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Who’s passing now? Mobility, race, and value in Zoë Wicomb’s playing in the light
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Emmett, Christine (2022) Who’s passing now? Mobility, race, and value in Zoë Wicomb’s playing in the light. Research in African Literatures, 52 (4). pp. 133-149. ISSN 0034-5210.
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Official URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/863345
Abstract
This article offers a close reading of Zoë Wicomb's novel Playing in the Light (2006), arguing that the novel's representation of racial passing, linguistic performance, and value present a radical departure from standard accounts of racial passing. In Wicomb's novel, individual advancement and social mobility are central aspirations both to the "play-whites" in the novel as well as to the postapartheid author-figure. In this way Wicomb's novel highlights not only the economic underpinnings of racial identity, but the continuation of racial exclusion in postapartheid South Africa. The novel provides an especially perceptive representation of racial capitalism in which the linguistic dominance of English, the development of neoliberalism, and continued hyper-exploitation produce a context in which social mobility is still dependent on passing.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Research in African Literatures | ||||
Publisher: | Indiana University Press | ||||
ISSN: | 0034-5210 | ||||
Official Date: | 3 September 2022 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 52 | ||||
Number: | 4 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 133-149 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||
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