ACT Like You Know: African-American Autobiography and White Identity

This latest contribution to ""whiteness studies"" alternates between being provocative and intelligent and being irritating and repetitive. Sartwell's primary focus appears to be African American autobiography, but just as fascinating to him is his own status as a white scholar attempting ""both to inscribe my own racism and to elide it or even destroy it."" Thus, this fairly accessible work of criticism tries to be both ""autobiographical theory as well as theory of autobiography."" It succeeds in neither completely, but offers some cogent insights along the way about the limits of the slave-narrative genre; Malcolm X's attempt to unify and thus empower the African American self; and the ""deeply subversive"" potential of rap music, a subject white scholars seem never to tire of. But as a writer, Sartwell, a professor of humanities and philosophy at Penn State, Harrisburg, is jargon-ridden (""ejection is ejaculation"") and repetitive, often at the same time. He plays at reaching a broader-than-academic audience by offering self-congratulatory comments about identifying with ""Malcolm"" (""I'm a traitor to my race"") and having black body language (""I'd had that since junior high""). He disdains white students who want their texts ""pre-chewed,"" but then assumes statements like ""the white man is culture, the black woman nature"" are obvious and need no explanation. Ultimately, the primary texts Sartwell addresses are in no way enhanced by this explanatory text, nor will many readers be interested in Sartwell's ""obviously problematic"" relation to his subject matter. (June)