Double Consciousness in African-American Literature: The Norton Anthology of African- American

Double Consciousness in African-American Literature

The Norton Anthology of African- American

 

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife–this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

Is “the Negro only an American and nothing else” with “no values and culture to guard and protect”? (Nathan and Moynihan, 1964) If he is not, what are the sources of black American culture and character? To what degree are they a product of Africa? Of American racism? Of poverty or economic marginality? Of the will to be black? The notion that black Americans have no culture or that black culture is merely a colorful variety of the culture of poverty is refuted by recent scholarship in Afro-American studies (Valentine, 1968). Although culture and society are closely related, the fallacious assumption of a direct correlation between them is the source of much confusion about the relationship of black

Thus, recent publication The Norton Anthology of African- American suggests that African-Americans should take the moment seriously. Financial investments by two major academic publishers, Oxford University Press and W. W. Norton, will shape the teaching of Southern literature for years to come–at least insofar as anthologies can, and that is not negligible–and the report of the Population Reference Bureau suggests that the classroom audience for these books will burgeon with the sons and daughters of African-American Southerners returning after a few generations to native ground.

A most striking feature of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature is the absence of any unique perspective on African American literature that would distinguish their theoretical framework from those of mainstream anthologies. The editors suggest that there is more interrelatedness among the folk, popular, and literary threads of African American traditions than of mainstream traditions, but they do not go so far as to reflect a resultant, distinct theoretical perspective on these forms. It is, furthermore, puzzling that current anthologies seem less theoretically expansive than some earlier ones.

In The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, folklore is situated as a primitive precursor to written genres, Hill’s anthology still reveals a perspective that is firmly rooted in the conventional notions about what literature is and how it should be read, interpreted, and critiqued. The blues lie at the boundary of African culture, where residual African elements pass over into American. They are always in danger of crossing the boundary but are held back by their musical traditions and mode of singing. Where, however, the song becomes a poem which is no longer sung, but written and printed, Africa is hardly a memory.

Several reasons for the omission of folkloristic references and theoretical discourse from African American literary criticism are rather obvious. Criticism of African American texts grows out of an academic tradition that disparages “folk” discourse, and has mirrored many of the perspectives of that legacy. As noted by countless folklorists, literary critics have seldom considered the materials of folklore comparable to literature–or the discipline of folkloristics on a par with their own. These attitudes are undoubtedly rooted in an elitist, Darwinistic perspective that regards expressive forms sanctioned by middle and upper socioeconomic classes as superior, and those associated with lower socioeconomic classes inferior. In general, it is this tendentious viewpoint that has posed such problems for the discipline of folklore within the American academy.

The network of understandings that defines black American culture and informs black American consciousness has evolved from the unique pattern of experiences of black people in North America. These experiences–of Africa, the transatlantic or Middle Passage, slavery, Southern plantation tradition, emancipation, Reconstruction, post-Reconstruction, Northern migration, urbanization, and racism–have produced a residue of shared memories and frames of reference for black Americans. Although there is no valid scientific evidence of a biological relationship between culture and race, the perception of physical differences by the white majority served as the principal basis for the social exclusion and subjugation of African captives and Afro-Americans.

Because Afro-Americans are neither biologically homogeneous nor necessarily identifiable by racial features in individual cases as having African ancestry, they are not completely deprived of social mobility and do not suffer total isolation in ghetto communities. Yet the systematic barriers of exclusion and discrimination based on perceivable and socially defined racial differences are more important in the distinctive history of the black American experience than slavery, emancipation, and the long march to the urban North.

In Double-Consciousness/Double Bind (Mason, 1999) the field of African American literary discourse is represented as always connected in some significant fashion to European modes of thought, such that constructing a purely culturally specific positioning for African American literature is always at the very least difficult, if not impossible.

For instance, Du Bois’s articulation of double-consciousness is far less warping and tortured than it is in some other interpretations. Rather, Souls of Black Folk richly and finally affirmatively “foregrounds the very complex system of interrelationships that makes up [its] (con)textual field.” Du Bois affirms the value of the connection between things European and things African, even as he recognizes the potential dangers of such connectedness. Similarly, Negritude, though aiming at a certain level of cultural purity in poetic experience, also “is dominated by the already established Western . . . interpretation of nature, the world, and beings in their totality.”

