Between the Masks: Resisting the Politics of Essentialism

(Paperback)

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This is a study of representation and the "politics of place" through a pedagogy of narrative-forming inquiry and a critical reflection on identity. As a resistance to essentialist politics, the text focuses on the identity making/marking role of cultural materials in the recovery of different and overdetermined histories. It seeks to propose a multicultural revision of knowledge that displaces the binarisms of insider/outsider rather than simply shifting the margin to the centre. By combining perspectives that produce strong readings with a semiotic method of analysis, the essentialist representations of racial, ethnic, sexual and class biases will be revealed as strategies of power that employ appearance in their seduction. By this method, Brunner suggests a view of reflexive performance that seeks not to legitimate, but to critique, displace and liberate these illusions of identity.

Reviews

The coda, Critical Teaching and Theatricality in Everyday Life, is an especially provocative look at universities and English departments as theaters of knowledge. Recommended for all collections. -- H. A. Booth, SUNY at Buffalo * Choice Reviews *
Between the Masks presents one feminist's contruction of a pedagogy that can illuminate the politics of race, class, and gender. * Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society *
The author takes the seminal and sometimes most difficult arguments of important theorists and applies them to the concepts of performance and essentialism in ways that are inventive and insightful . . . . The book is theoretically rich without being convoluted; therefore, rich in ways that are relevant and meaningful. -- D. Soyini Madison, associate director, Institute of African-American Research, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hil

Author Bio

Diane DuBose Brunner is associate professor of English and director of English education at Michigan State University.