Passing as a Jew in Roth's American Pastoral and The Human Stain

Abstract

The present article seeks to explore the ways in which Jewish identity is discursively deployed in two novels by Philip Roth: American Pastoral (1997) and mainly The Human Stain (2000). Calling upon a framework of philosophical approaches to identity structured around the key terms of otherness, performativity and ethics, culled from theoretical writings by Judith Butler, Paul Ricœur and Emmanuel Lévinas, the article analyzes how writing about Jews in America functions as a political act, initially perhaps against the author's will, and engages the terms of "majority" and "minority."

Keywords

• Philip Roth
• American Pastoral
• Human Stain