Laughing through the Mask in Invisible Man
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11271997 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Megan Cole Paustian (North Central College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 69-94 |
| Publication date | 2024-12-31 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/melus/mlae041 |
| OpenAlex | W4405987850 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
What is the relationship among Blackness, whiteness, and laughter? For Ralph Ellison, race is at the heart of “the American joke”; his phrase suggests that humor is somehow fundamental to the American story. It is certainly fundamental to his novel, Invisible Man (1952). While much scholarship has addressed the novel’s humor—how it makes readers laugh—the laughter of characters has been underexplored. From start to finish, the narrative is punctuated with scenes of laughter, which crop up at every major turning point in the unnamed narrator’s journey. While he encounters laughter that is racist and belittling, he also reckons with its creative, communal forms. By tracing his journey through the trope of laughter and placing the novel in conversation with theories of Black humor, this essay reveals how the laugh operates as a strategy of defense and defiance, at once protective and resistant. Like the mask of meekness, exemplified by the narrator’s grandfather, Black laughter is a technique for navigating the tensions and threats of American life. It can cloak aggression and ease white fears, but it communicates more ambiguously than the mask, leaving observers in a state of uncertainty. The novel suggests that Black laughter flirts with power in a way that unsettles white consciousness and expands the mask’s terrain of resistance. Zeroing in on laughter itself reveals its role in day-to-day navigations of the color line while also adding nuance to more general theories of humor
Aesthetics · Art · French Literature and Poetry · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · Theatre and Performance Studies
All Joking Aside
Laughter's Truths
Black Culture and Black Consciousness
Humor in African American Discourse
Comic Relief
Walking the tightrope between racial stereotypes and respectability
Uncle Tom is Dead
"Masquerade, Magic, and Carnival in Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man
He Speaks for Whom
Mapping Black Movement, Containing Black Laughter
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |