Paul Beatty’s 2015 novel The Sellout is preoccupied with exposing the limitations of contemporary attitudes towards race. Like all great works of satire, Beatty’s novel draws attention to the contradictions inherent in the social institutions and practices of his own culture through humour and irony. He does so to satirise the idea of a ‘post-racial’ America, to point out the gap between rhetoric and reality, between the claims of progress in Obama’s America and the reality of the racism that still exists in the twenty-first century. 

Chapter Twenty of the novel concerns the building of a makeshift swimming pool. Beatty recollects that at the ‘height of the government enforcement of the Civil Rights Act’ (226) some towns in the United States ‘filled in their municipal pools’ (226) rather than suffer the horror of letting African-Americans swim alongside white people. 

In light of this, the narrator hires someone to construct a ‘Whites Only swimming pool’ (226) in Dickens, surrounded by ‘a chain-link fence’ (226). The reason given for this bizarre construction is that the children of Dickens ‘loved to hop’ (226) the fence and ‘play Marco Polo’ (226) in the Whites Only pool. 

The narrator seems to revel that his act of seemly racist segregation serves only to spur on enthusiastic resistance to that same segregation. Beatty indicates here that the reason behind the narrator’s attempt to re-segregate Dickens is ironically so that the people of Dickens will resist it, and in resisting it, realise the already segregated nature of the society that they live in. 

By pointing out the reality behind the rhetoric, that the U.S.A. is still a heavily segregated society despite the end of formal segregation and Jim Crow, Beatty’s novel exposes the limitations of progressive anti-racism. In looking at race from a ‘colour-blind’ or ‘post-racial’ perspective, contemporary attempts to address race ignore the history and legacy of American racism, from segregation to slavery.  

Another incident that exposes the limitations in twenty-first century attempts to address race is The Sellout’s parody of Black History Month. In response to the ‘disingenuous pride and niche marketing’ (226) of Black History Month, the narrator converts an abandoned car wash into a ‘tunnel of whiteness’ (227). 

The narrator relates how the children can choose between ‘several race wash options’ that include ‘Regular Whiteness’, ‘Deluxe Whiteness’ and ‘Super Deluxe Whiteness’ (227). Regular Whiteness includes the ‘Benefit of the Doubt’, Deluxe Whiteness includes ‘Warnings Instead of Arrests from the Police’, and Super Deluxe Whiteness includes ‘Legacy Admissions to College of Your Choice’ (227).

Here, The Sellout clearly satirises the privilege still enjoyed by white Americans in a ‘post-racial’ society, but Beatty also suggests the intersectional nature of white privilege. Professor Steven Delmagori suggests that by including the different versions of whiteness, all with their different privileges, The Sellout acknowledges the ‘class privilege immanent to white privilege’.

Beatty’s critique implies that all white people enjoy white privilege, but not all white people enjoy the same amount of white privilege. In doing so, Beatty ‘couples the whiteness critique to a class critique’ in a way that points out the flaws in the monolithic view of White Privilege in contemporary attempts to address racism.

At the end of the novel, the narrator sees Foy Cheshire celebrating Obama’s election. Foy says that America has finally ‘paid off its debts’ (289). The narrator responds: ‘And what about the Native Americans? What about the Chinese, the Japanese, the Mexicans, the poor, the forests, the water, the air, the fucking California condor? When do they collect?’ (289).

Dr. Henry Ivry of the University of Glasgow’s School of Critical Studies suggests that this moment encapsulates Beatty’s approach to race in the twenty-first century, in which ‘race doesn’t exist in a vacuum’, but rather is ‘a tangled category that intersects not only with other racialized beings but also with class, the environment, and even animals.’ The Sellout rejects the narrow parameters of contemporary conceptions of racism to explore the ways that race intersects with class, gender, ethnicity and ecology in order to approach a more robust account of race in the twenty-first century. 

At the end of Chapter Twenty, the narrator travels to Dickens’ local hospital where he paints a ‘black or brown’ (231) line on the wall of the hospital that leads down three flights of stairs, and then to three different locations: ‘a back alley’, ‘the morgue’ and a ‘junk-food vending machine’ (231). 

These lines satirise the inequalities faced by African-Americans and other minorities in the American healthcare system, with black and other minority people facing lower insurance rates and higher premiums (abandoned in the ‘back alley’), shorter life expectancy (‘the morgue’) and higher rates of obesity and diabetes (‘vending machine’). 

Five years after the passing of the Affordable Care Act, Beatty’s novel emphasises both the disadvantages that black people still face in the American healthcare system and the discrimination that they face in medical treatment. The Sellout is preoccupied with questioning and exploring claims of racial progress, and suggests over and over that ‘post-racial’ rhetoric is just a cover for the unaddressed problems of American racism.

