BEING AND OTHERNESS: CONCEPTUALIZING EMBODIMENT IN AFRICANA EXISTENTIALIST DISCOURSE (THE BLUEST EYE, THE FIRE NEXT TIME, AND BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS)

Jonathan J. Brownlee

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August 2020

Committee:

Sue Carter Wood, Advisor

Nermis Susana Mieses Graduate Faculty Representative

Raymond A. Craig

Lee Nickoson © 2020

Jonathan J. Brownlee

All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT

Sue Carter Wood, Advisor

This dissertation explores the writings of three authors associated with the philosophical

and literary approach known as Africana existentialism (AE). There are two main exigencies which this study addresses: 1) What insights can rhetoric and writing scholars obtain from analyzing the work(s) of Africana existentialism regarding the concept of embodiment? 2) How might these insights impact our conceptual understanding of embodied practice and our ability to teach in a diverse classroom setting? Through a hermeneutic analysis of three AE works, The

Bluest Eye, The Fire Next Time, and Black Skin, White Masks, three key features of black embodiment were found. The three key features of black embodiment are as follows: 1) There is a context in which blackness exists as opposition or in contrast to the theory and glorification of whiteness. 2) Cultural products, narratives, and symbols put forth by Western mass culture can negatively impact many people who exist in/as black bodies. These products, symbols, and narratives can have an onerous psychological impact on black people. 3) There is an importance and irreducibility to black experiential facticity—a phenomenological knowledge gained from being in the world as a black body—and claims about experiential facticity go beyond typical academic arguments and discussions about the constructed nature of blackness. This emphasis on experiential facticity uncovers issues of divergent epistemologies and ideologies, and such divergences may spring from cultural positionality. My research sets forth three possible paths which might alleviate some of the problems that arise from divergent epistemologies and ideologies. First, it is extremely important for teachers to check their own ideological blind spots iv for beliefs and approaches which may stifle views which sound different than their own. Next, teachers should use rhetorical listening in order to improve cross-cultural communication. Lastly, teachers can develop and use heuristic practices or theories of acquisition which will let people apply concepts to their own personal, situated experience. v

To Jabari Mbwelera, Kathryn Brownlee-Mbwelera, Jocquell Brownlee, Ashley Doonan, and Dr.

Johnson vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Foremost, I would like to acknowledge my family. All of my family. For many of my family members, being black/bodies has been a source of great adversity, and yet a source of immense pride. To my brothers, Jabari and Jocquell, both of whom have had to battle the most insidious traps and strenuous tribulations set in front of the African American male, I empathize and acknowledge your struggles. To Jabari, the one who did not survive these battles of being: I love and miss you, and I will strive to honor your memory. To Jocquell (and my nephews and nieces): you’re still alive, you are strong, you still have time, and I am here for you. To my mother, Kathryn Brownlee-Mbwelera, I cannot imagine all you have seen, survived, and conquered. You have grown to be a better person with age, and I am proud of you.

To my grandmother: In a way, just by existing in your skin with such dignity and hidden depth, you taught me pride and to hold my cards close and love myself. I want to acknowledge the struggles and trials we have faced, and I want to celebrate our journey. Many of us have not survived these struggles and battles, but I will never forget you, and I will always put the weight of your hopes, dreams, and existence on my shoulders. I exist for you. I exist for the possible version of me that was befallen by a different fate. I exist. Blackness has been at the core of our existence in this society, and this project has taught me more about the brilliance, persistence, and courage of our black culture.

Secondly, I would like to acknowledge my dissertation chair and the full committee. I would like to thank Dr. Sue Carter Wood; you challenged me throughout my years in this program, and you helped guide me with some of the most insightful questions I have ever encountered. Also, thank you for allowing me the space to write about a topic I feel very strongly about, and one which challenges several ideas which are often overlooked or ignored. Thank you vii to my committee, as well, for your insightful feedback. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge everyone at Bowling Green State University (particularly my friends and my officemate, Ashely

Doonan) who collaborated, conversed, and debated with me during our time at the university.

And, it should go without saying: thank you, Chaz. viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER 1: BACK TO THE BODY ...... 1

