28.472, Diss: Will The 'Real' Author Please Stand Up: The Performance of Authenticity by Mohsin Hamid, Junot Diaz, and Madeleine Thien

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-472. Mon Jan 23 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.472, Diss: Will The 'Real' Author Please Stand Up: The Performance of Authenticity by Mohsin Hamid, Junot Diaz, and Madeleine Thien

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Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2017 16:40:06
From: Sreedhevi Iyer [sreedhevi at hotmail.com]
Subject: Will The 'Real' Author Please Stand Up: The Performance of Authenticity by Mohsin Hamid, Junot Diaz, and Madeleine Thien

 
Institution: City University of Hong Kong 
Program: Department of English 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2016 

Author: Sreedhevi Iyer

Dissertation Title: Will The 'Real' Author Please Stand Up: The Performance of
Authenticity by Mohsin Hamid, Junot Diaz, and Madeleine
Thien 

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis
                     Ling & Literature
                     Sociolinguistics


Dissertation Director(s):
Brian W. King
Rodney H. Jones
Aditi Bhatia

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation examines how authors of color present themselves within
literary discourse. The author of color occupies a paradoxical position in
contemporary literary discourse, which makes the presentation of a ‘real’ self
problematic. Well-known, established authors such as Mohsin Hamid, Junot Diaz
and Madeleine Thien construct an ‘authentic’ public persona related to their
literary work as a means of maintaining their market viability in the
publishing world. Each of them perform this role by expressing views related
to their literary work when presenting themselves to the public, through
interviews, literary festivals, and social media interactions. While their
visibility as authors of color lends credibility to their comments on issues
relevant to their work, it also limits such authors’ voices to those very
issues, due to the contemporary nature of identity politics. This discursively
reduces them to spokespeople of their particularity. 

Using ethnographic data obtained from semi-structured interviews, literary
festivals, and their social media presence, I argue from a sociolinguistic
perspective that the authors in these case studies negotiate their
‘authenticity’ within literary discourse by indexing social identities that
fulfill existing metapragmatic stereotypes surrounding the ‘real’ author. 

Overall, I posit that these authors construct different characterological
figures in their public persona as a way to negotiate the paradoxical
requirements surrounding authenticity. This is a necessary strategy that
increases their credibility and influence within popular cultural
conversation.




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