Bibliography

Beatty, Paul, The Sellout (London: Oneworld, 2015)

CDC, ‘Adult Obesity Facts’, 2021 <https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html> [accessed 3 Jan 2024]

Delmagori, Steven, ‘Super Deluxe Whiteness: Privilege Critique in Paul Beatty’s the Sellout’, Symplokē, 26.1-2 (2018), 417–25

Irvy, Henry, ‘Unmitigated Blackness: Paul Beatty’s Transscalar Critique’, ELH, 87.4 (2020), 1133–62

Lee, Paulyne, Maxine Le Saux, Rebecca Siegel, Monika Goyal, Chen Chen, Yan Ma, and others, ‘Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Management of Acute Pain in US Emergency Departments: Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review’, The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 37.9 (2019), 1770–77 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajem.2019.06.014> [accessed 3 Jan 2024]

The Century Foundation, ‘Racism, Inequality, and Health Care for African Americans’, 2019 <https://tcf.org/content/report/racism-inequality-health-care-african-americans/?agreed=1> [accessed 2 Jan 2024]

The New York Times, ‘U.S. Life Expectancy Plunged in 2020, Especially for Black and Hispanic Americans’, 2021 <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/us/american-life-expectancy-report.html> [accessed 2 Jan 2024]

In a piece that focuses on music I felt this song was appropriate to listen to while reading. Fake Plastic Trees played on loop in my head as I read his book. A call against consumerism and the capitalist regime, it perfectly summarises the dangers of falling for fake plastic love.

Cunningham and Warrick talk about Crisis Theory in their work Unnoticed Apocalypse, and this is the type of apocalypse dealt with in the ‘before’ parts of Infinite Detail. There is this great schism, the before and after, all triggered by the destruction of the internet. In a world that was so dependant on the internet and that was so full of surveillance capitol, once that was gone society completely crumbles. In Bristol there is a complete collapse. This is reminiscent of what Benjamin (1999) suggests in his notes making up the Arcades Project:

The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things “just keep going” [are “status quo”]is the catastrophe …. Thus Strindberg (in “To Damascus”): hell is not something that awaits [or lies ahead of] us, but is life here and now

benjamin (473)

Benjamin is suggesting that our progress as a society is leading us for an immanent apocalypse, that our catastrophe is coming from our own success. This work is echoing the previous work of Frank Kermode. Kermode alludes to the bible are recalls an idea that first appears in the Book of Revelation, the ‘reign of Beast’ that takes place between time and the End. He writes;

‘Transition is the historical ancestor of modern crisis; in so far as we claim to live now in a period of perpetual transition we have merely elevated the interstitial period into an age or saeculum in its own right, and the age of perpetual transition in technological and artistic matters is understandably an age of perpetual crisis in morals and politics.’ (Kermode 1966, 28)

Merlyn Oliver Evans
The Mark of the Beast
1940

Maughan’s Bristol, the Before, creates this world that is within this ‘reign of Beast’ in a state of constant ‘perpetual transition’ a world devoid of true human connection that is ever changing depending on technological upgrades. A world of predictive policing, surveillance capitalism, control and above all, a dependency on the ersatz good of the internet This is shown best in the last part of the before when Rush is locked away in a New Jersey data centre, finding himself trapped around “server racks, strobing with green and amber lights […] all wired together in some crazy-ass way, the box full of suspended cables, crisscrossing through the air from wall to wall, rack to rack, like a three-dimensional spiderweb.” He’s trawling his way through the entanglement of spider’s webs that is the internet, looking for any last memories of his partner Scott before it all went dark. Memory and love are lost to the hardware of the internet, their relationship wasn’t real but grounded in the falseness of the online world, reminiscent of;

In the After, Vinyl records, 3.5-inch floppies, VHS tapes, and DVDs are some of the most closely guarded objects in Infinite Detail. Within Cabot Circus, Bristol’s expansive shopping centre, most stores have already been looted, except for a single shop that houses “antique LCD televisions” and tapes. A sign in this shop warns that thieves will face dire consequences if theft is attempted, “thieves will be shot.” The tapes that Tyrone manages to acquire are not only valuable but also instrumental in remembering what society once was “[d]ecades of history, long lost elsewhere”, representing decades of history that have been lost elsewhere. Safeguarding this music becomes an ethical obligation. Tyrone unintentionally becomes an archivist. Through this portrayal, Maughan illustrates that the act of preserving memories requires active attention and care. Our digital culture is far more fragile than we can comprehend. These very things that society now has disregarded are the very objects that Maughan believes will be crucial in the rebuilding of a fallen society, built up from lost relics of the past.

The premise of the novel can be seen as a macrocosm for an event that took place in America in the 1970s. The New York blackout of 1977 was an event that spanned several legends in the music industry, there is a suggestion and stories that it offered a convenient opportunity for aspiring hip-hop artists to illegally acquire the expensive equipment necessary for their musical development, which they otherwise could not afford. This event, in turn, acted as a catalyst for the emergence and proliferation of a fresh sound and culture. While this tale cannot be proven or disproven, it holds value as a narrative that explores the interplay between technology, culture, social class, race, and the potential to construct a brighter future from the remnants of the past. Infinite Detail masterfully explores this concept on a larger, more expansive level. This real-life event shows the power of the human spirit and how intertwined that spirit is with music and culture, and how from the disaster in 1977 something new was created. The same thing has the potential to happen at the end of Maughan’s text, however there is no admission to what would happen next, one of the texts biggest flaws, but it gives society hope that they can take this plastic, things seen as gimmicks now, and build a future with them.

Robert R. McElroy/Getty Images

Bibliography

Man text

Maughan, Tim. Infinite Detail. First edition. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.

Secondary Texts

Benjamin, W. 1999. The Arcades Project. Translated by H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cunningham, David, and Alexandra Warwick. “Unnoticed apocalypse: The science fiction politics of urban crisis.” City 17.4 (2013): 433-448.

Kermode, F. 1966. The Sense of an Ending. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Word count – 967

A history of racism in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric (2014)

In 2017 the #MeToo movement was booming across social media, following the onslaught of allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein. Many big-name celebrities came forth online to share their own stories and show solidarity in the face of sexual abuse, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lawrence, and Uma Thurman to name a few. American actress Alyssa Milano encouraged the use of the hashtag in October 2017, writing that ‘If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me Too” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem’. With such big stars leading the movement we now, six years later, associate #MeToo with Hollywood.

