Whiteness, Otherness and the Individualism Paradox from Huck to Punk [Hardcover]

Traber reexamines the practice of self-marginalization in Euro-American literature and popular culture that depict whites adopting varied markers of otherness to disengage from the dominant culture. He draws on critical theory, whiteness and cultural studies to counter an eager correlation between marginality and agency. The nonconformist cultural politics of these border crossings implode since the transgressive identity the protagonists desire relies upon, is built from, the center's values and definitions. An orthodox notion of individualism underpins each act of sovereignty as it rationalizes exploiting stereotypes of an Other constructed by the center. The work closes by positing a theory of identity based on Jean-Luc Nancy's concept of the emptied self. In recognizing the already mixed quality of being, identity is made a vacuous concept as the standards for determining self and difference become too slippery to hold.They're After Us!': Criminality and Hegemony in Huckleberry Finn Stephen Crane and Maggie's White Other One of None: Quasi-Hybridity in The Sun Also Rises Back to the Future: Suttree (and The Pioneers) L.A. Punk's Sub-Urbanism Repo Man, Ambivalence, and the Generic Mediation Whither Agency?

How does the marginalized individual become the national type? Through a series of nuanced readings of key American texts, Daniel Traber expertly traces the ambiguous cultural politics where outlaws confirm mainstream culture, and otherness is re-appropriated and reconfigured as the heart of the national project. A deft and discerning application of recent cultural theory - itself implicated in the romanticization and neutralization of otherness - this book has telling consequences for American and literary studies, as well as for the fields of cultural studies and whiteness studies. - Nick Mansfield, Macquarie University; Author of Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway

'This book makes a very clear, and even relenlc,