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Volume 16, 2010
 
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Volume 5, December 2004
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Ethnic – Postethnic – Transethnic?
Black Identity in Contemporary African American Life Writing |
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KYVONNE GUTENBERGER
Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany
Abstract
This article takes as its point of departure David
Hollinger’s concept of postethnicity and applies the concept
to contemporary African American autobiographies. The texts
by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; Barack Obama; and Jennifer
Baszile serve to illustrate ways of constructing black
identity in the United States today along the lines of
ethnicity, postethnicity, and transethnicity. The article
looks at how the authors engage with the advantages and
drawbacks of ethnic group affiliation and how new concepts
of post- and transethnicity can show up new possibilities
for group identification. In all three examples black
identity is shown to rest on two pillars: identification
with black cultural accomplishments and identification with
black people in general. Furthermore, this racial-cultural
identification is represented as indispensible for
individual identity formation. Therefore, the negation of
ideas of ethnic or cultural identity leads to a void that
needs to be filled with new concepts. One such concept is
that of postethnicity, which takes group identification
beyond the racial-cultural border. Questions of “ethnic”
identity seem to be getting more and more complicated today.
Groups and their designations are in a constant flux.
Because of those are imminent questions life narratives such
as the ones analyzed in this article can help us understand
the meaning of “ethnic” group affiliations in the global and
transnational world that we encounter in the twenty-first
century.
Keywords: ethnicity, postethnicity,
transethnicity, identity, African American, life writing,
autobiography, globalization, group affiliation |
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