However, the #MeToo movement was actually birthed on MySpace in 2006 by activist Tarana Burke, an African American woman who used her own history of sexual violence to support and empower other young girls in marginalised communities. Despite receiving accolades from Time magazine as a female activist and ‘silence breaker’ in 2017, Burke’s name and intention has been lost among the names and stories from (predominantly white) Hollywood stars. Only a year later, Burke claimed that ‘The No.1 thing I hear from [black, Hispanic and Native American women] is that the #MeToo movement has forgotten us.’ She added, ‘We are the movement, and so I need you to not opt out of the #MeToo movement…Stop giving your power away to white folks’ (qtd. in Riley, usatoday.com).

‘We are the movement …
Stop giving your power away to white folks.’

(2018)

Christelle Ram uses Burke and the #MeToo movement as a key example in her essay, ‘Black Historical Erasure’ (2020). Ram broadens out the affair by reminding us that ‘The #MeToo movement was partly inspired by the widespread sexual violence experienced by slave women and men’ (25). Here, Ram asserts that sexual violence is inherently a racial issue, having roots in slave history as a ‘tool of violence and dominance’ (26). The erasure of black voices amidst the 2017 #MeToo movement therefore displaces both the history of the movement and the individuals it was made for. The slave women who endured this violence lacked the agency to have ‘their narratives or stories reported or recounted’ (26); the black, Hispanic and Native American voices of the #MeToo movement in this seemingly ‘post-racial’ society have similarly had their narrative and stories usurped by the affluent white voice.

The 2017 #MeToo movement took place three years after the publication of Claudia Rankine’s book, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), and yet the events of the movement speak to the themes explored in Rankine’s book. Her lyric is concerned with issues surrounding memory and erasure, as well as the body and violence. As early on as page 7, when describing a racial ‘slippage’ between two young close friends, Rankine writes that ‘your fatal flaw [is] your memory’. Soon after this she describes a racially charged instance between two people in a car, a moment which ‘you drive straight through…acting like this moment isn’t inhabitable, hasn’t happened before, and the before isn’t part of the now’ (10). In these instances, Rankine is interested in exploring a form a racism very different to the sexual violence enacted upon black female bodies; rather, she speaks to ‘ordinary’ or ‘intimate moments’ of day-to-day life where racism raises its head in surprise (Mormorunni 6). Rankine exposes this form of ‘casual’ or ‘acceptable’ racism as having sprouted from a deep and longstanding history of racism, rooted in slavery. As the reader works their way through, and is pulled into, these intimate and ordinary moments they become increasingly aware of the fact that the ‘before’ is still very much a part of the ‘now’; that ‘the body has memory’ (28), in fact there is an ‘historical self’ (14), and that the past cannot be put behind you as it is ‘buried in you’ (63).

Rankine is able to quite literally pull the reader into these scenarios through her ‘disorienting pronoun play’ (Mormorunni 10) where she conflates the ‘you’ and ‘I’ of the story, making her own experience ours (11). Who the ‘you’, ‘I’, ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘they’ refers to is never quite clear, making the reader do the work to decode the scenario and further implicate the reader in their involvement in the unfolding moment. However, the pronoun play does more than pull the reader into the racist scenario: these fractured pronouns point towards a fractured sense of identity for the black individual living against ‘a sharp white background’ (Rankine 52-3). A number of times throughout the book Rankine refers to this feeling of ‘displacement’ (153), the ‘feeling [that] you don’t belong so much to you’ (146).

I find that this concept is best explored through the art Rankine choose to include in the book, namely Kate Clark’s Little Girl (19) and Wangechi Mutu’s Sleeping Heads (147). Rankine states that these pieces were important to her work as they ‘performed, enacted, and depicted something ancient that I couldn’t or didn’t want to do in language’ (qtd. in Clark, kateclark.com). Both pieces bring together that which doesn’t belong together, they are ‘wrong’ and appear disturbing to a certain level. Clark’s Little Girl sculpture, which depicts a black girl’s face attached to a taxidermized infant caribou, is particularly interesting to me as it speaks to a number of themes explored throughout the lyric.

The uncanny or ‘Unheimlich’ nature of the sculpture mirrors the narrator’s feeling of displacement from oneself, whilst also evoking the sense that one is hunted, weak, and defenceless. Most importantly, however, for Rankine it reminds her that her ‘historical body on this continent began as property no different from an animal’. She goes on to say; ‘So when someone says, “I didn’t know black women could get cancer,” which was said of me, I see that I am not being seen as human’ (qtd. in Clark). Ultimately, for Rankine the casual and acceptable racist ‘slippages’ that she encounters in ordinary day-to-day life cannot be detached from the longstanding history of racism that is rooted in slavery. Little Girl speaks to both the present, seemingly ‘ok’ racism that sees her as something slightly different to human, and to the brutal history of slavery, the violent treatment of black people as literal objects and animals, of which the latter stems from. (Left: Little Girl, Kate Clark 2008)

Using an array of written and visual art forms, Citizen is able to express the belief that racism is not only ever present in society but is, in its ‘lesser’ and more acceptable forms, still rooted in the legacies left from slavery. For many like Rankine, to believe in a ‘post-racial America’ is to ignore this legacy and history, as if it does not still impact the lives of those who live in a society formed from it. The usurpation of the #MeToo movement by the white affluent voice provides a contemporary example of how an inherently racial issue can be stripped of its history and thus displace the victims of that history. Rankine poignantly ends her book with The Slave Ship, pointing towards the truth that all forms of contemporary racism starts and ends with the legacy of slavery.

