Socio-Cultural Interaction(s) and Its Channel towards ‘Race Memory’ through Disruption of Ethics and Society Or Horkheimer, Foucault and Habermas in Saving/s?: A Critical Acumen through Select American Young Adult Fiction

Abstract

African-American History is a history of continuous struggle and strife as its witnessing of more negative incidents rather than positive ones beginning with the Atlantic Slave Trade and gradually towards Jim Crow Laws, lynching and racial violence, Plessy v. Ferguson, unnecessary murders of the African-Americans; to name a few. These negative incidents have made generations of the African-Americans as victims of a traumatized ‘Race Memory’ which haunt them all the while which can be explained through Avery Gordon’s ‘Haunting and Memory’ theory. However, in this case counter narrative strategic mood and mode along with Max Horkheimer’s ‘Critical Theory’ and ‘Instrumental Reasoning’ and Foucauldian Power-Knowledge-Discourse and Counter-Discourse analyses will be ideal platforms for African-Americans’ identity (re)framing. Finally, there will be Jurgen Habermas’ ‘Communicative Action Theory’ (‘Communicative Rationality’) as a possible solution meted out for socio-cultural and ethical interaction(s) between the African Americans and the authoritative main stream White society on American soil through The Hate U Give, Ghost Boys, Dear Martin and All American Boys.