Beginning with Histories of Bodies, Theories, and Ambitions ...... 1

Literature Review: Embodiment in the Discipline/s ...... 4

The Body in Rhetoric and Writing Studies ...... 8

Why Africana Existentialism is Needed in Writing Studies ...... 15

Embodiment and Theories of Race ...... 18

Embodiment and Understanding...... 20

CHAPTER 2: REVIVAL OF A HISTORICAL METHOD: THE COMPATIBILITY OF

HERMENEUTICS AND AFRICANA EXISTENTIALISM ...... 23

Personal Positionality and Africana Existentialism ...... 24

To Perform or Not to Perform? Is There an Option? ...... 27

Hermeneutics as Methodology in its Relationship to AE ...... 33

Hermeneutics as a Research Methodology ...... 36

Turning to the Texts ...... 40

CHAPTER 3: ANALYZING EMBODIMENT THROUGH AFRICANA

EXISTENTIALISM ...... 43

Abolitionist Rhetoric and AE Embodiment ...... 45

AE Writing and US Authors ...... 45

Embodiment in The Bluest Eye ...... 54

Introduction ...... 54

Analysis and Findings ...... 57 ix

The Main Form of Embodied Terminology ...... 62

Embodiment in The Fire Next Time...... 63

Introduction ...... 63

Analysis and Findings ...... 65

The Main Form of Embodied Terminology ...... 69

Embodiment in Black Skin, White Masks ...... 70

Introduction ...... 70

Analysis and Findings ...... 72

The Main Form of Embodied Terminology ...... 76

CHAPTER 4: A CONCEPT OF BLACK EMBODIMENT FROM AFRICANA

EXISTENTIALISM AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS AND

IMPLICATIONS FOR RHETORIC AND WRITING STUDIES ...... 78

A Concept of Embodiment in AE ...... 78

Like Water, Like Culture: The Omnipresence of Culture ...... 79

Experiential Facticity ...... 81

How a Philosophical Split Led to Different Expressions of Embodiment and

Knowledge ...... 88

Getting Past the Impasse ...... 96

Imagine Pecola in the Classroom ...... 99

CHAPTER 5: PEDAGOGICAL POSSIBILITIES AND AN OLD EMBODIED

PRACTICE ...... 105

Research Limitations ...... 106

Checking Blind Spots, Rhetorical Listening, and Heuristic Practice ...... 108 x

Checking for Ideological Blind Spots ...... 109

Rhetorical Listening ...... 116

Kairos, Virtue Ethics, and Embodied Practice ...... 119

Aristotle’s Theory of Acquisition ...... 123

REFERENCES ...... 129

APPENDIX A: ANALYSIS OF THE BLUEST EYE ...... 137

APPENDIX B: ANALYSIS OF THE FIRE NEXT TIME ...... 157

APPENDIX C: ANALYSIS OF BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS ...... 166 xi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1 Total References to Embodied Terminology in The Bluest Eye ...... 62

2 Total References to Embodied Terminology in The Fire Next Time...... 69

3 Total References to Embodied Terminology in Black Skin, White Masks ...... 77 1

CHAPTER 1: BACK TO THE BODY

Words have been mattering more than matter. (Selzer, as cited in Smith et al., 2017, p. 45)

Beginning with Histories of Bodies, Theories, and Ambitions

There are numerous ways scholars approach the study of the human body: biologically, proprioceptively, genetically, and rhetorically, just to name a few. Rhetoric and writing studies often looks at the body as a site where, historically, power dynamics influence and/or determine social hierarchies of dominance based on bodies. This particular study looks at the body as a source of knowledge and meaning-making which impacts every interaction we have in and with the world, including how we think and write, and there are a few questions I would like readers to keep in the recesses of their minds for the duration of this journey into embodiment: How much do our bodies have to do with who we are? And how much bearing do our bodies have on how we interact with the world outside of us? These two questions may seem simple enough at first glance, but the long histories of philosophy and religion make such seemingly simple questions substantially more complicated, and fraught with cultural suppositions and conceptual variance. Moreover, this chapter will appraise how embodiment has been dealt with in rhetoric and writing studies and other disciplines, why Africana existentialism (AE) could be used in the discipline, and how race could impact writing.

Numerous thinkers have viewed the body as secondary to the mind, or even a redundant site of inquiry for our understanding of existence. For example, the French philosopher René

Descartes (1637/1999) famously asserted the fallibility of the body’s senses and argued that, in part, one’s knowledge cannot be grounded in the body, and therefore, we should look for an infallible source for grounding our epistemology. He wrote, “I have noticed that the senses are 2 sometimes deceptive; and it is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once” (p. 60). Descartes’s arguments for the need to ground our knowing in a place other than the body can be broken down even further as so:

My essential nature is to be a thinking thing.

My body’s essential nature is to be an extended thing in space.

My essential nature does not include being an extended thing in space.

Therefore, I am not identical with my body. And since I am a thinking thing (namely a

mind), my mind is not identical with my body. (Kim, 2006, p. 36)

Descartes’s stance set off a wave of philosophical skepticism which helped lead to the devaluation of the body’s importance in philosophy. As Johnson (2017), a philosopher of embodiment and cognitive science, puts it, “[A] good deal of mainstream philosophy, both in the

Anglo-American and European traditions, acted as if our bodies aren’t really that important for the structure of mind, and that our bodies don’t play any significant role in anything that mattered to philosophers” (p. 2). This skepticism of the importance of the body can also be seen in some religious traditions which emphasize the supremacy of the soul over the body, for they assert that the soul is the immaterial and infinite essence of a human being while the body is finite and does not survive after death as the soul does (Blackburn, 2005, p. 346). The point here is that the importance placed on the body has varied throughout history, diverged wildly among different groups, and it has often been seen as a less important component to who one is than the soul and/or mind.

Despite the aforementioned histories which deemphasize and/or marginalize the importance of the body, personally, I know my body has a prominent role to play in who I am. I carry it and it carries me. There is a weight, an indubitable attachment, a danger associated with the body that 3

I am. Unlike Descartes’s declaration that “my essential nature does not include being an extended thing in space” (Kim, 2006, p. 36), mine does. To me, there is nothing more real in the world than my black (male) body. It is more real than a philosophical concept, a social construct, or an Instagram like. Being in my body does not obstruct my thinking, it imbues it. It informs and influences my thoughts and actions. My experience as a body is the opposite of theoretical, it is actual.