Bibliography

• Clark, Kate. ‘Cultural Collaborations’. USA: kateclark.com, 2022. (Online resource, https://www.kateclark.com/cultural-collaborations).
• Clark, Kate. Little Girl. 2008.
• Ram, Christelle. ‘Black Historical Erasure: A Critical Comparative Analysis in Rosewood and Ocoee Rosewood and Ocoee’. Honours Programme Thesis. USA: Rollins College, 2020. (Online resource, https://scholarship.rollins.edu/honors/121).
• Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. UK: Penguin Random House UK, 2014.
• Riley, Rochelle. ‘#MeToo founder Tarana Burke blasts the movement for ignoring poor women.’ USA Today News, 16 November 2018. (Online resource, https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/11/16/tarana-burke-metoo-movement/2023593002/).
• Mormorunni, Cristina. ‘The Trauma of Racism in Translation: Making the Personal Universal through Language, Point of View and a Raced Aesthetic’. USA: TerraMar, 2017. (Online resource, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://terramarconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Trauma-in-Translation.pdf)
• Mutu, Wangechi. Sleeping Heads. 2006.
• Turner, Joseph Mallord William. The Slave Ship. circa 1840.

Emira Tucker is a twenty-something recent College graduate who feels rudderless and inadequately equipped for adulthood. Emira who is black, works part time as a babysitter for a wealthy white couple, the Kiley Reid’s novel opens with Emira at her friends 26^th Birthday party. The celebrations are interrupted with a phone call from Emira’s boss Alix Chamberlain, asking her to “take Briar to the grocery store for a bit?” (1) Whilst taking care of Briar at the grocery Emira is racially profiled by a security guard, accused of kidnapping the white child she is taking care of.  A white bystander, Kelley Copeland, who eventually becomes Emira’s boyfriend records the encounter “I got the whole thing on tape. I would turn it into a news station if I were you.” (16) This fateful encounter changes the trajectories for the characters’ lives, and allows Reid to blur the lines between an employee and boss relationship or an obsessive friendship to seek the cure for white guilt. And raises questions as to whether the relationship between Emira and Kelley is an innocent interracial relationship or a man who has fetish for black women and black culture.

Alix is your quintessential white liberal millennial ‘girlboss’ feminist, with her blog ‘LetHerSpeak’ she has capitalised white female empowerment. “Her propensity for receiving free merchandise quickly turned into a philosophy about women speaking up.” (22) Her brand of feminism is not about empowering women from marginalised backgrounds or even women from a lower class than her, it is corporate, capitalist friendly and entrepreneurial. Alix’s guilt over Emira’s encounter at the grocery store causes her to become obsessed with befriending her. Robin DiAngelo in her novel ‘White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism’ dissects the nature of racism in white liberals and the precarious nature of colour-blindness. “I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color. I define a white progressive as any white person who thinks he or she is not racist, or is less racist, or in the “choir,” or already “gets it.” Alix never sees Emira as a person, she is instead a vehicle to absolve her from criticism and a racist conflict from high school. She wants Emira to use her youth and blackness to validate her own anxieties, a token black friend, a trophy to win.

Reid, with the grocery store scene created a deeply pertinent case of racial profiling that echoes similar encounters that frequently pop up in the news cycle, a non-existent crime that speaks directly to white prejudice and privilege. The novel is set in 2016, viral videos depicting racial violence and discrimination at the hands of police officers and security guards are heavily discussed topics both in mainstream news media but especially on the internet. Emira has two fears, getting arrested, and going viral. The looming threat of the tape releasing constantly weighs on Emira’s mind. During their relationship Kelley frequently tries to convince Emira to release the tape much to her chagrin and discomfort, “You gotta stop bringing up that tape from Market Depot.” (193) The tape offers opportunities to the people around her, to partake in the role of white saviours. It offers Kelley a chance to posture how not-racist he is, to fetishize and consume her blackness and perceived coolness. As their relationship progresses we see how deeply invested Kelley is with black people and their culture, all his friends are black as are most of his previous girlfriends. He has appropriated traditional African-American style and vernacular, most striking is when he causally uses the n-word in front of Emira. Reid leaves Kelley as ambiguous he isn’t as performative as Alix and does seem at points to genuinely care for Emira but we as readers question if his proximity to blackness is purely good intentioned or is he trying to overcompensate to feel cool, “I probably thought the black kids in high school were much cooler than the white ones.” (225) Reid who herself is married to a White man, does not believe all white men who date black women are simply fetishising them but instead question the difficult questions black women place on themselves particularly the power dynamics of class.

At Thanksgiving we learn about Alix and Kelley’s shared history, it’s left them deeply resentful of each other. I culminates in a contest of ‘Which One of Us Is Actually More Racist’, and Emira is the pawn. “If you’re still okay fetishizing black people like you did in high school, fine. Just don’t pull that shit with my sitter.” (224) Again we see that Emira is devalued and not treated as a human but a trophy to win, and whoever wins her is the least racist. A competition to be more ‘woke’ than the other, an opportunity to tokenise Emira. She will only ever be seen as a caricature of ‘blackness’ for the white people around her, she is the poor black friend who needs to be saved by the white saviour. Thus, is why Alix eventually releases the tape. Alix and Kelley are not insidious villains however, they are results of larger systemic issues of race in America. Such a Fun Age dissects the fetishisation of black women and other systemic issues of micro-aggressions and unconscious bias through the white people in Emira’s life, eventually removing both Alix and Kelley from her life and instead she thinks about her time with the only person who genuinely loved her , Briar.

