« Inverser la plaisanterie afin de secouer le joug » ou comment vicier un stéréotype “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke” or How to Twist a Stereotype

Abstract

A California professor, a painter, an author and an occasional rancher Percival Everett appears as an iconoclast who often undermines racial and political stereotypes, ethnocentric and cultural narratives while provoking the academic establishment by making fun of its various literary theories. An excellent example is the short story, “The Appropriation of Cultures,” in the collection Damned If IDo (2004). The tale is a not-so-subtle deconstruction/reconstruction of symbols deeply embedded in the culture of the American South and its ultra-conservative values. Everett endows his protagonist with his favorite tools – irony, humor, artifice – by turning the Confederate flag into a Black Power symbol and laying African American claim to the Southern anthem, “Dixie”. Thus the archetypal “trickster” figure triumphs over his bigger, stronger adversary by getting him to psychologically relinquish treasured icons of Southern white superiority and by playing on that very myth. This article shows that post-structuralism per se might be inherently linked to African Americans.