“Sexual Niggerhood for Everyone”: Black Intruder in the Space of White Discourse in American Mainstream Novel of the 1960s and 1970s
Jerzy Kamionowski
Wydział Filologiczny, Uniwersytet w BiałymstokuAbstract
The article describes the intrusion of the previously “invisible” black Stranger into the “white” discursive space. It further shows how this phenomenon was represented in the mainstream American novel of the 1960s and 1970s. The author analyses three works: Mr. Sammler’s Planet by S. Bellow, The Tenants by B. Malamud, and Rabbit, Redux by J. Updike. Here, the black intrusion into the “white language” is observed in threes spheres: symbolic, aesthetic, and ideological. This contamination of white discourse causes fear and rejection, but, at the same time, it brings fascination with Afro-American – a dangerous Stranger. Eventually, the novels confirm the reflection by Toni Morrison: since American literature is unmistakably a product of the dominant culture of whites, it therefore, becomes invariably connected with Afro-American presence in the United States.
Keywords:
American novel, Afro-Americans, white discourse, stranger, Samuel Bellow, Bernard Malamud, John UpdikeWydział Filologiczny, Uniwersytet w Białymstoku
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