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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1979 Black studies : pedagogy and revolution, a study of Afro-American studies and the liberal arts tradition through the discipline of Afro- American literature. Johnnella E. Butler University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Butler, Johnnella E., "Black studies : pedagogy and revolution, a study of Afro-American studies and the liberal arts tradition through the discipline of Afro-American literature." (1979). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 3479. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/3479 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BLACK STUDIES: PEDAGOGY AND REVOLUTION A STUDY OF AFRO-AMERICAN STUDIES AND THE LIBERAL ARTS TRADITION THROUGH THE DISCIPLINE OF AFRO-AMERICAN LITERATURE A Dissertation Presented By JOHNNELLA ELIZABETH BUTLER Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION September 1979 Education Johnnella Elizabeth Butler 1979 c All Rights Reserved 1 ii To my parents and sister who taught me to love and know my Blackness, and to Winston who is always with me. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are times when one knows intuitively that he/ she is right; however, there may be little obvious empirical evidence to support the intuitive knowledge. Then one must explore and examine the manifestations of that intuitive knowledge empirically and intellectually. My students and colleagues at Mount Providence Junior College and Towson State University, both in Baltimore, Maryland, and at Smith College in Northampton, Massa- chusetts, encouraged and supported my explorations and examinations of Afro-American sensibility. Special thanks are due to them, and also to my dissertation committee, Rudine Sims, chairperson, Bob H. Suzuki, and Sidney Kaplan who allowed me to pursue in my studies toward the doctoral degree what will no doubt continue to be my life's focus. To this work they each contributed their insight and sug- gestions yet maintained the ambience of intellectual freedom which allowed me to grow. Thanks also to George Kent, Ezekiel Mphahlele and Harold Cruse who befriended me and eagerly discussed my ideas with me, and to Paul Carter Harrison, my friend, Freire and colleague and mentor. I am indebted to Paulo length with Imamu Baraka for finding the time to speak at me to "hold on to me, and to Vincent Harding for inspiring to challenge my the plow." Michael Novak was kind enough V . ideas and in so doing pushed me forward. The Five College Black Studies Faculty Seminar series provided a forum for the critiquing of my formative ideas by the knowledgeable scholars and teachers, Bernard Bell, Edward Hill and William Strickland. Thus was initiated a dialogue neces- sary to the clarification and generation of my proposed thesis My supportive friends and colleagues, Stanley Elkins, Charles Frye, Edward Hill, Manning Marable, Andrea Rushing, Douglass Davidson, Harold Weaver, Katherine Worsley, my typist, Mrs. Eleanor Starzyk, and numerous other colleagues and members of the New England Regional Conference of the National Council of Black Studies, have tossed about my ideas with me and encouraged me in this odyssey. May we all continue with one spirit in the struggle. Johnnella E. Butler Amherst, Massachusetts May, 1979 vi . ABSTRACT Black Studies: Pedagogy and Revolution A Study of Afro-American Studies and the Liberal Arts Tradition Through the Discipline of Afro-American Literature May 1979 Johnnella E. Butler, B.A., College of Our Lady of the Elms M.A.T., Johns Hopkins University, Ed.D., University of Massachusetts Directed by: Professor Rudine Sims The Afro-American operates within the context of an Eastern/Western, African/Euro-American, Black/White sensi- bility that is simultaneously in concert with and diametrically opposed to the dominant Anglo-oriented American sensibility. The Western aspect of the warring sensibilities within the Afro-American experience maintains an oppression of the African sensibility by virtue of inherent contradictions between the sensibilities, and by virtue of colonial oppression. The duality, operating with- in the context of the dominant either/or sensibility, is exacerbated thereby maintaining a colonized state for the Afro-American This colonization is manifest in what Harold Cruse terms the "cultural flaw," the failure on the part of Afro- and Americans to analyze historical, political, social, economic situations from the perspective of culture. This do not failure is encouraged by Western perspectives that vii rscogniz© t>h6 cil.3l6ct>ic Hnd diunital intGraction