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A review by blackoxford
Black Alice by John Sladek, Thom Demijohn, Thomas M. Disch
3.0
The Meaning of Colour
This is a strange, hastily written, ill-edited rant against American racism. Its central trope is a pill that changes a white girl’s skin from white to dark almost instantly. Its context is the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, an epoch most had thought an irreversible watershed until the emergence of Donald Trump. Alas, there is no such thing as permanent progress, at least not in terms of American race relations. So despite its literary deficiencies, Black Alice still has merit - as an incitement to political action if nothing else
As far as I can make out, Disch is exploring motives, particularly motives about racial attitude. He starts the exploration sedately: Is the driving ambition to have a respectable funeral and to be buried permanently in a pleasant spot a neurosis or a reasonably modest goal in life? That depends, of course, on one’s perspective. For someone with a ‘future’, such a focus is merely morbid. But for someone whose future promises to be identical to a disappointing and painful past, it could be quite rational. At that point the moral calculus becomes less clear.
So Black Alice is about what makes things rational, and by inference, irrational. It might seem obvious that rationality is that which furthers one’s ultimate interests, whatever those interests might be - money, position, reputation, survival, or a peaceful grave in perpetuity. But actions to promote those interests are not simply instrumental; they also are valuable, or not, relative to each other. One’s interests therefore cannot be neatly divided into ends and means. Making these visible, even to oneself, is the foundation of justice, if justice is to be at all rational.
The difficulty is that perfectly rational behaviour, like a child who is being emotionally abused talking things out with an imaginary friend, can look odd, even deranged. What is tagged as irrational can’t be distinguished from what is unperceived rationality. But substantial parts of our civilisation are based on a rejection of this possible confusion of apparently unreasonable but actually misunderstood reason. The legal system would crumble if it were recognised as a principle, for example. But then again most marital arguments could be avoided if it were accepted by both parties. And, more generally, the motivations for rather horrid attitudes, like racially motivated hatred, could be seen clearly as banal by those who have them as well as by everyone else.
I’m guessing that there is at least one human institution which has no problem integrating ends and means, and through which motivations are made entirely visible: the brothel. And not just because of the uninhibited sex. Disch’s 11 year old victim-protagonist, kidnapped and held captive in one, treats it with the reason inherent in such a place. She intuitively accepts the rational efforts, strange as they may be, of the people around her. She knows she doesn’t understand. So she uses conversation with her imaginary friend to get to the bottom of things - not just the motivations of the kidnappers but of her own family as well.
Colour has a great deal to do with making motivations visible. Colour, of course, implies light. But light isn’t colour; it only allows colour. We become, we are, a colour in the light. White is an absence of colour; but so is black because even in the light, colour can’t be distinguished within it. In Black Alice, only people of colour are people at all. Those without colour are monsters, even if they cover themselves in the coloured silk of the Klan. They have no colour because they have no motivation that can stand the light. Their reasons are irrational; they are not just inhumane, they are inhuman.
This is a strange, hastily written, ill-edited rant against American racism. Its central trope is a pill that changes a white girl’s skin from white to dark almost instantly. Its context is the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, an epoch most had thought an irreversible watershed until the emergence of Donald Trump. Alas, there is no such thing as permanent progress, at least not in terms of American race relations. So despite its literary deficiencies, Black Alice still has merit - as an incitement to political action if nothing else
As far as I can make out, Disch is exploring motives, particularly motives about racial attitude. He starts the exploration sedately: Is the driving ambition to have a respectable funeral and to be buried permanently in a pleasant spot a neurosis or a reasonably modest goal in life? That depends, of course, on one’s perspective. For someone with a ‘future’, such a focus is merely morbid. But for someone whose future promises to be identical to a disappointing and painful past, it could be quite rational. At that point the moral calculus becomes less clear.
So Black Alice is about what makes things rational, and by inference, irrational. It might seem obvious that rationality is that which furthers one’s ultimate interests, whatever those interests might be - money, position, reputation, survival, or a peaceful grave in perpetuity. But actions to promote those interests are not simply instrumental; they also are valuable, or not, relative to each other. One’s interests therefore cannot be neatly divided into ends and means. Making these visible, even to oneself, is the foundation of justice, if justice is to be at all rational.
The difficulty is that perfectly rational behaviour, like a child who is being emotionally abused talking things out with an imaginary friend, can look odd, even deranged. What is tagged as irrational can’t be distinguished from what is unperceived rationality. But substantial parts of our civilisation are based on a rejection of this possible confusion of apparently unreasonable but actually misunderstood reason. The legal system would crumble if it were recognised as a principle, for example. But then again most marital arguments could be avoided if it were accepted by both parties. And, more generally, the motivations for rather horrid attitudes, like racially motivated hatred, could be seen clearly as banal by those who have them as well as by everyone else.
I’m guessing that there is at least one human institution which has no problem integrating ends and means, and through which motivations are made entirely visible: the brothel. And not just because of the uninhibited sex. Disch’s 11 year old victim-protagonist, kidnapped and held captive in one, treats it with the reason inherent in such a place. She intuitively accepts the rational efforts, strange as they may be, of the people around her. She knows she doesn’t understand. So she uses conversation with her imaginary friend to get to the bottom of things - not just the motivations of the kidnappers but of her own family as well.
Colour has a great deal to do with making motivations visible. Colour, of course, implies light. But light isn’t colour; it only allows colour. We become, we are, a colour in the light. White is an absence of colour; but so is black because even in the light, colour can’t be distinguished within it. In Black Alice, only people of colour are people at all. Those without colour are monsters, even if they cover themselves in the coloured silk of the Klan. They have no colour because they have no motivation that can stand the light. Their reasons are irrational; they are not just inhumane, they are inhuman.