Becoming Rasta: Recentering White Masculinity in the Era of Transnationalism

Abstract

In a 1995 speech President CUnton asked, When President ofMexico comes here in a few days and we talk about drug problems, are we talking about domestic problems or foreign prob- lems? (. . J Ifwe talk about NAFTA and trade, is it their foreign policies or our domestic economies? (. . J When you think about world and way we live in it, you readily see that foreign-domestic distinction be- gins evaporate in so many profound ways. And we must learn speak about it in different ways. (733) During Clinton's presidency boundaries of United States have grown increasingly permeable, transnational capital has rapidly ex- panded, and importance ofthe United States in world markethas declined. Coinciding with these poUtical and economic shifts is occurrence of US narratives, generaUy by and about white men, that recenter position ofthe white male citizen-subject, as weU as that of nation. At a time when their futures seem uncertain, white North American writers have begun construct narratives in which Uteral or metaphoric father-son relationships are central, and white patriarchal famuy history is reconstructed incorporate an impure racial genealogy that constructs white men as cultural hybrids. Popular US narratives, such as Richard DooUng's novel White Man's Grave (1994), RusseU Banks's novel Rule ofthe Bone (1995), director John Sayles's film Lone Star (1996), and even director Barry Sonnenfeld's summer blockbuster Men in Black (1997), all use race color-in white lineage and ensure a pivotal role for white male subjects in global future. Bolstering nuclear famuy through incorporation of racial, cultural, and/or national difference, these narratives position white male US citizen- subject as a borderland being, so that his central importance, both in other nations and within United States, is reaffirmed. As opposed angrywhite male narratives, which cast white male subject as a victim ofidentity poUtics, these narratives appropriate Uberai discourse ofthe borderlands andthus customarily appear sup- portive ofprogressive social movements. In The Sadomasochist in Closet, David Savran convincingly argues that angry white male phenomenon, exemplified by Timothy McVeigh and Patriot Move- ment, can be seen as an attempt by white men to recoup perceived losses of past twenty years (128). While these attempts take new guises in nineties, Savran argues that white male anxieties began surface in seventies in response feminist movement, civil rights movement, lesbian and gay rights activism, perceived loss of Vietnam, and, most importantly, the end ofthe post-World War II econ- omic boom and a resultant and steady decUne in income of white