+ Great

Sweater! It
Thanks!
I just
Complement looks good
with those
bought
it!
versus jeans!

Compliment

ELIT 48C Class # 6

+
 Complement is a noun or verb that means
something that completes or makes up a whole:
“The red sweater is a perfect complement to the
outfit.”
 Compliment is a noun or verb that means an
expression of praise or admiration: “I received
compliments about my new red sweater.”

 Easily Confused or Misused Words | Infoplease.com

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0200807.html#ixzz2T7S5NSIg
+
AGENDA

 Finish
Lesbian, Gay, and Queer
Theory
 Lecture:
 African American Criticism

 Discussion:
 QHQs
 The Great Gatsby

 Author introduction:
 Susan Glaspell and Trifles
+QHQs: Gay, Lesbian, Queer Criticism
1. Q: What is heterocentrism and how does it affect
our view of literature and the world?

2. “A better way to define a lesbian, then, is to say that

she is a woman whose sexual desire is directed
toward women”(Tyson 324).
Q: Does that mean that a woman who is attracted to
women is lesbian? Why do we still feel the need to
label ourselves or others?

3. Q: What is truly considered “queer” in the

heteronormative bias in society and literature?
+QHQs: Gay, Lesbian, Queer Criticism
1. Q: In Lois Tyson’s chapter on “Lesbian, gay, and
queer criticism” she mentions the fact that many
lesbians and gay men find that oppression is one of
the few experiences they have in common. So why
are both often times grouped together if they do not
share same personal experiences?

2. Can human sexuality be accurately defined? Should

there be a need to define it, or does it transcend
any construct created by the human mind?
QHQs: Gay, Lesbian, Queer Criticism

1. Q: In Lois Tyson’s discussion of LGBTQ+ theory,

how is it possible for essentialist and
constructionist arguments for and against
homosexuality to occur?
+

2. The functions of “minoritizing” and “universalizing” views of homosexuality

were developed by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in Epistemology of the Closet
In the fight against homophobia, pure essentialism begins with
the assumption that queers will always be the minority and that
heterosexuals will always be the vast majority. Essentialists
promote queer rights through arguing that gay people "can't
help" being queer and saying that giving queer people equal
rights will not cause anyone else to become queer.

Pure social constructionism holds that in a truly liberated

society where same-sex desire was not stigmatized, everyone
would feel and acknowledge feeling same-sex sexual desire,
and exclusive heterosexuality would fade out of existence. In
order to win queer rights, heterosexuals must be liberated to
see their own queer potential.
 African
American
Criticism

+
Toni Morrison: American novelist, American
literary critic, editor, and professor.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. : American literary critic,

educator, scholar, writer, editor, and public
intellectual
+
The following perspectives help identify
African-American criticism

 African American criticism notes that black writing

comes out of a sociological, political, ideological, and
cultural situation marked by oppression and
marginalization. “Black” reading then must negotiate
the difficult boundaries between textual and cultural
meanings.
 Black criticism has substantial ties to post-colonial
criticism, and to the issues in it of the representation of the
'other” and the reclamation of identity in the forms and
language of the oppressor.
+

African American criticism has an awareness

that black experience has ties to African
language, cultural practices, and attitudes, that
it is formed through the experience of slavery
and violence, that it has endured a long and
troubled negotiation with white culture, so that
black artistic production in white cultures is
marked by white culture positively and
negatively.
 African American criticism is a struggle over
the relation of race, reading, and critical theory,
similar in some respects to that of feminist
theory:
 Who “speaks for” blacks?
 Can only blacks “read” black literature?
 Can black literature be read with the tools of
contemporary criticism, or does it demand a
more basic, moral and ideological
commitment?
African American criticism examines how white writing in
racist countries reveals the nature of the oppression of
blacks.

 Toni Morrison, for instance, argues that American culture

is built on, and always includes, the presence of blacks, as
slaves, as outsiders. Morrison likens the unwillingness of
academics in a racist society to see the place of
Africanism in literature and culture to the centuries of
unwillingness to see feminine discourse, concerns, and
identity.

 She posits whiteness as the “other” of blackness, a

dialectical pair (each term both creates and excludes the
other): no freedom without slavery, no white without black.
 African American criticism is also an attempt to come to terms
with the whole issue of what “race” is.

