Beyond the Color Line: A Postmodernist Reading of Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada

Bi Boli Dit Lama Berté GOURE

doi:10.30560/hssr.v3n3p1

Bi Boli Dit Lama Berté GOURE Department Of Humanities, National Polytechnic Institute Félix Houphouet-Boigny of Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30560/hssr.v3n3p1

Keywords: ethnicity, metanarrative, deconstruction, carnivalization, cynicism towards orthodoxy

Abstract

Though African American literature can be regarded by some theorists as a means of defining the racial self, a postmodernist reading of Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada delves into the intrinsic value of that literature which supersedes the traditional racial connotation ascribed to it. Reed not only castigates the metanarrative of the American cultural and democratic thought through the exposure of its inconstancies and the criticism of traditional ideas on race and ethnicity, but he also gives proof of his creative genius by operating a carnivalization of the novel genre itself.

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