I can remember one of the first times I realized that my body could, at least in the eyes of others, determine my future, my possibilities. My first love as a child was football. The game was so powerful and so beautiful. It was equal parts grace and brutality. I would watch my older brother play for his peewee team. He was a budding star, and I would dream about how it would feel when I got my opportunity to suit up in one of those cool helmets and play with everything I had. One of my most vivid childhood memories is of me begging my brother’s coach to let me play before the age of eligibility. I was under the age minimum, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to play. I wanted to play more than anything. I can remember bawling when the coach wouldn’t budge.

My childhood was very rough in many ways, but my love for football was a bright spot in the dreary fog. I wanted to play the game and be great like the real supermen I saw on TV: Berry

Sanders, Eric Dickerson, Eddie George, and the “Nigerian Nightmare,” Christian Okoye. But as a kid, I was pretty short and not very brawny. From the time I finally got to suit up when I was nine, even though I was an above average player, people would constantly tell me I was too small to be an NFL running back. As I got older, the refrain got louder. “You are a really good player. You’re really quick and tough. Sure, you work as hard as anyone else on the field, but hard work can’t grow you inches.” I honestly believe that such a refrain was not meant to offend 4 or soil a young boy’s dream. Most of the people who told me that my dream would remain a fantasy seem to be doing it to help me. They would say it with a hint of sadness in their voices; they wanted me to have realistic expectations of my body’s possibilities. They wanted me to know that my body would impact and/or determine my future.

When I got to high school, I was about 5’3-4, 150 pounds, max. Eventually, despite my love for the game, I gave up on my dream of being an NFL superman. The refrain won over.

Everyone couldn’t be wrong, I thought. I eventually fell in love with a sport where my height was never a consideration, and my weight would, by rule, match the weight of my opponent: wrestling. So, you see, my body, or other people’s views of what the possibilities my body could reach, determined the outcome of my future. I learned that my body was seen as a limitation. It wasn’t long after my football dreams were dashed that I learned that people also saw the color of my skin as a limitation. In many ways, my history in this body led me to this study. Moreover, my history of being a black man in America, led me to seek out academic discussions which speak about the concept of embodiment, and those voices led me to this study of embodiment in

Africana existentialism.

Literature Review: Embodiment in the Discipline/s

In this study of embodiment, through the lens of AE, I will analyze how some of the thinkers associated with the philosophical system understand and express the importance of the body. Additionally, there are two main exigencies which led me to the current iteration of my research questions: “What insights can rhetoric and writing scholars obtain from analyzing the work(s) of Africana existentialism regarding the concept of embodiment? And how might these insights impact our conceptual understanding of embodied practice and our ability to teach in a diverse classroom setting?” Firstly, I believe that Africana (also commonly referred to as black) 5 existentialism is a fascinating discourse community which merits greater research and recognition. Before I was aware of the term “Africana existentialism,” I had long been a fan of several of the thinkers and monographs which fit under its umbrella. I had long been an avid reader of Toni Morrison, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and others. Even outside of academia, I have been interested in the work of black thinkers who fearlessly undertake the mammoth task of honestly explaining and untangling the black experience. I rarely if ever encountered these thinkers in college classrooms, but I found them as I searched for deep and detailed accounts of the black experience for my own understanding.

During a course called Convincing Women, the professor, Dr. Sue Carter Wood, asked the students to think about some of the women who were left off the syllabus but who deserved further research. I chose to do my final project on Harriet Tubman whom I asserted was a rhetor in her own right, and despite the success and completion of the project, the question Dr. Sue put forth stuck with me long after the course concluded. The question was a way for me to think about areas in the field of rhetoric and writing studies that could use new or elaborated scholarship. It was also a way to enter into scholarly conversations that rhetoricians and writing studies scholars are having. After uncovering AE as a discourse community by sheer happenstance, I realized that these thinkers fit the question posed in the Convincing Women course. That is, I believe that the works of AE thinkers deserve further research and examination through the lens of rhetoric and writing studies.

While exploring the intellectual landscape of rhetoric and writing as a bright-eyed graduate student, I became aware that there were scholars who were doing serious research into how bodies impact discourse. The term “embodiment,” which scholars in the field of rhetoric and writing often use, also deserves further examination and exploration. When I first 6 encountered the term embodiment in the academic literature, I was intrigued. Although the term seemed somewhat ambiguous, it also seemed like it could value phenomenological experiences and the various ways in which people interact with the real world. Reading the literature also helped me recognize that my view of embodiment tended to differ greatly from the way it was typically or most often used in the scholarship. Further, after revisiting the works of the Africana existentialists, I discovered how important embodiment and embodied experience was to their discourse community. Combining these two realizations led me to believe that these issues intersect. I believe that this project is at the nexus of two areas which merit more research, and I hope that the summation of this project can shed light on these important topics.

As a writer of fiction and a student of philosophy, I understand the deep connection between existence, body, experience, rhetoric and meaning-making. All of these concepts intertwine when one is creating and/or exploring a work of fiction or philosophy. Many writers who are now classified as existentialists explored these very connections. For example, in

Nausea Jean-Paul Sartre explores how the lead character, Roquentin, “who is profoundly lonely, without friends or family, expresses a sensation of ‘sweetish sickness’ in contemplating the absurdity of life. He refers to this sensation, which is both mental and physical, as the Nausea”

(Gale, 2006, par. 3). Sartre’s existentialist novel combines fiction, physical sensation, and philosophy to discuss concerns about existence and existential fear.