 Historically race has been seen as something essential. That race is

inherent, a matter of 'blood', was and is firmly believed by
Americans, is clear from the recent autobiography of an American,
Gregory Howard Williams, now Dean of the Law School at Ohio
State, Life on the Color Line, a man who looks white, and whose
father passed as Italian in Virginia, where his family was not known.
He was, in Virginia, accepted and treated as white, but he was
treated as black (and hence was the victim of exclusion and other
prejudicial behavior) when the family returned to their home town of
Muncie, Indiana: there they knew that his grandmother was black;
therefore, he was black.

 When is white black?-- When you have some “black blood”? Or

when people know or think you have black blood?
 As a subject matter, any analysis of a literary work written by
an African American, regardless of the theoretical framework
used, might be called African American criticism, even if no
attention is paid to elements in the text that are specifically
African American.

 However, as a theoretical framework [. . .] African American

criticism foregrounds race (racial identity, African American
cultural traditions, psychology, politics, and so forth) as the
object of analysis because race, in America, informs our
individual and cultural psychology, and therefore our literature,
in profound ways. As a theoretical framework, then, African
American criticism can be used to analyze any literary
text that speaks to African American issues, regardless of
the race of its author, although the work of African American
writers is the primary focus (Tyson 394).
+
Important Terms

 In The Souls of Black Folk, arguably W.E.B. DuBois’s most

famous work, he introduces and addresses two concepts that
describe the quintessential Black experience in America. The
first is the concept of “the veil. ”
 The veil concept primarily refers to three conditions of
racial difference:
 The literal darker skin of Blacks, which is a physical
demarcation of difference from whiteness.
 White people’s lack of clarity to see Blacks as “true”
Americans.
 Blacks’ lack of clarity to see themselves outside of what
white America describes and prescribes for them.
+
Important Terms
 The second concept that Debois introduces is “double-
consciousness.” This concept is inextricably intertwined with “the
veil.”

The veil dampens the view of both Blacks and Whites, yet
Blacks traditionally have a better understanding of whites than
the reverse because of the “two-ness” lived by Black Americans.
Understanding being Black and what that has historically meant
(or means) in America, Black people know they operate in two
Americas— one that is White and one that is Black. This is the
phenomena of “double-consciousness,” the awareness of the
“two-ness” of being both American and African American and
the largely unconscious and instinctive shifts between the these
two identities.
+
Some questions African American
critics ask about literary texts
1. What can the work teach us about the specifics of African heritage,
African American culture and experience, and/or African American history?

2. What are the racial politics (ideological agendas related to racial

oppression or liberation) of specific African American works?
 Does the work correct stereotypes of African Americans?
 Does it correct historical misrepresentations of African Americans?
 Does it celebrate African American culture, experience, and achievement?
 Does it explore racial issues, including, among others, the economic, social, or
psychological effects of racism?
 Or, does it, as can be seen in the literary production of many white authors,
does the work reinforce racist ideologies?
+
More questions African American
critics ask about literary texts
3. What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of specific
African American works?

 Does the work use black vernacular or standard white English?

 Does the work draw on African myths or African American folktales or folk
motifs?
 Does the work provide imagery that resonates with African American
women’s domestic space, African American cultural practices, history, or
heritage?
 What are the effects of these literary devices, and how do they relate to the
theme, or meaning, of the work?
+
4. How does the work participate in the African American
literary tradition? In short, what place does it occupy in African
American literary history or in African American women’s
literary history?

5. How does the work illustrate interest convergences, the

social construction of race, white privilege, or any other
concept from critical race theory? How can an understanding
of these concepts deepen our interpretation of the work?

6. How is an Africanist presence—black characters, stories

about black people, representations of black speech, images
associated with Africa or with blackness—used in works by
white writers to construct positive portrayals of white
characters?
+
In
Groups
 Discuss
African
American
Criticism, An
application of
AA criticism
to The Great
Gatsby, and
your QHQs
+
Internalized and Institutionalized
Racism
1. Q: How does Internalized
Racism affect literary works
from African American writers?
How has [it] affected the way
we learn and perceive
information about another
group of people than
ourselves?
“Internalized racism
often results in intra-
racial racism, which
refers to
discrimination within
the black community
against those with
darker skin and
more African
features.”
 + Internalized and Institutionalized
Racism
1. Q. If it is possible to psychologically program
black people or anyone to discriminate within And despite the success
their race simply because society portrays as of black‐pride advocates,
one (white people) better than the other; then many people of color
why can’t we psychologically program people continue to suffer from it
to realize that racism is not okay, or sexism, today. Internalized racism
or any type of discrimination if we really want results from the
to change the world for the better? psychological
programming by which a
2. Q: What does Tyson mean when she says, racist society
“in short, if our attitudes toward race are indoctrinates people of
constructed by society, then society can color to believe in white
reconstruct them” (382)? superiority.” (362)
+
QHQ: African American Criticism

