Abstract

This essay brings critical discourse on whiteness into conversation with African American satire to demonstrate how Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad (2016) engages in both traditional and postmodern forms of satire to trouble our assumptions about the function of historical fiction in a post-truth era. Whitehead satirizes various moments in American history to show how white power is maintained through a dialectic of fear. Whitehead's novel claims control over the white gaze by asserting a satirical black gaze, rendering established (white) history the subject of scrutiny. Through an engagement with W. E. B. Du Bois's “The Souls of White Folk” (1920) and bell hooks's “The Oppositional Gaze” (1992), I demonstrate how Whitehead utilizes satire to subvert this white gaze of history. When, in our contemporary post-truth moment, facts are ignored or repudiated—when reality looks disturbingly similar to “fake news”—and when the US president is a former reality television star with a nostalgic desire to “make America great again,” satire emerges as a way to throw the ridiculous into sharp, biting relief. The Underground Railroad exposes how an underlying (white) fear of black liberty and power contributes to the violence committed against black people throughout history, thereby demanding we take an oppositional look at American history in the ongoing project of emancipation.

中文翻译：

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“什么种族问题？”：地下铁路中（白人）历史的讽刺注视

摘要

本文将与白人有关的批判性演讲带入了与非裔美国人讽刺小说的对话，以展示科尔森·怀特海德的《地下铁路》（2016）从事传统和后现代讽刺形式来困扰我们对后真理时代历史小说功能的假设。怀特海讽刺了美国历史上的各个时刻，以展示如何通过恐惧的辩证法维持白人力量。怀特海的小说声称通过讽刺性的黑色目光来控制白色的目光，使已确立的（白色）历史成为审查的对象。通过与WEB Du Bois的“白民之魂”（1920）和钟形钩子的“对立注视”（1992）的接触，我展示了Whitehead如何利用讽刺来颠覆这种白色的注视历史。当在我们当代的后真理时期，地下铁路揭示了对黑人自由和权力的潜在（白色）恐惧如何助长了整个历史上针对黑人的暴力行为，从而要求我们在正在进行的解放计划中对美国历史持相反的看法。