Black existentialists explored the same connections, but most of them realized that existing in/as a black body irrevocably impacts how they exist in the world because of how they were perceived by those without black bodies. This realization can be seen in Richard Wright’s groundbreaking novel Native Son. In the novel, Bigger Thomas, a young black man from an extremely poor neighborhood, experiences almost all of the feelings which have come to be 7 known in their totality as an existential crisis: fear, anxiety, frustration, dread, meaninglessness, and hopelessness. But in each factor of his misery, Bigger’s blackness is a key (if not the primary) factor. Bigger’s crisis eventually leads him to commit a horrible crime, but in a way, due to his blackness, Bigger sees his downfall as inevitable. The narrator states, “[H]is crime seemed natural; he felt that all of his life had been leading to something like this [murder]. It was no longer a matter of dumb wonder as to what would happen to him and his black skin; he knew now” (Wright, 1940, p. 101). Accordingly, in both Sartre’s and Wright’s novels, each lead character experiences the hallmarks of an existential crisis; however, in Native Son, blackness plays an omnipresent role in Bigger’s existential upheaval.

I come to this research with a connection to AE philosophers and novelists because as a black writer, and thinker, I too have experienced some of the very existential issues these writers describe so acutely and vividly. Moreover, as a black man I have experienced the various ways my body impacts how and what I think, and often how and what others think of me. For example, I have personally experienced, as I walked through a grocery store, seeing a fellow shopper clutch her purse and hurry the other way in (apparent) fear. It is incredibly doubtful that the shopper’s fear stemmed from my being a doctoral student or a creative writer or even a

“menacing” person (since I was completely on the other side of the aisle, dressed normally, looking at groceries). It is more likely that the shopper’s fear and bias stemmed from my being in/a black body, particularly in a black male body. There are often or always connotations and implications which come with my skin. My personal experiences, I believe, affords me a unique perspective on how rhetoric and writing studies can use new points of view to be more inclusive and knowledgeable. Though, my closeness to AE can also be seen as a limitation which could 8 bias my findings. However, my hope is that the methodology I have chosen, hermeneutics, already takes both the affordances and limitations into account.

First, the goal of this study is to examine how rhetoricians and writing studies scholars use the terms “embodiment” and “embodied” in scholarly works. This will give the reader an overview of the origins, stemming back to ancient Greece, of embodiment in rhetorical conversations, and expound on some of the different definitions and ways in which the term embodiment is used in the field. Secondly, this project seeks to describe the relation between AE

(and AE phenomenology) and embodied rhetoric. This, I believe, will help to fill in a gap which exists in how embodied experience is often defined in the field of rhetoric and writing studies.

Africana existentialists often describe their embodied experience very differently from those in the field. Why is this, and how might it impact how conversations about embodiment are conducted? And thirdly, this project seeks to analyze how select writings from the corpus of AE fit into the discussion of embodiment and can add to the overall understanding of such definitions and descriptions. By adding these unique voices to the conversation, the project could expand how embodiment is talked about and understood in rhetoric and writing studies. When combined, each goal will connect to form a whole which looks back to the past and ancient discussions of embodiment and rhetoric and looks forward to the future of embodiment conversations in the classroom.

The Body in Rhetoric and Writing Studies

There is a long history in rhetoric and writing studies of investigating and theorizing the connection between writing practices and the body. The discipline often places a great deal of value on the interconnectedness of the body and writing practices. For example, in Keywords in

Writing Studies, a go-to resource for rhetoricians and writing studies scholars, “body” is one of 9 the thirty-six key terms (exemplifying its importance to the field). But the value placed on the body, and the use of embodied terminology, is not relegated to rhetoric and writing studies. As

Knoblauch (2012) writes, “[W]hat we might call ‘embodied terminology’—the use of terms such as embodied, embodiment, bodily, and references to bodily acts —also crosses disciplinary borders” (p. 50). This cross-disciplinarity speaks to what one could call a resurgent interest in the importance and influence of the body in modern academic research. Some of the cross- disciplinary questions which arise from theorizing embodiment are: How do those occupying marginalized bodies navigate scholarly practices (such as the writing process), and what does it mean to have embodied knowledge?

There are several in-depth treatises which deal with how and why the body matters in relation to writing practices. For example, books and articles such as “Bodies of Knowledge:

Definitions, Delineations, and Implications of Embodied Writing in the Academy,” “Breathe

Upon Us an Even Flame: Hephaestus, History, and the Body of Rhetoric,” and “Mobile Bodies:

Triggering Bodily Uptake Through Movement” all explore the various ways in which the body impacts how rhetorical discourse and writing is done. The theorization of the relationship between the two can be traced back to ancient Greece. Hawhee’s (2009) book, Bodily Arts:

Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece, illuminates how the ancient Greeks combined athletic and rhetorical training in order to facilitate a holistic, bodily knowing. The book “work[s] at the interstices between athletics and rhetoric in order to help elaborate rhetoric’s emergence in a network of educational and cultural practices articulated through and by the body” (Hawhee,

2009, p. 6). The book illustrates how differently the ancient Greeks thought about how one becomes educated. 10

