Rachel Dolezal’s Drag Race: A Critical Psychoanalytic and Cultural Analysis of Post-racial Melancholia and the Racial Passing Narrative
Humanities
LTWL 195: Senior Essay
The overturning of anti-miscegenation laws has undoubtedly created a sense of hope that mixed-race people and families could somehow be an optimistic symbol of the future. Mixed-race people have always existed, but now the genre of the tragic mulatto, the mixed-race figure who must perish, has been re-imagined in some ways yet perpetuated in others. Now, mixed-race people represent an increasingly large population that must be attended to by the scholarly field. The recent celebration and interest around mixed-race identity in art and culture reflects the current political desire to live in a post-racial society. This essay will critique the seemingly “common sense” understanding of racial identity by critiquing the authority of personal identification with a racial identity and the way that the interpolation of our identity by others limits the subject’s autonomy; furthermore, it will critique the existence of a post-racial identity by exploring the role of racial performativity and melancholia.
