Abolishing White Masculinity from Mark Twain to Hiphop: Crises in Whiteness

(Paperback)

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Abolishing White Masculinity from Mark Twain to Hiphop examines white American male literature for its social commentary on the construction of whiteness in the United States. Whiteness has always been a contested racial identity in the U.S., one in a state of construction and reconstruction throughout critical cultural and historical moments. This text examines how white American male writers have grappled with understanding themselves and their audiences as white beings. Abolishing White Masculinity from Mark Twain to Hiphop specifically brings a critical whiteness approach to American literary criticism and strengthens the growing interdisciplinary field of critical whiteness studies in the humanities. Critical whiteness studies shifts the attention from solely examining people and perspectives of color in race discourse to addressing whiteness as an essential component of race ideology. The primary contribution of this perspective is in how whites construct and see whiteness, for the larger purpose of exploring the possibilities of how they may come to no longer construct and see themselves through whiteness. Understanding this is at the heart of contemporary discussions of post-raciality. Abolishing White Masculinity from Mark Twain to Hiphop uses the following texts as canonical case studies: Puddnhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain, The Great Gatsby and The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Angry Black White Boy and The End of the Jews by Adam Mansbach. Each underscores the dialectic of formation, deformation, and reformation of whiteness at specific socio-historical moments based upon anxieties about race possessed by whites and highlighted by white fictionists. The selected writers ultimately serve dually as co-constructors of whiteness and social critics of their times through their literature.

Reviews

Stephany Roses Abolishing White Masculinity from Mark Twain to Hiphop: Crises in Whiteness has the potential to revolutionize discussions of whiteness and the cultural imagination. Exploring the works of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Adam Mansbach, Dr. Rose illustrates the centrality of white masculinity within these works and the larger American cultural imagination. Highlighting the relational dimensions of racial constructions and the fluidity and continuity across time and space, this book adds tremendously to our collective understanding of racial formation and the role popular culture plays in the production of white identity. -- David Leonard, Washington State University
Casting an explicitly and necessarily cognizant African American gaze on an eclectic array of white male American authors and their sociohistorical contexts, Stephany Rose repeatedly demonstrates the continued need for critical whiteness critique. By analyzing the always racialized work of a wide historical range of white male authors, this book exposes many of the ways that white masculinity continues to bolster its social dominance at the expense of its Others. Rose also effectively demonstrates the ongoing need to expose the symbiotic reliance of white identity and cultural production on its figurations of Otherness. In these reputedly post-racial times, Abolishing White Masculinity offers bracing reminders of the ongoing salience of de facto white supremacy for literatures production and reception. In both theoretical and practical terms, this book will serve as a valuable source for those who study American literature, critical whiteness studies, racial history, and critical race theory. -- Tim Engles, Eastern Illinois University
Abolishing White Masculinity from Mark Twain to HipHop is a carefully detailed examination of the ways three white male American writers across a centuryMark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Adam Mansbachinterrogate white privilege and white supremacy in America. Stephany Rose Spaulding deftly bridges the gap between popular culture critiques of post-racism and scholarly debates about critical whiteness studies. -- Bakari Kitwana, author of Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes and the New Reality of Race in America

Author Bio

Stephany Rose is assistant professor of women's and ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.