The Melting Pot That Boiled Over : Racial Fetishism and the Lingua Franca of Jack Kerouac's Fiction
Dublin Core
Title
The Melting Pot That Boiled Over : Racial Fetishism and the Lingua Franca of Jack Kerouac's Fiction
Description
From the author: "The racechanges in Jack Kerouac's fiction originate in racial fetishism. Kerouac's arrested Oedipal narratives and his related myth of Native Canadian ancestry lead to ambivalent identifications with black subjects, who exhibit characteristics that more properly belong to Kerouac's mother. These identifications exhibit a fetishistic play of presence and absence. Accordingly, Kerouac's racechanges are unstable formations designed to consolidate an ethnic minority writer's American national identity, his autochthonous link to a gendered landscape and his volatile sexuality. When Kerouac's fiction is read in 'translation,' his joual mother-tongue dramatises a psychosexual crisis in national belonging."
Creator
Nicholls, Brendon
Date
2003
Language
en
Type
Journal Article
Identifier
Coverage
1935-1967; United States
Contribution Form
Online Submission
No
Zotero
DOI
10.1353/mfs.2003.0053
ISSN
0026-7724
Issue
#3
Pages
524-549
Publication Title
Modern Fiction Studies
Volume
49