Identity, Capitalism and Aesthetics in Invisible Man

• Thesis title in Czech: Identita, kapitalismus a estetika v Invisible Man
• Thesis title in English: Identity, Capitalism and Aesthetics in Invisible Man
• Key words: Ralph Ellison|Invisible Man|individualita|Bildungsromán|osobní vývoj|psychologie|identita|naivita|nevinnost|univerzalita|společnost|kapitalismus|oprese|rasismus|nespravedlnost|zneužívání|krutost|odcizení|hegemonie|komunita|politika|komunismus|fašismus|ideologie|subjekt|postmodernismus
• English key words: Ralph Ellison|Invisible Man|individuality|Bildungsroman|personal development|psychology|identity|naivety|innocence|universality|society|capitalism|oppression|racism|injustice|exploitation|cruelty|alienation|hegemony|community|politics|communism|fascism|ideology|subject|postmodernism
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2018/2019
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Stephan Delbos, M.F.A., Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 12.02.2019
• Date of assignment: 13.02.2019
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 26.02.2019
• Date and time of defence: 05.09.2019 08:30
• Date of electronic submission: 06.08.2019
• Date of proceeded defence: 05.09.2019
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: doc. Erik Sherman Roraback, D.Phil.

Guidelines

While conventional readings of Invisible Man primarily focus on its status of a race-critical novel, this BA thesis will discuss and develop the notion that the novel is in fact an experimental bildungsroman whose protagonist is a universal figure and that his development across the narrative can be applied to any person building their identity in today’s late capitalist society. By analyzing key moments in the novel with the help of post-structural and metamodern critical, cultural and aesthetic theories the text will arrive at an original reading that synthesizes those approaches. The first chapter will establish what precisely makes the text an experimental coming-of-age novel by introducing the genre’s conventions that started in German Romanticism with Goethe, and will then trace these features and their distinctive emergences in Invisible Man. The second chapter will then consist of an analysis of the social system as it is presented in the novel, the capitalist power structure that both requires and prevents the protagonist’s assimilation. This will be supported by texts critical of capitalist society and culture and how these theories specifically apply in the novel. The third chapter will then introduce metamodern aesthetic theory to bridge the novel into contemporary times and to prove the text was ahead of its time not only in style, but also in content, when even theories released more 60 years later are very much useful to its interpretation – especially given the fact that these texts appeared after some of the most culturally turbulent decades of human history. The ultimate goal of the thesis is thus to transcend the conventional readings to show there is more in the text than meets the eye, and it is through a spectrum of critical and cultural theory that these semantic planes will be decoded.

References

Avery, Tamlyn E. “The Crisis of Coming of Age in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and the Late Harlem Bildungsroman.” Limina, vol. 20, no. 2. (2014) 1-17. EBSCO: http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=e3c290c4-4cc0-4a00-926f-a700f68ba9f2%40sessionmgr101
Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. London: Penguin Books, 2016.

Foley, Barbara. Radical Representations: Politics and Form in U.S. Proletarian Fiction, 1929-1941. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993.

Freinacht, Hanzi. The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One. Amazon: Metamoderna ApS, 2017.

Hassan, Ihab. Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.

Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso, 1991.

Klein, Marcus. After Alienation. Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1965.

O’Meally, Robert et. al. Introduction. “New Essays on Invisible Man”. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Smith, Valerie et. al. The Meaning of Narration in Invisible Man. “New Essays on Invisible Man.” Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Van Den Akker, Robin et. al. Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect and Depth after Postmodernism. London and New York, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

Quinn, Justin et. al. Lectures on American Literature. Prague: Karolinum, 2011