Visual Narrative of Racial Identity and double Consciousness in Because It Is Bitter,and Because It Is My Heart

The issue of race is the focus of Oates’novel Because It Is Bitter,and Because It Is My Heart.The racial identity metaphors in the photos in the novels show the characteristics of racial ideology.This paper argues that photographs are no longer used as external cultural metaphors,but as invisible references to racial prejudice and racial contradictions.This article re-examines Oates’racial issue writing in the form of visual narratives and considers the ambivalence of the dual identities and double consciousness of blacks in New York City in the late 1950s from the visual ethical interpretation of black identity awareness,and the perception of cruelty and violence of social inequality.The historical limitations of the harsh reality of racism make a critical intervention in visual ethics.

Masking“My Face,”Unmasking“My Soul”:Bert Williams’s Double Consciousness,Carnivalesque Inversion,and Nobodiness

Known as the representative figure of black minstrelsy.Bert Williams’s revolutionary-success on Broadway and in the Zicgfeld Follies created a landmark opportunity for black voices to be heard in high-profile setting in a white world.The performance most notably preferred by his white audiences was Williams’s minstrel song“Nobody,”which from Williams’s perspective was also an irreplaceable piece.Visually echoing his minstrel song,Williams’s cakewalk performance success in the 1890s laid the basis for the song’s popularity.Both the song and Williams’s camivalesquc performance blurred the color line and transcended black minstrel stereotypes by taking African Americans’voices in the Jim Crow and lynching eras into serious consideration.However,though black minstrelsy has been largely misunderstood as exclusively racial stereotypes,what Bakhtin describes as the permeating camivalesquc inversion in black minstrel performance helps sharpen and clarify the double consciousness ideology between the burnt cork blackened face mask and the soul of black minstrel performers.

A Rebellious Mimic: Sappho’s Literary Allegiance and Betrayal in Fragment 1 and 16

Sappho’s Fragment 1 and Fragment 16 are both about the feminine love and desire.This essay invents an original term“rebellious mimic”,based upon Jack Winkler’s theory“double consciousness”,to interpret the two lyrics:“mimic”means that both lyrics,formulaically,adhere or allude to the literary norms which are frequently applied by other male authors while“rebellious”further complements that she creatively alters the conventional themes that are usually expected within such norms.For one thing,this literary contrast effectively attracts the audience’s attention and highlights the individual voice of Sappho in her lyrics.For another,it also alleviates the hostility between genders-it is intended to express that both men’s and women’s world share some common characteristics,instead of establishing one’s supremacy over the other.

Embodied Faith and the Limits of Female Agency in Randa Abdel-Fattah's Does My Head Look Big in This?

The present essay discusses Randa Abdel-Fattah's Does My Head Look Big in This?by focusing on the rendition of Islam as an axis of social agency in an environment that is excessively antagonistic of any version of Islam that falls outside the contours of the "liberal model"morphed by the Western creed of equality,liberty.Amal,the protagonist,embodies the dilemmas of choice and agency within an ideological rubric which disassociates such notions from faith-based convictions.The analysis relies on the notion of Muslim agency as theorized by Saba Mahmood,for whom the conscious formation of deeply rooted religious subjectivities is sidelined within the modern secular rubrics of self-formation.The article also draws on W.E.B Du Bois's concept of double consciousness to highlight the extent to which Muslim female bodies are caught at the intersection between religion and nation.Hence,this essay discloses the challenges facing Muslim women whose exercise of agency is tied to their religious beliefs in a backdrop characterized by multicultural and secular economies.More particularly,it explores Amal's religious tradition of habituated practices-such as wearing the veil in a hostile environment--as embodiments of autonomous agency.