Satire as a Mode of Resistance Against the American Post-Racial Utopian Impulse in Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
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Authors
Calame, Fisher
Issue Date
2023-04-19
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
University of the South , English Department , Senior Honor Thesis 2023 , Contemporary Literature , African American Literature , Colson Whitehead , Deleuze and Guattari , Zombies , Postracial Studies , Satire , Allegory
Alternative Title
Abstract
In 2009, Colson Whitehead published an op-ed in The New York Times titled “The Year of Living Postracially,” a blistering, satirical attack on false allegations of a post-racial American society following Obama’s election. At the same time, Whitehead was working on a novel that sought to expand upon the forms and ideas from that article: Zone One. In Zone One, Whitehead hides a similar, subtler critique highlighting the dangers of the post-racial utopian impulse in America within the subtext of what appears to be “just another zombie novel.” He resists the allegorical apparatus of capture that is synonymous with the speculative fiction genre by satirizing an apocalyptic zombie dystopia and using that satire to speak out against the exclusion of Blackness in American futurity, the post-racial fantasy, and capitalism. By conducting close readings of the text and putting them into conversation with literary theorists Fredric Jameson, Lee Edelman, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, this essay will explore Whitehead’s use of satire as a counter-allegorical mode of reading and its engagement of a symptomatic self reading targeting the complacency of colorblind racism in white upper-middle class American circles. Additionally, it will contend with the real world obstacles to both criticizing the post-racial myth as well as encouraging such a satirical reading, focusing mainly on the American capitalist tradition, a resurgence of racially motivated polarization and violence coexisting with the negative symptoms of colorblind racism, and the literary publishing industry’s role in perpetuating readings that distract readers from interrogating flawed institutional systems.
Description
Citation
Publisher
University of the South