Bibliography:

DiAngelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Beacon Press, 2018.

“Kiley Reid.” The Daily Show, season 25, episode 66. Comedy Central. 2020.

Lea, Richard. Kiley Reid: ‘Some black women say: “I don’t want to explain anything.” I’m not one of them.’ The Guardian, 28^th December 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/28/kiley-reid-interested-reading-writing-world-we-live-in-debut-novelist

Reid, Kiley. Such a Fun Age. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

‘Severance’ makes a claim that Capitalism is a flawed system which suppresses our desires by forcing participation in a system that prioritises capital value over cultural value. A system which delivers our ‘wants’ rather than our ‘needs’.

“I was like everyone else. We all hoped the storm would knock things over, fuck things up enough but not too much. We hoped the damage was bad enough to cancel work the next morning but not so bad that we couldn’t go to brunch instead.”

Ma, Ling. Severance (p. 198). The Text Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.

Through a post-apocalyptic setting, we can fantasise a hypothetical world where Capitalism has been destroyed. A common trope in such a story involves the characters coming to terms with their own needs and re-contextualising the value of work. Where Ma’s novel differs in this aspect, is by depicting the extreme circumstances as rather mundane and repetitive:

“My reflection in the computer screen stared blankly at me. I opened Outlook, which showed no new emails. I typed up an email to Michael Reitman and Carole, with the subject line elevator malfunction, that detailed my morning’s travails and the steps I took to implement a solution.”

Ma, Ling. Severance (p. 251). The Text Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.

In this passage, Candace is the only one left in her office due to the pandemic and takes it upon herself to inform the managers of an elavator malfunction. The lack of tension makes this novel stand out compared to similar apocalyptic narratives, which rely on life-threatening situations to push the narrative forward.

‘Severance’ on the other hand, sheds the narrative elements that create tension: the ‘fevered’ are of no threat to the main cast, the search for supplies is categorised as mainly inconvenient:

“I had taken to buying all my household supplies off Amazon, but the boxes, carrying anything from batteries to deodorant, took at least two weeks to deliver, whether the service was FedEx or UPS or USPS or DHL.” (247-248)

The fact that Amazon and several delivery services are still up and running undermine the precarity of the situation. Furthermore the items that are being delivered could be considered non-essential in a life or death scenario (deodrant stands out in particular when you imagine the typical, unhygenic characters in a show such as ‘The Walking Dead’).

Another key subversion of the ‘apocalypse’ genre is visible in the blurred lines between the past and present. The genre hinges on the idea of the ‘end’. However, the ‘end’ cannot be constituted without other parts of a narrative, so in a sense the apocalpyse is just as much about the ‘beginning’.

Where Ma goes in a different direction is immediately noticed in the structure of the novel: the narrative is non-linear and jumps between past and present. A common theme in the novel is one of nostalgia seeping into the present:

“The internet is the flattening of time. It is the place where the past and the present exist on one single plane. But proportionally, because the present calcifies into the past, even now, even as we speak, perhaps it is more accurate to say that the internet almost wholly consists of the past. It is the place we go to commune with the past.” (113)

If the past bleeds into the present and vice versa, then how can a post-apocalyptic narrative structure work? I believe that ‘Severance’ can be a challenging read because it lacks this clear structure, but the effect of this is an interesting commentary on the idealistic idea of a ‘post-capitalist’ world.

This is best demonstrated through Bob’s group, which could be accurately described as a cult with Bob as the authorative figure. If this group is categorised as a new beginning post-capitalism, then the outlook is remarkably dreary. An obvious example being the gender roles: “The men hunted, and the women gathered” (63) which suggests that the flaws of a capitalist system would simply repeat themselves.

Theodore Martin claims in ‘Survival: Work and Plague’ that “The sameness at the heart of survival complicates the speculative power usually accorded to the genre of post-apocalyptic fiction”. (162) I believe that in this instance, Ma has leaned more into the repetitive aspects of the survival genre and in this case it serves the speculative ideas present in the text: that whilst Capitalism is accurately portrayed in all of its flaws, there seems to be a reluctance to embrace a new style of living.

Bibliography

Ling, Ma, ‘Severance’ 2018 (Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Theodore Martin, ‘Survival: Work and Plague’ in Contemporary Drift: Genre, Historicism and The Problem of the Present (Columbia, 2017)

Ma, Ling. Severance (p. 63). The Text Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.

Ma, Ling. Severance (p. 113). The Text Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.

“One zombie can be easily killed, but a hundred zombies is another issue […] This narrative, then, is not about any individual entity, per se, but about an abstract force: the force of the mob, of mob mentality”.

ma, 29

Ideas of survival and the collective are foregrounded; both are central to Ma’s post-apocalyptic novel Severance(2018). Whilst hinting at notions of survival, Ma’s repetition of “mob” emphasises an element of susceptibility alike a herd mindset, whilst also harking towards brutal competitiveness (29). As Monbiot establishes in How Did We Get Into This Mess?, “competition and individualism, in other words – is the religion of our time” (10). Aided by Western capitalist culture, individualism – exacerbated by self-gratification and a strand of self-serving personal autonomy – have become the supreme ethos. Severance offers an at times morbid reflection of this illusionary notion of individualism. Instead, Ma suggests that the waring notion of the ‘individual’, is not actually ‘individual’ at all – and is alternatively, a composition of the collective. 

