¹ While I wish to avoid the constricting term “ethnic literature,” I do not want to deny ethnic content, as I believe is the case with the reductionist view presented in Sollor, Werner's Beyond Ethnicity (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar. Sollor”s study is helpful in identifying and reconstructing common myths as unifiers in American literature from the Puritans to Malcom X. However, Sollors admits in his introduction that his study emphasizes “the whole balloon.” I want to suggest in this study that there exists powerful decentralizing tendencies in American ethnicity, but at the same time, these tendencies become too unstable to support the writer's imagination.

² For two discussions on this terminology see Greeley, Andrew, Ethnicity in the United States (New York, 1974)Google Scholar and Apter, David, The Politics of Modernisation (Chicago, 1965), 314Google Scholar. Greeley, , as a “new ethnic,”Google Scholar believes that the renewal of ethnic consciousness is entirely substantive, and consequently he sees no difference between the processes of ethnogenesis and ethnicization. Apter's view is closer to the one in this paper when he suggests that the idea of being a member of an ethnic group is different from the ideology of having to act on the idea.

³ Eco, Umberto, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington, Indiana, 1976), see ch. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ O'Hara, Frank, Standing Still and Walking in New York (San Francisco, 1975), 82.Google Scholar

⁵ Levine, Lawrence W., Black Culture and Black Consciousness (Oxford, 1977), 1 of Preface.Google Scholar

⁶ Jones, Leroi, Home: Social Essays (New York, 1966), 165.Google Scholar

⁷ Corso, Gregory, Gasoline (San Francisco, 1958), 95.Google Scholar

⁸ Kerouac, Jack, Maggie Cassidy (New York, 1959), 43.Google Scholar

⁹ Ginsberg, Allen, Collected Poems, 1947–1980 (New York, 1984), 209–25.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Ginsberg, Allen, Collected Poems, 1947–1980 (New York, 1984), 216.Google Scholar

¹¹ Sollors, Werner, Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones: The Quest for a Populist Modernism (New York, 1978), 24.Google Scholar

¹² Huggins, Nathan, Harlem Renaissance (New York, 1971), 84–93.Google Scholar

¹³ Baraka, Amiri, Selected Poems (New York, 1979), 13.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Baraka, Amiri, The Autobiography of Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka (New York, 1984), 128.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Baraka, Amiri, Selected Poems (New York, 1979), 123.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Friere, Paolo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York, 1983), 76.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Reed, Ishmael, Speaking for Ourselves: American Ethnic Writing (Dallas, Texas, 1975), 202.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Baraka, Amiri, The Autobiography of Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka (New York, 1984), 202.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Beaulieu, Victor-Levy, Jack Kerouac: A. Chicken-Essay (Toronto, 1975), 34.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ginsberg, Allen, Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties (New York, 1977), 34.Google Scholar

²¹ Gifford, Barry & Lee, Lawrence, Jack's Book: An Oral History of Jack Kerouac (New York, 1978), 15.Google Scholar

²² Kerouac, Jack, Satori in Paris (New York, 1966), 77.Google Scholar

²³ Ginsberg, Allen, Collected Poems, 348.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ginsberg, , 527.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ginsberg, , 209.Google Scholar

²⁶ Levy-Beaulieu, Victor, Jack Kerouac: A Chicken-Essay, 98.Google Scholar

²⁷ Corso, Gregory, Gasoline, 28.Google Scholar

²⁸ Baraka, Amiri, The Autobiography of Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka, 323.Google Scholar

²⁹ Baraka, Amiri, Selected Poems, 216.Google Scholar

³⁰ Baraka, , 106.Google Scholar

³¹ Derrida, Jacques, Writing and Difference, (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

³² Kerouac, Jack, The Subterraneans (New York, 1971), 39–40.Google Scholar

³³ Baraka, , Selected Poems, 298.Google Scholar