Issue:

№5 2018

УДК / UDK: 82(092)
DOI:

10.22455/2541-7894-2018-5-116-131

Author: Nicole Lindenberg
About the author:

Nicole Lindenberg (lecturer at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany)

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Abstract:

This article analyzes the episode “Motion Picture” in Ralph Ellison’s unfinished novel Three Days Before the Shooting…, which presents the transformation of the protagonist Bliss into the race-baiting ‘white’ Senator Adam Sunraider. In order to understand the significance of the episode it has to be read in the context of Ellison’s nonfiction writing, his numerous unpublished notes on Bliss as Mr. Movie man and the episode itself. Moreover, in his notes, Ellison explicitly interrelates the micro-level of his protagonist’s trajectory with the macro-level of American history, creating an even broader context for the story. In the process of changing from a prospective Reverend to a politician, the hero is influenced decisively by the cinema, a phase in his life that has been largely overlooked in the novel’s reception. This article attempts to close this gap by focusing on the protagonist’s metamorphosis in the cultural field. In addition, it explores the driving force behind this transformation that ensures Bliss’s success both in the field of cultural production and in the political field. The immense power that the illusionary art of the movie exerts upon the black community can be read as a soft, non-physical power or, what with Pierre Bourdieu we may call symbolic violence. The article highlights that Bliss exploits the community by using the symbolic violence of the movie as well as his own charismatic violence.

Keywords: Ralph Ellison, Second Novel, Three Days Before the Shooting..., Notes, Movie, Pierre Bourdieu, Symbolic Violence
References:

[Bourdieu 2001] – Bourdieu, Pierre. Masculine Domination, transl. Richard Nice. Oxford: Polity, 2001.

[Bourdieu 2000] – Bourdieu, Pierre. Pascalian Meditations, transl. Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2000.

[Callahan, Bradley 2010] – Callahan, John, Bradley, Adam. “General Introduction.” In Ellison, Ralph. Three Days Before the Shooting…, eds. John F. Callahan and Adam Bradley. New York: Random House, 2010: XV-XXIX.

[Ellison 2003] – Ellison, Ralph. The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison (1995), ed. John F. Callahan. New York: Modern Library, 2003.

[Ellison 2010] – Ellison, Ralph. Three Days Before the Shooting…: The Unfinished Second Novel, ed. by John Callahan and Adam Bradley. New York: Random House, 2010.

[Sundquist 2016] – Sundquist, Eric. “Ralph Ellison in His Labyrinth.” In The New Territory: Ralph Ellison and the Twenty-First Century, eds. Marc Connor and Lucas Morel. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2016: 117-41.