Event overview
Philippa Campbell presents her 'The Inescapability of Racial Oppression and White Supremacy in Joyce Carol Oates’ I’ll Take You There'
GLITS Seminar
Set in the early 1960s, Joyce Carol Oates’ I’ll Take You There depicts the relationship between the novel’s anonymous narrator and Vernor Congers, a Black PhD candidate. The novel’s second section recounts Vernor’s experiences of racist discrimination, which dominates much of his public life.
This presentation will discuss Vernor’s responses to racism and highlight his attempts to free himself from the restraints placed upon him by racist societies and social structures. In particular, following the work of George Yancy and Robert Birt, Vernor’s actions will be analysed in the context of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘bad faith’, as he attempts to escape the social realities of racism into the abstract world of academic philosophy. Secondly, this paper will discuss the ways in which the novel’s social institutions exhibit the social mechanics of racial oppression, as discussed by Nadine Ehlers, W.E.B DuBois and Frantz Fanon. These mechanics are replicated by the novel’s narrator and the narrative itself. In this way, the narrative constitutes a textual, racist enclosure within which Vernor is held.
On many levels, Oates’ novel depicts the pressures Vernor experiences because of the colour of his skin. Appreciation of such racist mechanics can lead not only to greater understanding, but concrete steps which can be taken towards racial equality.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 30 Jan 2020 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
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