Raceball : African Americans and myths of America in baseball literature

• Main Author: Austen, Benjamin
• Other Authors: Coetzee, John M
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2016
• Subjects: Literary Studies
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/18419

This paper will examine moments in literature where the narratives of baseball as American myth and those involving African Americans converge, moments where authors confront (either consciously or not) the implications of both narratives within the same shared space. It is at these moments of convergence that the mythic language surrounding the game and its interaction with African Americans are thrown into dramatic relief. A myth, says Roland Barthes in his Mythologies, is a kind of "metalanguage," a narrative which refers to and talks about another narrative; it is at least twice removed from any referent which exists in reality. "What is invested in the concept," writes Barthes, "is less reality than a certain knowledge of reality." Examining this space will reveal how myths operate and continue to affect an understanding of personal and national identities, especially since this space involves the intersection of the emblematic discourse of baseball with a black presence that appears to question the very tenets of established national memory.