Postethnicity and Ethnic Performance in Rebecca Walker’s “Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self”

Abstract

Mixed-race autobiographies often focus on the stories of individuals who feel at odds with the multicultural framework of racial representation based on color and cultural purity, and rather advocate hybridity as a cultural choice, thus undermining any notion of alleged racial authenticity. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, this article investigates Rebecca Walker’s Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, bringing together the concept of performative ethnicity, mixed-race claims, and the novel approach suggested by new cosmopolitanism. In particular, Walker’s memoir is analyzed for the insights it offers into a cosmopolitan rethinking of identity as based on performativity and hybridity, which provide an effective alternative to multicultural categories. Such a shift rethinks notions of identity that fully abandon essentialism and encourage misrepresented subjects to seek support beyond national (and cultural) boundaries. Finally, it tries to establish to what extent the author succeeds in conveying her post-identity message in the memoir.