Shen Fever, an apocalyptic virus and seminal motif within the text, prospers under fundamentals of late capitalism: oblivion and repetition. Ma’s use of repetitive, forceful sentences, alike “I got up. I went to work in the morning. I went home in the evening” (150). As such, suggesting that for Candance to follow a routine, other than this, would be mindless. 

Initially, Jonathan, operates as a polarity to Candace the office drone – 

Whilst Jonathan refuses to be a cog within the system, he subsequently suffers, alike Candace. 

For Candace, working at Spectra, as a “Senior Product Coordinator of the Bibles division”, offers safety; yet safety is in exchange of self-fulfilment (Ma, 22). As Ma notes “the Bible embodies the purest form of product packaging, the same content repackaged a million times over, in new combinations ad infinitum” (23). Spectra have tapped into a nuanced market, one which is extraneously hyper-specific. Ma furthers the notion of hyper-individualism. Returning to Monbiot’s suggestions; capitalism enacts competition and individualism, whilst situating citizens as consumers (10). Individuality hinges on a desire to become a trailblazer; consumers seek out extremely niche products, alike those who purchase the Bible’s produced by Spectra. Ma writes that the Bible is “repackaged a million times”; the desire to have something unique is not truly satisfied (23). Ma furthers the waring notion of ‘individualism’, one which is repackaged and distributed to the masses. Individuals are situated within the cycle of consumption, paralleling the guise of which individuals- turned-meek zombies are lured under. 

In addition to the unyielding nature of consumerism, individuals are governed by circumstance, i.e., capitalism, and its fixation on draining labour. Fisher writes in Capitalist Realism (2008), 

Ma’s narrative raises the question, is it possible to ‘sever’ ties and exist outside the ant farm, or rather, the zombie farm? 

Whilst operating within the ‘ant farm’ in terms of labour and consumer culture, Candance is immune from becoming a zombie. She is positioned as an outsider. Bob questions Candace’s place within the group, stating “Do you think we’re the right fit for you?” (Ma, 32). Here, Ma situates Candace’s position within the band of survivors as something unstable, in an already precarious environment. In doing so, Ma harks towards ideas surrounding identity and migration. 

Shen Fever is triggered by nostalgia – feelings of belonging are dangerous. Alike Ma, Candace immigrated to the US from China at a young age. Both of Candace’s parents have died, exacerbating her already detached relationship with China. Yet, Candace’s relationship with New York is also fraught. Ma writes “New York has a way of forgetting you” (151). Candace’s parted relationship with New York is further reflected in the name of her blog, “NY Ghost” (14). Candance is positioned as an outsider and an observer. As such, reflecting the ‘othering’ of immigrants. As Powell notes in ‘Us vs them’, othering “is largely driven by politicians and the media, as opposed to personal contact. Overwhelmingly, people don’t ‘know’ those that they are Othering” (n.p). The harmful sentiment which renders certain identities, i.e., East Asian / Asian Americans, as non-viable. 

Ma humanises the reality of those who are continually ‘othered’, centring fiction as a means of breeding empathy. Fiction, alike Ma’s, explores the pathology of different identities and existences. Within ‘The Doom and Glory’, James Baldwin writes, “It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive” (n.p). By depicting the experience of the daughter of 1^st generation immigrants, Ma humanises the experience. Fiction refutes the weaponizing of migrants’ identities. Whilst individuals are forged as a mass, Severance recognises the individuality of experience. Yet, Ma encourages the fostering of a unifying empathetic connection, through the recognition of multiplicity. 

Ultimately, Ma dispels the capitalist-led and bred notion of individualism, and instead favours a more empathetic, collective, and restorative stance. 

Word Count: 999

Bibliography

Primary Resources

Ma, Ling. Severance. 2018. Text Publishing. 2020. Print.

Secondary Resources

Baldwin, James. ‘The Doom and glory of Knowing Who You Are’. Life Magazine, May 24, 1963. 

Fan, Jiayang. “Ling Ma’s “Severance” Captures the Bleak, Fatalistic Mood of 2018.” The New Yorker, 10 Dec. 2018, www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/ling-ma-severance-captures-the-bleak-fatalistic-mood-of-2018. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023.

Fisher, Mark. Capitalism Realism: Is There No Alternative? 2009. Zaro Books. pp.15. Print. 

Monbiot, George. How Did We Get Into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature. New Left Books, 2016. Print. 

Powell, John A. “Us vs Them: The Sinister Techniques of “Othering” – and How to Avoid Them.” The Guardian, The Guardian, 30 Nov. 2017, www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/08/us-vs-them-the-sinister-techniques-of-othering-and-how-to-avoid-them. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023.

In a digital era where feminism has gained spectacular visibility (think hashtag activism, feminist slogans on t-shirts), you might be tempted to believe that feminism has evolved into an all-inclusive movement. Well, Kiley Reid begs to differ. Her 2019 novel, Such a Fun Age, pokes fun at the performative nature of white female ‘wokeness’ while also exposing its insidious underbelly–it highlights how popular feminism prioritises the white, middle-class experience. This preoccupation, Reid slyly suggests, threatens to silence and make invisible the voices and experiences of women of colour.

