Representing the Overdetermination of Blackness in Roddy Doyle’s “Guess Who’s Coming for the Dinner”

With the increase in migration to the Republic of Ireland during the period of economic prosperity known as the Celtic Tiger (1990-2008), Irish writers began to represent the lives of African and Asian immigrants. Given the need for a critical analysis of racial representation and blackness, this article aims to analyze the construction of the character Ben in the short story "Guess Who's Coming for the Dinner" by Irish writer Roddy Doyle (2007). The story follows the racial anxiety experienced by Larry, a white Irishman, who welcomes Ben for dinner. In addition to Frantz Fanon's (2020) concepts of overdetermination of blackness and Negrophobia, I analyze the short story considering the notion of hospitality discussed by French philosopher Jacques Derrida (2000) and internationalist Ida Danewid (2017), reflections on empathy by historian Saidiya Hartman (1997), as well as issues of gender and sexuality based on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1985) and Keguro Macharia (2019). I argue that the short story reinforces racial tropes, contributing to anti-black solidarity. The irrationality of racial anxiety remains unchallenged by humor because the short story does not evolve from the irrationality it wants to dismantle, reaffirming Ireland’s self-image as a country that is cordial and receptive to immigrants.