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American Literature, Volume 79, Number 2, June 2007 DOI 10.1215/00029831-2007-004 © 2007 by Duke University Press American Literature the nationâs denial of its racial hybridity is visible and tangible in the practice of passing. This rupture in the nationâs self-understanding, in turn, ruptures the passing of time.4 To gauge this spectral history, we need the full semantic range of the term passing, which yields three interlocking connotations. Most immediately, passing names the furtive crossing of the color line, the subjectâs disappearance into the unmarked territory of whiteness. As a social practice, passing is driven by the anxious anachronisms by which the hybridization of peoples is repressed or disavowed. Passing, as language tells us, is intimately related to counterfeiting, to the art of passing bills. In narratives of passing, racial counterfeiting can be practiced only because the law that it seeks to subvert has equally illegitimate origins. Passing bills, that is, denotes not only the unlawful release of queer currency into circulation but also the legitimating operation of the law itself. One passes bills not only on the streets but also in Congress. The former is a criminal act while the other purports to name it. This doubleness, registered
American Literature – Duke University Press
Published: Jun 1, 2007
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