English 159 - Winter, 2011

Topics in the Novel

Topic: Virtual Skins: Fictions of Identity Tourism from 1850 to the Present

Class Information

Instructor: Langmade, Lynn
CRN: 22561
Time: MWF 3:10-4:00
Location: 229 Wellman

Description

When describing Herman Melville’s identity-assuming antagonist in The Confidence Man, the narrator claims he is “at a loss to determine where exactly the fictitious character had been dropped, and the real one, if any, resumed.” By suggesting that identity is fluid and artificially constructed as well as writing a novel that acutely wrestles with issues of identity, individuality, and personhood, Melville composed the incunabular text of virtual embodiment, crafting in 1857 what many critics have denominated not only “Melville’s most nearly perfect work,” but also “the exemplary postmodern text.” In this course, we will examine the slippery, amorphous, and problematic category of identity that preoccupied writers for the last century and a half on both sides of the Atlantic, focusing on the ways in which individuals throughout history—and by extension characters in novels—have chosen to pass for, or assume, other identities for pleasure and/or profit: identity tourism.

In a world that is becoming increasingly more post-humanized, we will pay particular attention to cyberpunk novels that anticipated the Web 2.0 revolution, a revolution that institutionalized social media—in the form of online gaming, virtual realities, and social networks. For such technologies have made it increasingly easier to assume alternative identities as well as provide fertile terrain for novelists wishing to explore the problem of identities detached from bodies.

Ultimately, we will employ the critical lenses of digital media theory, philosophy of personal identity, and critical legal studies to frame the following inquiries: How is identity formed and consolidated? In what way is identity a performance? How can you be sure that someone is who they say they are? What happens to the law or to society in general if persons can willfully pass for others? More pointedly, with the rise in virtual realities, what happens when contested identities, those based upon race, gender, corporeality (twin) or class, become increasingly detached from bodies altogether? And in what way might virtuality provide the means to democratize identity once and for all?

Texts

The Confidence-Man , Herman Melville
Pudd’nhead Wilson , Mark Twain
Passing, Nella Larson
Down and Out in Paris , George Orwell
Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin
Twins: Dead Ringers , Bari Wood
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
He, She, It / Body of Glass , Marge Piercy