Peter Pan and the White Imperial Imaginary

Abstract

To consider racial difference in terms of exclusion enables whiteness to retain its relative invisibility. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of critical whiteness studies, Mary Brewer examines J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, exploring how the amorphous status granted to whiteness in the text lends it cultural authority. She aims to uncover how race and racism structure the play and to find ways of exploiting the gaps in its representation of white identity. These gaps potentially may be exploited in production – that is, made to operate against the grain and yield explicitly oppositional performances that work toward the denaturalization of hegemonic constructions of whiteness, gender, and sexuality. Mary Brewer lectures in the Department of English and Drama at Loughborough University. Her books include Race, Sex, and Gender in Contemporary Women's Theatre (Sussex Academic Press, 1992) and Problems of Exclusions in Feminist Thought: Challenging the Boundaries of Womanhood (Sussex Academic Press, 2002).