The concept of mêtis may best illustrate how the Greeks understood the nexus between body and mind. Scholars in ancient Greece believed mêtis to be “the mode of negotiating agonistic forces, the ability to cunningly and effectively maneuver a cutting instrument, a ship, a chariot, a body, on the spot, in the heat of the moment” (Hawhee, 2009, p. 47). This definition expresses how, under the highest stakes and most dangerous of circumstances, the body and mind must work together in order to maneuver at a moment’s notice. Thus, for the Greeks, mêtis was corporeal cunning of both bodily and intellectual ability, understood in a single concept. As

Dolmage (2009) puts it in “Metis, Mêtis, Mestiza, Medusa: Rhetorical Bodies Across Rhetorical

Traditions,”:

[Hawhee] more fully theorizes metis as a bodily intelligence, evidence of a syncretic

relationship between flexible bodies and the virtuosity of the mind, leading to her

argument that ‘thought does not just happen within the body, it happens as the body.’ (p.

6)

For Hawhee, then, embodied knowledge is knowledge beyond simply mental or theoretical comprehension. Embodied knowledge is a kind of understanding one feels in a holistic way, physical constitution included.

Moreover, Dolmage likewise develops the connection between the value and/or importance of the body in rhetorical practice and rhetorical tradition by looking back at this relationship in ancient Greece through an analysis of how the bodies of women were treated in the Greek rhetorical and philosophical traditions. Dolmage (2009) argues “that we have accepted an historical narrative in which rhetoric, similarly, denounces the body, overlooks its phenomenological and persuasive importance, and lifts discourse from its corporeal hinges” (p.

1). Additionally, in the article Dolmage states, “I will show that it also matters which bodies we 11 align with rhetoric. I will exhume the myths of the Greek goddess Metis as a means of enlivening an embodied rhetoric and a divergent rhetorical history” (p. 1). Adding the body back into conversations about persuasion and privilege is essential for having an accurate and fuller account of how rhetoric works and who it works for.

For Dolmage, the rhetorical history that we traditionally study is one that not only devalues the body in general, but one that uses the white male body as the norm and correlates the female body with one that is disabled. Dolmage (2009) writes:

Women, then, inhabit monstrously different bodies, and this difference rules every aspect

of their being, even their soul. In this way, any departure from the bodily norm is seen as

potentially “crippling” all other capacities, even the soul. The “crippled” or feminized

body is therefore incapable of philosophical thought and is also blamed for any corporeal

distractions. Femininity and disability, then, are classically intertwined. Disability and

disease become key metaphors in this history of thought—a history that we have

selectively inherited and interpreted. (p. 3)

Not only does such a history skew how persuasion works but making such a correlation between non-male bodies and disability is in and of itself a rhetorical act. It is meant to disable those outside of the “norm.” This is a key revelation from Dolmage’s work.

Although the works of Hawhee and Dolmage demonstrate how many Greeks understood the connection between body and mind, it does not discuss the specific ways in which rhetoricians and writing studies scholars talk about the body and/or embodiment. However, in

“Bodies of Knowledge: Definitions, Delineations, and Implications of Embodied Writing in the

Academy, ” Knoblauch (2012) attempts to do just that. In her work, Knoblauch differentiates three primary ways scholars in writing studies and rhetoric talk about embodiment as it relates to 12 knowledge production and writing in the academy: embodied language, embodied knowledge, and embodied rhetoric. She goes on to explain, “While these categories overlap and inform each other, clarifying the definitions themselves is important as there seems to be little agreement within the field about how one might define embodiment as it relates to writing” (Knoblauch,

2012, p. 50).

Embodied language, Knoblauch (2012) suggests, consist of “terms, metaphors, and analogies that reference, intentionally or not, the body itself” (p. 51). For example, the phrase

“she holds the position [that]…” could be understood as embodied language because it metaphorically reflects how human bodies/hands “hold” objects. Furthermore, the term

“position” in the phrase could also be understood as embodied language because human bodies occupy space. Thus, the phrase could metaphorically refer to the body. Knoblauch states that embodied language is valuable because it often captures the attention of an audience in a way that non-embodied language may not.

Knoblauch (2012) asserts that embodied knowledge is:

[K]nowledge that is very clearly connected to the body. Embodied knowledge often

begins with bodily response—or what we might call ‘gut reactions.’ As a trigger for

meaning making that is rooted so completely in the body, embodied response is rarely

legitimated in academia” (p. 54).

This category of embodiment is extremely important because it not only points to bodily response as a form or cue of knowing, but to expand further on this notion, it also evokes the knowledge one gains from lived experience. One’s lived experience informs one’s “gut reaction.” For example, an individual may have a gut reaction to witnessing someone being poked in the eye. 13

This gut reaction likely comes from one’s lived experience, knowing how sensitive the eye is, or from the personal experience of being poked in the eye themselves. Yet, as Knoblauch suggests, embodied knowledge as a form of understanding is often devalued in an academic context. It can be seen as purely subjective or prejudicial. However, lived experience, “gut reaction,” and rational thinking are not incompatible. Lived experience can inform rational thinking. Johnson (2017) asserts that embodied knowledge can be used to “work out solutions to problematic situations” (p. 172). Combining embodied knowledge with other forms of knowledge could boost one’s thinking.

