@phdthesis{Bast2013,
  author    = {Heike Bast},
  title     = {\"The Quiltings of Human Flesh\" - Constructions of Racial Hybridity in Contemporary African-Canadian Literature},
  journal    = {Hybridit{\"a}t und Identit{\"a}t in zeitgen{\"o}ssischer afro-kanadischer Literatur},
  url       = {https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:gbv:9-001608-9},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {1. \"Sole or Whole\" – Quilting the Racialized Subject Calgary feminist and scholar Aruna Srivastava tackles the complex question of what it means to be \"mixed-race/mixedblood/halfbreed/mestizo/hybrid/hyphenated?\" in her editorial to Hyphe Nation (1996). In response to her question, this study of contemporary African-Canadian literature suggests that mixed-race Canadians are often constructed as the Other in Canadian society. In consequence, constructions of \"racial hybridity\" in African-Canadian literature usually aim at carving out a space that doesnt marginalize \"racial\" mixing but eviscerates restrictive Manichean constructions of identity in order to promulgate concepts of wholeness and self-definition. In consequence, African-Canadian mixed-race writers create hybrid identities that are infinite, multilayered, fragmented and yet whole. They reflect the processes of shifting, overlapping and re-creation in the process of creating identity and can hence be read as representations of complex, de-central, non-hierarchical identities. They are quilting multidimensional racialized subjects. 2. Signifying the In-Between: \"Race\", \"Racial Hybridity\" and Questions of Belonging \"Race\" is not a biological category. Rather it represents a social construction predicated upon the interpretation of difference. It was designed to establish, justify or perpetuate hegemonic social structures and is adherent to the principle of white supremacy. Contemporary \"race\" theory often neglects the experiences of racially mixed individuals because it fails to offer flexible models of identity in which bi- and multiracial people find themselves represented. This thesis argues in favor of a poetics of difference that accepts and recognizes the heterogeneity of subjectivities while taking into consideration the various dimensions of class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity. Accordingly, constructions of racial hybridity in contemporary African-Canadian literature demonstrate that racism must be acknowledged as an ideology in which people believe and upon which people act. Thus identities often bear the stamp of various histories of resistance and domination, while tackling the question of belonging and re-defining Canadianness. 3. African-Canadian Borderlands References to interracial contacts and the existence of bi- and multiracial people have been omitted from the official founding narratives of the Canadian nation. African-Canadian writers have therefore been successful chroniclers of the past and filled blanks in Canadian historiography in order to shed light on hitherto repressed or erased knowledge. Part of this process is also the inscription of the mixed-race experience into Canadas past. Along this line, bi- and multiracial Canadians often criticize that the state-proclaimed policy of multiculturalism fails to take their manifold racial and ethnic subjectivities into account. 4. \"From Sole to Whole\" – African-Canadian Mixed-Race Poetics Mixed-race characters in US-American literature often appear in the literary motif of the \"tragic mulatto\" and it is often implicitly suggested that the bi- or multiracial protagonist is categorized as black. In contrast, African-Canadian constructions of racial hybridity less frequently adhere to the stereotype of the \"tragic mulatto\" and leave more space for employing alternative modes of racial and ethnic identification. Canadian writers of mixed descent have created a mixed-race poetics that calls attention to contexts, relationships, intersections and wholes. They encourage sites of inclusiveness, incessant shifting and discontinuity in the process of constructing identities. Nevertheless, modes of identification among racially hybrid writers in Canada vary, ranging from detesting whiteness to claiming a Black Nationalist stance. In general, however, they support the idea of fluid and flexible identities. The answer to the initial question of Srivastava is hence given by a vast variety of African-Canadian subject positions. An essentially \"black\" or \"racially mixed\" Canadian subject does not exist. Instead, constructions of racial hybridity in African-Canadian literature offer a holistic view of identity and aim at re-conceptualizing the various senses of self and community in Canada. This strategy provides a significant means of self-empowerment and self-reclamation – making racially mixed African-Canadians \"whole\" instead of \"sole\".},
  language  = {en}
}