Although Wideman (1994) recently spoke on the insufficiency of the concept, one could say he experienced a bifurcation of personalities, corresponding to W. E. B. Du Bois’ conception of a ‘double consciousness’: “One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”(Du Bois, 1997) At the university, his demeanour of brilliant student, apt athlete and tall, handsome and courteous young man earned him the epithet ‘the amazing John Wideman’. At home, he did his best to prove he was still ‘Spanky Wideman’, ghetto boy, sly ‘hoopsman’ and infatuating lady-killer, who had experienced some “brushes with the law.”(Wideman, 1994).

The importance of folklore to black literature is widely acknowledged and documented. Trudier Harris states, in fact, that “African-American folklore is arguably the basis for most African-American literature” (cited in Kreyling, 1998). While critics have often discussed the significance of folklore in works by black writers, however, they have consistently resisted the inclusion of folklore scholarship in their discussions, often refusing acknowledgment of a discipline that has been well-established since the beginning of the twentieth century (Prahlad, 1999).

Of course, this attitude is based upon antiquated ideas of who the “folk” are. Often it does not occur to literary critics that “folklore infuses all levels of society” (Hemenway 128); that everyone is the folk, even the critics themselves; and that intellectual snobbery toward groups with less formal education is a part of the superstitions, folk beliefs, and mythology of the upper class.

Thus, while critics have had to concede that folklore forms the core of African American literature, it has been a problematic acquiescence. The uneasiness of this acknowledgment is revealed in the absence of folkloristic citations by literary scholars, even those writing about folklore in literature (e.g., Blake, de Weever, and Gray, 1980). At times this omission strikes the reader as ignorance resulting from less than rigorous standards of scholarship. Just as frequently, however, the exclusion of folkloristic research seems to be a deliberate choice. Henry Louis Gates, for example, constructs in his The Signifying Monkey an entire theoretical paradigm around speech behavior studied primarily by folklorists, but nowhere in his entire book does he acknowledge this field. He describes Roger Abrahams, known to those of us in the field of folkloristics and self-described as a folklorist, as “a well-known and highly regarded literary critic, linguist, and anthropologist” (Gates, 1997). Nor do most other critics acknowledge that a field of folklore scholarship exists.

In sum, we argue that an anthology compiled from this new perspective would, first of all, not be titled The Norton African American Literature. Second, it would not contain empty texts of folklore genres, lumped together and discussed in brief introductory comments. Rather, it would contain ethnographic excerpts of particular performances by specific individuals, involving descriptions and analysis of performative dynamics occurring at a specific moment. By such contextual organization, and through more elaborate explanations, readers would come to understand more fully how folklore is lived and what the relationship of texts might be to the dynamics of interpersonal communication. Editors would indicate that meanings cannot be gained from texts alone, that folklore always involves elements of innovation and tradition, and would explain how folklore is related to works of literature on more than a textual level. Finally, it would be made abundantly clear that folklore is a contemporary, dynamic phenomenon, integral to every person’s life, not a holdover from some earlier, primitive stage of development.

 

References

Andrews, W., Gwin, M., Harris, T. and Hobson, F. (1997) (eds) The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997.

 

Barnes, Daniel R. “Toward the Establishment of Principles for the Study of Folklore and Literature.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 43 (1979): 5-16.

 

Blake, Susan L. “Folklore and Community in Song of Solomon.” MELUS 7.3 (1980): 77-82.

 

Dance, Daryl C. Long Gone: The Mecklenberg Six & The Theme of Escape in Black Folklore. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1987.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1997) The Souls Of Black Folk. In: The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 615.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Nellie Y. McKay, eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: Norton, 1997.

Glazer, N. and Moynihan, D. (1964) Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City ( Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1964), p. 53.

Hemenway, Robert. “Are You a Flying Lark or a Setting Dove?” Fisher and Stepto 122-52.

 

Kreyling, M. (1998) A Book Review on The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology. The Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 51.

 

Mason, T. (1999) Double Consciousness/Double Bind: Theoretical Issues in Twentieth Century Black Literature. African American Review, Vol. 33.

 

Prahlad, A. (1999) Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: Folklore, Folkloristics, and African American Literary Criticism. African American Review, Vol. 33.

Valentine, C. (1968) Culture and Poverty: Critique and CounterProposals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wideman, J.E. (1994) Fatheralong. London: Picador, 1996. 42.)

 

 

 

 

 

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