ABSTRACT
This chapter explores The Human Stain in the light of the new trajectory in the recent studies on identity, mainly race/ethnicity. ‘Identity’ with its troubled history has always been a central focus of literary debate. Introduced by the works of Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead, identity has evolved and grown central to current psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and cultural materialist criticism in areas ranging from postcolonial and ethnic studies to feminism and queer theory. Racism, in its many varieties, including black racism of America, that has its roots in the country’s long history of slavery, is part of such dominant culture. The concept of identity has a long tradition in western thought, but the notion of an identity that can be fashioned by each and every individual is a relatively new phenomenon.