The last category of embodiment that Knoblauch (2012) elucidates is that of embodied rhetoric. Embodied rhetoric “becomes more clearly the purposeful effort by an author to represent aspects of embodiment within the text he or she is shaping.” Furthermore, she continues, “when practicing embodied rhetoric, the author attempts to decipher how these

‘material circumstances’ (Royster 228) affect how he or she understands the world” (Knoblauch,

2012, p. 58). This kind of embodiment speaks to the positionality of the author. Embodied rhetoric anticipates and responds to questions such as: Why might the author be interested in the topic he or she has chosen to research? How might the author’s gender, race, socioeconomic status, or the intersectionality of them all, impact the author’s view of the subject?

Although, as Knoblauch (2012) suggests, “[T]hese categories overlap, inform each other, even bleed into each other. And scholars interested in embodiment rarely consider or utilize just one category.” Her categorical distinctions are vital when attempting to understand how embodiment works in the discipline. “Not understanding the differences between such concepts can also serve to hide the distinct contributions each form of embodiment can bring to

Composition Studies” (p. 52). Therefore, in rhetoric and writing studies, understanding the 14

different ways in which embodiment is defined is important in understanding how various scholars use the term in their theories and in their practices.

Additionally, scholars from fields outside of rhetoric and writing studies have also theorized the importance of embodiment and its multifaceted uses. In Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason: How our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding, Johnson (2017) explains how our embodied experiences have a major influence on what we understand and how we understand.

He writes, “[O]ur bodies give rise to the meaning we can experience, the reasoning we do, and the ways we communicate with others, not just through language proper, but also through all our many forms of symbolic action in the arts and associated practices” (p. 17). Johnson goes on to argue that a proper understanding of embodied experience can be a bridge between modern and postmodern epistemologies. Johnson’s argument will reappear in much greater detail in Chapter

4 of this project because different philosophical and ideological views on epistemology is a factor in the ways individuals and groups talk about their embodied experience. Moreover, this can have a serious impact regarding why it may be difficult communicating about one’s embodied experience with those with different philosophies and ideologies.

Therefore, it would be very beneficial to see what sort of epistemology those with black bodies subscribe to and how those in rhetoric and writing studies see their bodies in terms of the rhetorical tradition. Similar to Dolmage’s (2009) statement that “the canonical view of rhetorical history that not only overlooks the body but also explicitly vilifies the female body and that uses disability as a master trope of disqualification” (p. 1), the same could be said for black bodies in the rhetorical tradition, and AE may make the case.

15

Why Africana Existentialism is Needed in Writing Studies

Although, as Knoblauch and others point out, there has been and continues to be work

done on the topic of embodiment including female and transgender embodiment, and disability rhetoric, there remains a conspicuous gap in the literature. While some scholars in rhetoric and writing studies have dealt with the topic of race in the academy and the writing studies classroom

(see, Inoue, Delpit, Jones-Royster, Young), the specific link between blackness and embodied knowledge, or embodiment in general, has been neglected.

However, many books in the cannon of AE, such as Black Skin, White Masks, The Souls of Black Folks, The Bluest Eye, along with many others, have dealt with the connection between blackness and embodiment on a large scale, using a variety of genres, with profound depth, for decades. Africana existentialists’ discourse on embodiment spans eras and continents. Many scholars may be familiar with the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Frederick

Douglass, Toni Morrison, and Frantz Fanon; however, they may be unfamiliar with Africana existentialism (AE) as a corpus or discourse community. To understand AE as a whole, one must first be familiar with the concerns of AE and familiar with what makes AE a unique discourse community. European existentialism (EE) is an important movement in Western philosophy, it has a wide range of defining characteristics; but at its base, it is a philosophical system that focuses on “[s]uch matters as anxiety, death, the conflict between the bogus and the genuine self, the faceless man of the masses, the experience of the death of God” and the like (Barrett, 1958, p. 9).

EE was a major philosophical movement which spanned from the writings of

Kierkegaard to those of Sartre (and beyond). Existentialism is a philosophical approach which many scholars find somewhat difficult to define. This difficulty is often described as being due to the various styles, methodological approaches, and assertions or findings of philosophers who 16 are categorized as existentialists. However, in Irrational Man, Barrett (1958) writes that existentialism deals with the “themes of life”; that is, unlike analytic or linguistic philosophy which often deals with formal rules and abstractions, existentialism deals with such matters as death, anxiety, authenticity, the death of God, and meaninglessness (p. 9). While many of the philosophers and novelists who are classified under the term repudiated the classification of existentialism during their day, the movement began with the writings of Kierkegaard which pushed beyond academic philosophy and romanticism (Kaufmann, 1975, pp. 12-13) and instead, as Barrett suggests, sought to deal with real life issues and questions.

Though focused on the more antagonistic aspects of existentialism, Kaufmann (1975) echoes Barrett’s definition writing that those classified as existentialists share a “marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life—that is the heart of existentialism” (p. 12). Keeping a sharp focus on “real life,” not tradition, is one of the key components of the approach. Moreover, in dealing with themes which stem from lived experience, existentialism can be viewed as a direct reaction against or counter-philosophy to purely analytic and linguistic philosophizing. Kaufmann (1975) also asserts, “Existentialism is not a philosophy but a label for several widely different revolts against traditional philosophy,”

(p. 11) a tradition which rarely if ever impacted the lives of the general public.

