Hybridity and Whiteness in Claudine C. O’Hearn’s Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and BiculturalPosted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive on 2010-09-01 03:29Z by Steven |
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Volume 7, Issue 3 (September 2005)
9 pages
Heather Latimer
Simon Fraser University
In her paper, “Hybridity and Whiteness” in Claudine C. O’Hearn’s Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural, Heather Latimer examines the autobiographical collection Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural assembled and edited by Claudine C. O’Hearn. Latimer’s analysis reveals how current models of hybridity theory are performed, articulated, and exemplified in the texts of O’Hearn’s volume. In her analysis, Latimer explores the anxiety and tension about whiteness within hybridity theory, often reflected in the performance of hybrid aesthetics. Latimer argues that while some authors in Half and Half avoid talking about whiteness as a way to establish legitimate hybrid identities, this avoidance actually resinscribes an authenticity to their identities which in turn replicates the very oppressive processes of identity formation they are attempting to write against. Latimer sees other authors in the volume, however, as disrupting the stability and invisibility of whiteness by performing a type of hybridity that makes visible the made-up and constructed nature of all racial identities.
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