“”I’ll call her father and he can come down here. He’s an old white guy so I’m sure everyone will feel better'”

“The security guard pointed a finger at her face. ‘I am speaking to the child‘”

14

What ensues is what Alix mentally terms a game called “Which One of Us Is Actually More Racist” (228) or as one reviewer from The New York Times puts it: “white liberal anxieties play out in a tug-of-war for Emira’s affections”:

“’Emira deserves to know who she’s dating.” No, you know what, Alex?’ Kelley leaned forward with one arm on the table. ‘Emira deserves a job where she gets to wear her own fucking clothes.'” 

227

Here, the presumptious attitude of Alix and Kelley as they dictate what they believe is best for Emira reveals the superficial nature of white allyship. By excluding Emira from a conversation that directly concerns her, the white characters inadvertanely reinforce Banet-Weiser’s proposition that popular feminism “refuses intersectionality, and often erases and devalues women of color” (13-14).

“neoliberal feminism is one in which the values [of] neoliberalism—ever-expanding markets, entrepreneurialism, a focus on the individual—are embraced, not challenged, by feminism”

Banet-Weiser 11-12

Such a Fun Age locates this wave of entreprenurial feminism firmly within the digital realm. Reid satirises the rise of the white female entrepreneur to Instagram fame through Alix who “earn[s] another thousand followers” after “Small Business Femme” posts an Instagram photo of Alix breastfeeding onstage, captioned “Find You a Woman Who Can Do Both” (29).

On the other hand, Emira remains invisible within this digital world: “oh no, I don’t have Instagram” (Reid 135). Emira’s lack of an online presence therefore positions her distinctly outside the sphere of popular feminism, a movement that relies on online platforms to desseminate messages of female empowerment.

It is ironic then that Alix’s feminist slogan, #LetHerSpeak, actually serves to disempower Emira in the novel–we learn that Alix’s slogan, like her name, is phony. Alix’s suggestion that Emira wear one of her “white LetHer Speak polos” while babysitting not only carries racial undertones of white ownership and black subservience but it also reduces Emira to a tokenistic accessory; a living embodiment of Alix’s supposedly inclusive brand (Reid 49).

Tokenism intensifies as the novel progresses, culminating in a television interview where Alix exploits Emira as a passive prop to endorse her company. During the interview, Emira is thrust into the ‘spotlight of visibility’ and her trauma is transformed into a marketable commodity:

“Emira embodies much of the spirit in my business LetHer Speak,” she said. “Not only did she stick up for herself, but she listens to herself, and this is exactly the kind of person Peter and I want around our girls”

285

Yet, in the cathartic final pages of the novel Emira reclaims her verbal power. Leveraging her newfound visibility, Emira hits Alix where it hurts–her public image–and denies Alix and the wider media the opportunity to monetise her trauma:

“I will not actually be joining the Chamberlains full-time? Or like… at all […] it would be best if we go our seperate ways and our paths… never like came back together.”

285-286

Through its exploration of everyday racial microaggressions, Such a Fun Age urges its readers, especially its white readership, to consider the ways in which we wield our voices, or in this new digital age, our keyboards, to inadvertently marginalise the experiences of women of colour. Ultimately, Reid advocates for more equitable spaces, both online and offline, in order to amplify, rather than silence, diverse voices.

Bibliography

Banet-Weiser, Sarah. Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. London: Duke University Press, 2018.

Canfield, David. ‘Kiley Reid has written the most provocative page-turner of the year’. Entertainment Weekly, 2019.

Christensen, Lauren. ‘When It Comes to Race, How Progressive Are the Progressives?’. The New York Times, 2019.

Reid, Kiley. Such a Fun Age. Dublin: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

The US government ignored prior warnings of the 9/11 attacks, to justify their subsequent Middle East invasions. ‘Climate change’ is a political (particularly Democrat) invention used to garner financial or ideological support. Medical vaccines are poisonous, causing fatal adverse effects, and are thus used to depopulate the earth. US mass shootings are staged performances to enforce gun control laws in governmental attempts to acquire deeper societal control.

These are but a few of the dangerous conspiracy theories that remain popular within twenty-first century discussions, believed by disconcertingly large quantities of individuals.

Many such conspiracies are upheld in America, by groups believing their government to be “…hijacked by external/foreign powers … looking to promote a ‘New World Order’,” whilst holding: “In order to facilitate this [Order] … the government is interested in undermining the power of those who oppose it, by eroding constitutional rights,” (Sweeney & Perliger 54). Throughout his graphic novel Sabrina, Nick Drnaso alludes to real contemporary events that bred conspiracies, also creating his own conspiracy around a fictional murder. In doing so, he profoundly demonstrates the psychological instability of those who promote harmful theories surrounding traumatic events, and the damage they cause to their irrational accepters.

Within Sabrina, we witness the lives of Calvin and Sandra become harmed by conspiratorial speculations, receiving threats like: “Someone should kill you,” (120) and: “Your address is online[,] … I’m armed and protected. See what happens if they … test me,” (155) as Sabrina’s existence becomes questioned. While each suffer greatly, Teddy (Sabrina’s partner) falls most susceptible to the effects of conspiracy throughout, becoming both a target of the paranoid mob and a succumbing absorber of its deluded mentality.

Someone is at fault. Someone is scheming and capitalizing big time. To … expose the conspirators for the thieving murderers they are; that is my vocation.

