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4.35 AVERAGE
4.35 AVERAGE
As usual, Toni Morrison is unafraid of drawing attention to "unspeakable things unspoken," or subjects that others have historically dismissed and ignored. Morrison's discussion of the Africanist presence in American literature is crucial to our understanding of how what she has termed American Africanism has influenced society from then until now. Anyone interested in American literature and its complicated interactions with race absolutely must read this book.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Racial slurs
informative
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I adore Morrison's writing as a novelist, and while this endeavor into academic nonfiction didn't disappoint, it also didn't dazzle in the same way that her creative writing nearly always does. This was a straightforward examination of the presence of "Africanist" figures in some American canonical literature, written with a crisp precision that is generally impressive. In short, Morrison's argument is that the heralded writers of early American literature included the presence of Black characters as symbols used to both explore the "dark" corners of their imagination and reinforce self-perceived and self-created characteristics of white identity. There are a number of brilliant sentences woven throughout, shining so brightly that they can make you blink at the cutting ways they're still relevant today. However, the scope is more micro than macro for the most part, and Morrison is primarily concerned with the texts at hand. I'd imagine that, had I read the material she was critiquing and exposing, I'd have enjoyed this book a good deal more.
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Worthwhile for it's lengthy criticism of Hemingway and the Africanist presence in American literature.
What I found so compelling was how well Morrison articulates the idea of experiences and specific moments only being played out or felt by African Americans – what does that do to the people forced and written into these moments over and over? But Morrison also asks a question that is ignored so often (and I had not considered before) – what happens to the people scripted out of those roles? What disconnect does this create, not only from another people, but from something within themselves?
“What I propose here is to examine the impact of notions of racial hierarchy, racial exclusion, and racial vulnerability on nonblacks who held, resisted, explored, or altered those notions…equally valuable is a serious intellectual effort to see what racial ideology does to the mind, imagination, and behavior of masters.” (11)
This idea reminded me of the moment in Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, when Mr. Raymond explains to Scout and Dill how he lies to the town by pretending he is an alcoholic so that he can be left alone to live his life with the ‘others.’ One never thinks of whites as disenfranchised and I’m obviously not suggesting this is what Morrison is arguing, but because Mr. Raymond is a white man he is written out of possibilities as well. He must explain his actions as out of the scope of the ‘ordinary’ (non-alcoholic) white member of society: “‘It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason…folks can say Dolphus Raymond’s in the clutches of whiskey – that’s why he won’t change his ways. He can’t help himself, that’s why he lives the way he does.’” Not only does this paradoxically restrict whites, but it reinforces the idea that they are somehow separate and thus above the ‘other;’ if one can’t experience the raw emotions of a savage then one has evolved beyond him.
I wanted to include the following quote as well because I believe it so eloquently and lucidly states Morrison’s purpose of Playing in the Dark:
“Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny.” (52)
Morrison’s text illustrates the power of language – not only to reveal and liberate but to distort and imprison: “in matters of race, silence and evasion have historically ruled literary discourse. Evasion has fostered another, substitute language in which the issues are encoded, foreclosing open debate” (9). Morrison also poetically and grimly describes how enforcing such ‘racelessness’ is a transgression as well, on every side:
“The act of enforcing racelessness in literary discourse is itself a racial act. Pouring rhetorical acid on the fingers of a black hand may indeed destroy the prints, but not the hand. Besides, what happens in that violent, self-serving act of erasure on the hands, the fingers, the fingerprints of the one who does the pouring? Do they remain acid-free? The literature itself suggests otherwise.” (46)
Morrison spends some time analyzing the construction of America and her literature, still deep-rooted in and feeding off the Old World:
“If the New World fed dreams, what was the Old World reality that whetted the appetite for them? And how did that reality caress and grip the shaping of a new one? …For a people who made much of their ‘newness’ – their potential, freedom, and innocence – it is striking how dour, how troubled, how frightened and haunted our early and founding literature truly is.” (34-35)
I thought the creation of a literature rooted in such “transactions” between the Old World and its developing new one might be a parallel to the creation of the ‘Africanist’ presence. What compelled the authors, what was within them that gave birth to such dark presences manifested only by their African Americans?
“What I propose here is to examine the impact of notions of racial hierarchy, racial exclusion, and racial vulnerability on nonblacks who held, resisted, explored, or altered those notions…equally valuable is a serious intellectual effort to see what racial ideology does to the mind, imagination, and behavior of masters.” (11)
This idea reminded me of the moment in Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, when Mr. Raymond explains to Scout and Dill how he lies to the town by pretending he is an alcoholic so that he can be left alone to live his life with the ‘others.’ One never thinks of whites as disenfranchised and I’m obviously not suggesting this is what Morrison is arguing, but because Mr. Raymond is a white man he is written out of possibilities as well. He must explain his actions as out of the scope of the ‘ordinary’ (non-alcoholic) white member of society: “‘It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason…folks can say Dolphus Raymond’s in the clutches of whiskey – that’s why he won’t change his ways. He can’t help himself, that’s why he lives the way he does.’” Not only does this paradoxically restrict whites, but it reinforces the idea that they are somehow separate and thus above the ‘other;’ if one can’t experience the raw emotions of a savage then one has evolved beyond him.
I wanted to include the following quote as well because I believe it so eloquently and lucidly states Morrison’s purpose of Playing in the Dark:
“Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny.” (52)
Morrison’s text illustrates the power of language – not only to reveal and liberate but to distort and imprison: “in matters of race, silence and evasion have historically ruled literary discourse. Evasion has fostered another, substitute language in which the issues are encoded, foreclosing open debate” (9). Morrison also poetically and grimly describes how enforcing such ‘racelessness’ is a transgression as well, on every side:
“The act of enforcing racelessness in literary discourse is itself a racial act. Pouring rhetorical acid on the fingers of a black hand may indeed destroy the prints, but not the hand. Besides, what happens in that violent, self-serving act of erasure on the hands, the fingers, the fingerprints of the one who does the pouring? Do they remain acid-free? The literature itself suggests otherwise.” (46)
Morrison spends some time analyzing the construction of America and her literature, still deep-rooted in and feeding off the Old World:
“If the New World fed dreams, what was the Old World reality that whetted the appetite for them? And how did that reality caress and grip the shaping of a new one? …For a people who made much of their ‘newness’ – their potential, freedom, and innocence – it is striking how dour, how troubled, how frightened and haunted our early and founding literature truly is.” (34-35)
I thought the creation of a literature rooted in such “transactions” between the Old World and its developing new one might be a parallel to the creation of the ‘Africanist’ presence. What compelled the authors, what was within them that gave birth to such dark presences manifested only by their African Americans?