From graphic passing to witnessing the graphic: racial identity and public self-fashioning in Incognegro

  • Pramod K Nayar Department of English, University of Hyderabad.
Keywords: Graphic novels, visual cultures, race and ethnicity, lynching

Abstract

This article studies Mat Johnson and Walter Pleece’s graphic novel about lynching, Incognegro (2008). It demonstrates how “passing” is central to the public self-fashioning, for public consumption, of the African-American, but it is a passing that enables the transgression into spaces of horrific racism, such as lynching. It then moves on to the portrayal of improvisation by the two main protagonists via the use of the erotic (Carl) and the acquisition of a dual cultural citizenship (Zane). The essay concludes with Zane’s fashioning himself as a crusader-witness by continuing to be ‘Incognegro’.

Published
2019-12-04
Section
Articles