Stain; Or, It Depends on What the Meaning of ‘Clinton’ Is,” Studies in American Jewish Literature 2004,
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, New York: Vintage, 1992, 38.
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation),” in The Anthropology of the State: A Reader, eds., Aradhana Sharma and Anil Gupta, New Jersey: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, 105.
Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power,” in Power/ Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972- 1977, ed., Colin Gordon, New York: Pantheon Books, 1980, 122.
Ross Posnock, Philip Rothʼs Rude Truth: The Art of Immaturity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, 196.
Timothy Parrish, “Roth and Ethnic Identity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth, ed., Timothy Parrish, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 128.
