Ramifications of Racial Identity in Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills

This paper attempts to bring out the racial identity in Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills. It presents the struggle for African-American identity; the idea of feminist consciousness is brought forward. There is a fight against racism. Women are found to be dominated, humiliated, and harassed by the male characters. The theme of tragic mulatto is introduced in the novel, reinforcing the importance of racial roots. Linden Hills portrays a sarcastic examination of the uncertain struggle for African-American identity in the nineteenth century and twentieth century. The relationship between personal identity and cultural history is the main theme in this novel. Naylor focuses on a community of heartless people who have become detached from their cultural past in the action of ascending the corporate ladder towards a promising monetary future. In this quest of upward mobility, the occupants of Linden Hills have even turned away from the sense of their racial identity.

Afrofuturism and Transhumanism: New Insights into the African American Identity in Octavia Butler’s Dawn

Afrofuturism offers visions about different aspects of African Americans’ future. Combining the elements of Afrofuturism and Transhumanism can allow new and vast paths to argue about African Americans’ future. Octavia Butler (1947-2006) is among those authors who wanted a better future for her people. In Dawn (1987), she presents the future of an African American protagonist – Lilith, whose identity is scientifically fictionalised and intermingled with hope for a better future. This study critically examines the traits and the role of the protagonist. It aims to investigate how Butler’s transhumanist protagonist’s portrayal is necessary to pursue the demarginalisation of African American’s future identity. In this respect, we adopt the Afrofuturistic sense of utilising knowledge and science of Ytasha Womack in discussing Afrofuturism, as well as Nick Bostrom’s transhumanistic perspective on the necessity of body enhancements to extend humanism.

Mind games: A temporal sentiment analysis of the political messages of the Internet Research Agency on Facebook and Twitter

This study examines the temporal dynamics of emotional appeals in Russian campaign messages used in the 2016 election. Communications on two giant social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, are analyzed to assess emotion in message content and targeting that may have contributed to influencing people. The current study conducts both computational and qualitative investigations of the Internet Research Agency’s (IRA) emotion-based strategies across three different dimensions of message propagation: the platforms themselves, partisan identity as targeted by the source, and social identity in politics, using African American identity as a case. We examine (1) the emotional flows along the campaign timeline, (2) emotion-based strategies of the Russian trolls that masked left- and right-leaning identities, and (3) emotion in messages projecting to or about African American identity and representation. Our findings show sentiment strategies that differ between Facebook and Twitter, with strong evidence of negative emotion targeting Black identity.

TONY MORRISON AND ALICE WALKER’S LINGUISTIC IDENTITY AND SEMANTIC TRIGGERS (IN THE CONTEXT OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN IDENTITY)

The article is devoted to linguistic identity and semantic triggers, a rather interesting aspect of the linguistic identity of Tony Morrison and Alice Walker. The main purpose of of the research of linguistic identity by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker is to analyze of semantic trigger lexical units and expressions in their ideolect. Scientific novelty of the research is determined by studying the semantic trigger lexical units. Our analysis suggests that for T. Morrison and E. Walker, semantic triggers such as blue eyes, nigger, and coon provide a “transition” to scripts that are relevant to their African-American identity. Thus, both writers are carriers of individual linguistic identities, as well as symphonic (social, ethnic, social) linguistic identities, specifically African-American linguistic identities.

The Reel and Surreal of Race in America: Michel Gondry and the African–American Identity Crisis of Dave Chappelle

In this chapter Monique Taylor analyses the concert documentary DaveChappelle’s Block Party (2005), directed by French filmmaker Michel Gondry, which depicts the organization and performances of a “block party” hosted by African-American comedian Dave Chappelle in Brooklyn, New York. Chappelle’s Block Party featured performances by some of the biggest names in hip hop, rap, and R & B music, including ?uestlove, Erykah Badu, Mos Def, the Fugees reunited with Lauryn Hill, and Kanye West. The chapter argues that Gondry plays the role of outsider-looking-in as both a participant in as well as an observer of aspects of American cultural conversations on memory, identity and language. Taylor’s chapter draws attention to Dave Chappelle’sBlock Party’s construction of a hybrid and hyper-real community through the use of strategies such as movements back and forth in time between the entertainers’ performances and the preparations leading up to the concert which highlight the production of the event, surreal visual embellishments, and prominent allusion to symbols of African–American identity. The chapter also places the film within the context of Chappelle’s own exploration of his identity and struggle to “keep it real.”