Existential philosophers did not simply write to and for other philosophers and academicians, they implemented philosophical methods which were meant to reach a mass, nonacademic audience. For it was not only a philosophical movement, “Existentialism was a literary movement… and its leaders—Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir— were brilliant and engaging writers” (Barrett, 1958, p. 8). Also, the novelist Dostoevsky is known as one of the most influential and insightful existential writers of all time (Kaufmann, 17

1975, p. 14). This genre-bending approach clearly differentiated the existentialists from the vast majority of their analytic counterparts.

Novels such as Nausea, The Stranger, and She Came to Stay were popular among a public audience, and each book put existentialists themes into words that a mass audience could understand and relate to. Therefore, existentialism can be seen as an amalgam of theories and methods which deal with very similar themes of dread, anxiety, and death, and each thinker who is commonly understood to be a part of the amalgam did so in a unique, and often creative way.

Hence, an emphasis on real life and lived experience, particularly the negative aspects of experience, and a deep aversion to purely academic, analytic, and theoretical philosophy could be seen as two of the main hallmarks of existentialism. A third hallmark of existentialism is the concept that “existence precedes essence,” which the most prominent existentialist, Jean-Paul

Sartre, said was the unifying concept of all those who practiced the philosophy. “What

[existentialists] have in common is simply their belief that existence precedes essence” (Sartre,

1947/2007, p. 20). Therefore, if being precedes essence: being in a body precedes essence as well, and this idea connects AE and EE.

There are other connections between AE and EE. Bassey (2007) describes how AE relates to EE, yet remains clearly distinct: “[A]lthough Africana critical theory [existentialism] shares similar concerns and themes such as existence, consciousness, trepidation, meaninglessness, hopelessness, fear, despair, servility… [but] there are important distinctions between them” because AE “critiques domination and affirms the empowerment of Black people in the world” (p. 914). Thus, AE is similar to EE in that it is concerned with the themes of existence, anxiety, despair, and the like, but AE is unique in that it aims to focus on a specific 18 group of people who have, due to the color of their skin, i.e., their black bodies, experienced numerous forms of domination and oppression.

Therefore, if one looks at the link between AE and its concern with embodiment, the question could be asked: What insights can rhetoric and writing studies scholars obtain from analyzing the works of AE regarding the concept of embodiment? And how might these insights impact our understanding of embodied practice and our ability to teach in a diverse classroom setting? To start to answer these questions, understanding the work of the philosopher Lewis

Gordon is paramount. Gordon’s work can connect well with work being done in rhetoric and writing on antiracist writing assessment because both seek to understand the connection between race and power.

Embodiment and Theories of Race

The philosopher Lewis Gordon, who works in the areas of phenomenology and AE, has written in great detail on the topic of embodiment. In several works, Gordon has written and compiled books which define and display theories of AE. In his scholarship, Gordon has repeatedly made the connection between phenomenology and racialized bodies. As Garrett

(2011) explains, “Gordon, based on the work of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, developed an original notion of embodiment in his phenomenology of racialized bodies” (p. 7). As Gordon puts it, “‘To be seen in a racist way is an ironic way of not being seen through being seen. It is to be seen with overdetermined anonymity, which amounts, in effect, to invisibility’” (Garrett, 2011, p. 8). The overdetermination Gordon writes about is very similar to the overdetermination I felt as a child regarding my dreams of being an NFL player. Gordon’s theory of embodiment speaks to how, through the lived experience of “being seen” by others, one with a black body can come to understand their own invisibility. 19

But the uniqueness of their embodied experience does not end there. Gordon also argues that there is an added component to the existential question when one occupies a black body:

Gordon advances an in-depth narrative of just what it means to be confronted as a black

person with the question of existence. From the very beginning, Gordon argues, a black

person is faced with a different sort of challenge. He or she must not only answer the

existential enigma of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is my reason for being here?,’ … A person

of African descent must provide ‘justification for their continued presence.’ (Samuel,

2000, p. 79)

Thus, those who have black bodies, in witnessing the reactions of others, have the added burden of justifying their existence. This is a unique feature of the black experience.

In this respect, Gordon’s theory is evocative of the Africana existentialist philosopher and psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon’s view of embodiment. Frantz Fanon, a black man born in 1925 in the French colony of Martinique, was a psychoanalyst, philosopher, and cultural critic. He was also colleagues with Jean-Paul Sartre, the most widely recognized existentialist. Fanon, quoting

Jean Veneuse, argued that being black is akin to embodying the Other: “To be ‘the Other’ is to always feel in an uncomfortable position, to be on one’s guard, to be prepared to be rejected.” He adds that in Eurocentric societies “the man of color encounters difficulties in elaborating his body schema” (Fanon, 1952, p. 57). Fanon’s insights into the body will be discussed in much greater detail in Chapter 3, but this brief quote shows the unique and distinct views of Africana existentialists.