 In Tyson’s chapter on “African America Criticism”, she makes

note both of how people of color have tried to assimilate into
white society, and how white society has taken the culture of
people of color, specifically black people. Why is their such a
crucial difference in both these acts, and why is appropriation
of black culture, even in literature, not an act of cultural
exchange or cultural appreciation?
+
QHQ: African American Criticism
1. Q: Can white critical theorists effectively evaluate African American
texts? Can European American critical theories be applied to African
American literature, while still not undermining its unique politics,
qualities, and meaning— its “Afrocentricity”?

2. Q: Can, or should, white authors write characters that experience

racism?

3. Q: Tyson says, “…the literary style black writers choose cannot be

separated from their political views on the writer’s role as the member
of an oppressed group” (364). How is this true? Why are African
American art and literature considered a political statement?

4. Q: How has encoding been a successful tactic in portraying the minds

and works of African American writers, and how successful were they?
+
QHQ: African American Criticism

 Q: Lois Tyson states that,“[Richard] Wright was a naturalist: he

believed that the harsh, inescapable realities of racist
oppression should be represented in straightforward, stark
language in order to convey as powerfully as possible the evils
of racism and the depth of black suffering […] [and] [Ralph]
Ellison, in contrast, was a modernist: he believed that the
complexities, ambiguities, and uncertainties of human
experience could best be represented by ambiguous,
metaphorical language and a complex narrative with multiple
layers of meaning” (387). Which of these two perspectives is
the best way to write about the black experience in
literature?
+
Real World Applications

1. Q: Why do some people think that criminality is an African

American trait? (Or Mexican trait)

2. Q: How is the black female experience characterized in

literature?

3. Should the social construct of “race” be dispensed of

entirely?

4. Q: What is the impact of so many minority’s voices and

perspectives being silenced in literature?

5. Q: Should the voices of middle-class people of color who do

not feel that they have been victims of racism be considered
“voices of color”?
F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s grave

Courtesy of
Lindsay King
+
The Great Gatsby

 Q: Certain literary theories lend themselves to certain works more

effectively than others, but is it possible for a literary theory to be
entirely incompatible with a work of literature? For example, if one were
to make the argument that The Great Gatsby does not have any
underlying themes of race, would it be appropriate to apply African
American literary theory to the work?

 Q: According to Tyson, one of the basic tenets of critical race theory is

that racism stems from an “interest convergence,” which is an
overlapping interest over “something needed or desired” between two
groups; often, it manifests as “material determinism” or the struggle to
“advance oneself in the material world.” Given that its characters are
highly materialistic, can this concept be applied to The Great Gatsby?
+
Author: Susan Glaspell
On July 1, 1882, Susan Glaspell was born in
Davenport, Iowa. She excelled in academics
as a student, studying Latin and journalism.
After graduation from high school, she worked
as a newspaper reporter for the Davenport
Morning Republican, then as the society editor
for the Weekly Outlook. From 1897-1899 she
attended Drake University and received a
Ph.D. in Philosophy.
At the time of her death in 1948, she
had written fifty short stories, nine
novels, and fourteen plays; most of
these works feature strong female
protagonists and stories that focus
on the experiences of women.
Perhaps not surprisingly, her work
faded from public interest during the
conservative1950s, and practically
disappeared from bookshelves and
the stages of amateur theatres. Yet
in the past few decades, her work is
being reexamined and celebrated
by a new group of critics and
audiences.
+
HOMEWORK
 Read Trifles (1916) pp. 252-262
 Post # 6: Choose one
1. In literature, a symbol represents
something else, and is often used to
communicate deeper levels of
meaning. What is one important
symbol in Trifles? How does Glaspell
use it to propel the plot and convey
deeper levels of meaning about her
characters or themes?
2. Write a paragraph or two on how you
might apply any one of the Critical
theories we have discussed to Trifles.
3. How might you read Trifles in
connection with one of the modernist
manifestos?
4. QHQ Trifles