Four. Practicing Critical Race Autobiography
Four. Practicing Critical Race Autobiography
This chapter addresses Du Bois's inquiry into his own exemplarity, his status as both an exemplar or “exception” and an example of “the Problem.” It offers an interpretation of Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois's 1940 autobiographical exploration of his life and the life of the “race concept,” as a counterpoint to William Connolly's account of identity and difference. Read together, Du Bois and Connolly demonstrate how identity categories shape democratic life; but Du Bois takes a further step, discerning those places in Connolly's work where race is elided and gesturing toward an alternative model of self-fashioning in a racially divided society.
Keywords: W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn, autobiography, race, William Connolly, identity, democratic life
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