Douglas’ Conspiratorial Voice (p.89)

Many conspiracy theories seem “…product[s] of mental illness,” with “…some people who accept [them being] mentally ill and subject to delusions,” (Sunstein & Vermeule 211) which relates to Teddy. Following his introduction, I sympathise with Teddy’s grief-induced sombreness and unwell, dishevelled constitution. His digressions from silence (13), vomiting (37), and nightmares (46) into nervous exhaustion (52) factor into his susceptibility to the neurotic conspiracies of Albert Douglas, voiced on the radio. Douglas characterises an unhealthy conspiracist, discussing “…doomsday predictions,” and “…a global dictatorship,” whilst claiming: “Our masters will flee to their compounds, leaving us to endure unimaginable plagues…” (88). Not coincidentally, such provocative language resembles that of contemporary right-wing conspiracists like Alex Jones and the QAnon movement.

Throughout Sabrina, Douglas’ voice acts supernaturally, being both “…disembodied,” and “…omnipresent,” (Jacobs 72). Ironically, this demeanour transforms Douglas into his worst fear – a malevolent composer that “…stir[s] the pot, to keep [people] separate, suspicious, and hostile,” (88). Relatedly, Oliver and Wood highlight how many Americans “…consistently endorse some kind of conspiratorial narrative about a current political event … [with their] attitudes [being] predicted by supernatural … sentiments,” (953). Such sentiments often revolve around a battle of free humanity against a corrupt, enslaving force, presumably having “…seeds in the fall of the Twin Towers,” (Park §7) highlighted through Drnaso’s allusion to the event. Douglas incites this paranoia, arguing society will have “…defenceless groups of people being shepherded together, and … completely dependent on those in control,” (138) psychologically hauling Teddy into his state of mind. In this sense, Douglas becomes the “…spokesman of the paranoid style,” who “…finds [the conspiratorial world] directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others,” kindling Teddy’s devolution into a “…clinical paranoic,” that “…sees the hostile and conspiratorial world … as directed specifically against him,” (Hofstadter 4).

Although Douglas claims Sabrina’s murder to “…ha[ve] all the hallmarks of the [routine] staged tragedies,” (108) Teddy remains susceptible to his suspicions. However, notably: “…most people will only express conspiracist beliefs after they encounter a conspiratorial narrative that gives ‘voice’ to their underlying predispositions, assuming the particular incident was unusual … enough to invoke these feelings,” (Oliver & Wood 955) which applies to Teddy. Douglas discusses how he “…[doesn’t] believe … that Sabrina … was murdered by Timmy Yancey,” while posing: “For all we know, she’s alive in bondage somewhere … [or] [m]aybe forces too evil to comprehend did in fact murder [her],” (117) thereby provoking Teddy’s irrationality on two levels. Firstly, Teddy holds onto the possibility that Sabrina is alive, being kept in an area like the referenced “…black site,” (132). On the other hand, Teddy believes that Sabrina’s murder may have been performed by such veiled, heinous figures as described. This highlights the complex nature of conspiracism with trauma, with Teddy’s denial and longing for explanation contributing to his gullible vulnerability.

Eventually, his mistrust peaks, as Douglas’ ‘warnings’ of “…troops … announc[ing] a state of emergency … [and] shut[ting] down the power grid … [thus] keep[ing] the population under control,” (138) take thorough effect, leading Teddy to steal a kitchen knife for protection (135). Thus, through Teddy, Drnaso shows the parasitic nature of conspiracy, particularly within fixated, traumatised, and isolated individuals.

Thankfully, Teddy eventually switches off the radio, and begins reading an academic book designed for children (145). In this humorous implication, Drnaso suggests that there is more educational value in a children’s book than in such ramblings as Douglas’. Despite Teddy’s somewhat contented ending, however, we are left sympathising with those affected by the conspiracy, as Sandra and Calvin remain threatened and isolated, personifying melancholy.

Ultimately, Sabrina warns us to reject catastrophic conspiratorial perspectives, and to instead focus on empathy, rationality, and community. Can empathy be felt for Douglas himself, however? We see remnants of his humanity remain, unashamedly stating: “Thanks for giving me strength, mom. I love you,” (89). Furthermore, he “…served in the army during the Gulf War,” (121) perhaps being similarly traumatised, yet unable to escape the conspiracy cesspit before it consumed him. While this doesn’t justify Douglas’ scaremongering, it certainly sends Drnaso’s ambiguous text into deeper levels of interpretability. Maybe, to avoid being similarly seduced by conspiracies in our volatile contemporary period, we should heed Sabrina’s advice to “…get away from the internet,” (8) and preoccupy our minds with rewarding, satisfactory activities.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCE

Drnaso, Nick. Sabrina. Granta Publications, 2018.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Hofstadter, Richard. “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, Vintage Books, New York, United States of America, 1967, pp. 3–40.

Jacobs, Rita D. “Review: Sabrina by Nick Drnaso.” World Literature Today, vol. 96, no. 6, 2018, pp. 72–73.

Oliver, J. Eric, and Thomas J. Wood. “Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 58, no. 4, Oct. 2014, pp. 952–966.

Park, Ed. “Can You Illustrate Emotional Absence? These Graphic Novels Do.” The New York Times, 31 May 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/books/review/nick-drnaso-sabrina.html. Accessed 14 Nov. 2023.

Sunstein, Cass R., and Adrian Vermeule. “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures.” The Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 17, no. 2, 2009, pp. 202–227.

Sweeney, Matthew M., and Arie Perliger. “Explaining the Spontaneous Nature of Far-Right Violence in the United States.” Perspectives on Terrorism, vol. 12, no. 6, Dec. 2018, pp. 52–71.