Jinny Huh. The Arresting Eye: Race and the Anxiety of Detection

The Arresting Eye is a varied interdisciplinary and comparative work that examines a wide set of cultural productions—from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day—in which the act of racial passing is intrinsically linked to the anxiety of detection, a type of narrative that the author generically defines as "race detection" (6). The discernment or acknowledgment of race, but also its misperception, is a process that creates anxiety both on the part of the detected and the detector, or detective. Huh's argument consists in applying the concept of ratiocinative detection introduced by Edgar Allan Poe and developed by Arthur Conan Doyle to a postcolonial reading of texts that question one's ability and authority to detect and expose a person's race. By relating detective fiction and passing narratives, The Arresting Eye aims to explore how "race, visible or invisible, provokes unease" (4).