Week+13+Discussion+Questions

Race 1. Appiah says about The Tempest "it is more than just colonialism in general that needs to be justified. what needs to be justified is the especial brutality of the colonization of nonwhite peoples." does literature still play a role in serving government agendas, such as wars, random civilian casualties, etc.? for the sake of "implementing democracy" or any other reason?

2. On page 286, Appiah says, “It is equally inevitable that a national literature, consisting of the folk art of the race, should be seen as the highest expression of the black nation spirit.” My question is: To what degree does the canon of literature contribute in identifying or drawing lines between different races and national literature? What role do literature anthologies, such as The Norton Anthology of American literature and Norton Anthology of African American Literature, play in this process?

3.Do you believe that members of races share certain fundamental, biologically heritable, moral and intellectual characteristics? Or do you believe that everything about race is socially constructed?

4. Could any race writer possibly be unbiased from the dominant racial ideology and make independant accounts at the risk of being viewed as a racial traitor?

5. Appiah mentioned several examples of literary works in the 18th & 19th century that praised and superiorized the white race over the other races, do you think that this is still the issue, or there is a shift in the way that literary works view race these days?

Ethnicity

1. Why does Sollors say about Ethnicity on page 304 "it is hardly an exaggeration to state that it may also bring out the worst in readers of literature." and do you agree with this assumption.

2. On page 299, Sollors says, “…ethnicity rests on boundary, not on the ‘cultural stuff that it encloses.” My question is: How can we examine the intersections of race, ethnicity and culture?

3. Is there a distinct difference between race and ethnicity? Or, Do the two have a dual meaning?

4. In the works of some writers, like //The Remains of the Day// by Kazuo Ishiguro, one can hardly find the trace and impact of ethnicity, or the author's Japanese–English novelist identity notwithstanding. Does ethnicity necessarily influence the mindset and the ideology of the non-native writers?

5. According to Sollors ethnicity used to be a synonym of race. In your opinion what accounted for their seperation to the extent that they became two different literary concept?