bGtwGGn culture and these other aspects of human reality. It results in an ambivalence towards the self and the oppressive other and negates the possibility of effective political action emanating from what Freire calls con- scientization. In order to effect this conscientization, a de- colonization of the Afro-American must occur. A major step in this decolonization is the employment of a liberating pedagogy which frees the duality to interact simultaneously dialectically and diunitally rather than oppressively with the negative imposition of the Western sensibility. This dissertation offers a conceptual frame- work for the criticism and teaching of Afro-American literature, and proposes a liberating pedagogy developed through (1) the recognition and examination of the sensi- bility of the literature and aesthetic criticism by Afro- Americans which is replete with manifestations of the con- tradictions of the duality and of the cultural flaw, and (2) a tapping of student sensibility as it relates to the duality and the cultural flaw through dialogue. This pedagogy puts into motion a process of the raising of critical consciousness which affects comprehension and ultimately yields conscientization. The pedagogical process is demonstrated through the discussion of a college-level Afro-American literature viii course, a questionnaire revealing student affective and effective responses to the course, and the positing of nine key pedagogical principles emanating from this dis- sertation study. The Afro-American sensibility makes sense of the world (i.e., achieves comprehension) through a fusion of feeling (intuition) and intellect. Likewise, does the rest of humanity} however, the Western sensi- bility, with its emphasis on the rational, negates this fusion and encourages what T. S. Eliot and George Kent, among others, call a dissociation of sensibility. Thus, employment of the liberating pedagogy in the teaching of Afro-American literature, which evolves from a synthesis and unification of Afro-American sensibility, the theories \ of comprehension and learning of Frank Smith and Kenneth Goodman which emphasize fusion of feeling and intellect, and the proposed liberating pedagogy of Paulo Freire, pro- vides a pedagogical paradigm for similar pedagogical constructs in other disciplines both within and outside the field of Black Studies. This dissertation, in demonstrating the applicability of Freire ’s model to the American situation, Americanizes and Blackens, in a cultural sense, Freire; however, the Afro-American sensibility, with its parallels in African traditional and Taoist thought, expands of contra- Freire 's pedagogy in that it reveals interactions dictions diunitally as well as dialectically. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ^ Chapter I. BLACK STUDIES AND SENSIBILITY: IDENTITY, THE FOUNDATION FOR A PEDAGOGY 1 Introduction 1 Statement of Problem and Significance of the Study 5 Sensibility: Definition and Function in This Study 9 II. THE JAGGED GRAIN OF THE WARRING SENSIBILITIES: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 25 Spiritual sensibility and liberation: the curriculum content and pedagogy ... 26 American contextual definitions of Freire's concepts 36 Meaning of Terms 44 III. TWO WARRING IDEALS: THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF AFRO-AMERICAN REALITY 51 IV. AFRO-AMERICAN SENSIBILITY AND AFRO-AMERICAN LITERATURE: THE AMBIVALENT AESTHETIC 6 ? V. BLACK STUDIES: THE PEDAGOGY 101 VI. BLACK STUDIES: THE REVOLUTION 14? Summary of the Dissertation 1^7 Educational Implications of the Dissertation 1^9 Recommendations for Further Study 150 BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDIX I APPENDIX II X CHAPTER I BLACK STUDIES AND SENSIBILITY: IDENTITY, THE FOUNDATION FOR A PEDAGOGY We have lost something, brothers, wandering in strange lands. We have lost our ideals. —W. E. B. DuBois "Education and Work," 1930. Reprinted in The Education of Black People (New York Monthly Review Press, 1973). Introduction Today, American education is in a quandary about what an educated man or woman should be. The 1960’s move away from the highly structured liberal arts curriculum; the various attempts to reflect America’s culturally plural- istic reality and the minority groups within the dominant culture; the plethora of interdisciplinary courses, pro- grams, and departments; the confusion and all too often hostility towards the changes in attitudes towards tradi- tional courses; the appearance in the college classrooms of racial, cultural, and ethnic groups that hitherto had been known seldom to

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