The image of one’s body as a negation of justified presence is a stark one. The descriptions given by Gordon and Fanon connects to Knoblauch’s definition of embodied knowledge. One has a “gut reaction” when, as mentioned above, one in a black body passes by a 20 shopper and she clutches her purse tightly. What kind of knowledge can arise from recognizing oneself, one’s body, as a negation? What type of knowledge can arise from being presumed a predator? Exploring questions such as these could be vital to understanding how the discourse on embodiment in rhetoric and writing studies scholarship should be expanded to allow for different insights into embodied knowledge, language, and rhetoric.

Embodiment and Understanding

Further examining the relationship between race and embodiment in rhetoric and writing studies could have major implications for the classroom and future scholarship. Namely, how one views their embodied experiences may have a heavy bearing on how one views and relates to the world. If race plays a major role in how one understands embodiment, writing studies educators (and educators in general) would need to be mindful of and responsive to the various ways in which embodiment is understood, expressed, and experienced. If scholars suggest that there is one monolithic conception or language for embodied identity, this could leave out those with different conceptions of their existence.

For example, Kerschbaum (2014) writes that, “[I]ndividuals are seen as using rhetorical cues, markers of difference… thus showing difference not as a possession but as an emergent and continually shifting relationship that is constructed through the use and display of markers of difference” (p. 26). Kerschbaum’s theory will be discussed at length in Chapter 4. However, this model of identity attempts to mitigate the problem of “fixed difference” by treating it as a rhetorically situated phenomenon. She believes that teachers should view difference “as dynamic, relational, and emergent… in so doing, it resituates the problem away from learning about, and thus needing to know students, toward learning with, and thus always coming-to- know students” (p. 57). Kerschbaum’s new formulation is meant to refocus how we think and 21 talk about identity. Thus, to mark difference is to reply to rhetorically situated events. In these events, individuals “create versions of themselves that they display for others, and because these selves emerge during interaction, all participants contribute to their emergence” (p. 83).

It seems that there may be unintended consequences which emerge from such a reformulation of identity and difference, especially when one tries to project this epistemically based assertion to all groups. When speaking to students unfamiliar with the specialized terminology of rhetoric and writing studies and/or the ontological and epistemic foundations upon which such claims are constructed, this intellectual and linguistic shift could go against students’ own views of their embodied existence. For many African Americans, the idea that their blackness is not “stable,” “objectively real,” or “fixed” (Kerschbaum, 2014, p. 39) may strike them as false and unsounded. Such a suggestion may seem like a trivialization and/or misrepresentation of their embodied existence.

They may not see their blackness as “yet-to-be,” but as always been. Consequently, although Kerschbaum’s work attempts to alleviate the real problem of difference fixation, such a framework might not only be difficult for students to comprehend, it might also alienate some of the very individuals it attempts to aid. What does one do if a student views their identity as an ontological and/or embodied possession? What does one do with a student who views a categorical identifier as essential? Allowing space for the insights of AE could add a new and powerful voice to the conversation on identity and difference fixation, and perhaps bring answers to some of the issues writing scholars pose.

The awareness that there are various ways in which embodiment is understood, expressed, and experienced, would not imply special treatment for those with different articulations of embodied experiences, it would imply, to use Ratcliffe’s (1999) term, “rhetorical 22 listening.” In the work “Rhetorical Listening: A Trope for Interpretive Invention and a ‘Code of

Cross-Cultural Conduct’,” Ratcliffe (1999) envisions a type of listening which improves and extends cross-cultural communications, writing:

The rhetorical listening that I am promoting is a performance that occurs when listeners

invoke both their capacity and their willingness (1) to promote an understanding of self

and other that informs our culture's politics and ethics, (2) to proceed from within a

responsibility logic, not from within a defensive guilt/blame one, (3) to locate

identification in discursive spaces of both commonalities and differences, and (4) to

accentuate commonalities and differences not only in claims but in cultural logics within

which those claims function. (p. 204)

Truly listening to students and scholars describe how race and culture shapes their embodied experience may provide insights into how and why individuals react to and interact with different classroom situations in different ways. It may also add to our understanding of embodied experience in general. A monolithic or mono-cultural understanding of embodiment and embodied experience could have a silencing effect on students and scholars. Through deep rhetorical listening, students and teachers might be spared the silencing effect which will be discussed at length in Chapter 5. Chapter 3 analyzes specific texts from the cannon of AE in order to induce whether or not there is a single concept of embodiment in the sample of texts, while Chapter 4 describes how epistemological and ideological differences could undergird some of the miscommunication and crosstalk which takes place between black students and writing instructors. But first, the next chapter gives a detailed account of why a hermeneutic analysis is the best methodology for this project, and how other scholars have observed a deep connection between existentialism and hermeneutics. 23

CHAPTER 2: REVIVIAL OF A HISTORICAL METHOD: THE COMPATIBILITY OF

HERMENEUTICS AND AFRICANA EXISTENTIALISM

Knowledge is only rumor until it lives in the bones. -Brene Brown, Rising Strong

As demonstrated in Chapter 1, many scholars in rhetoric and writing studies view the body as a venue where power dynamics influence and/or determine social hierarchies of dominance based on bodies. And although there are several scholars who have dealt with how the bodies of various ethnic and gendered groups have been denigrated, forgotten, and/or ignored throughout social and rhetorical history, there is still, in my view, a gap in the literature where black embodiment can and should be elaborated. One issue which magnifies the gap is that many of the scholars who discuss, theorize, and conceptualize the black bodily experience, or embodiment in general, are often those without black bodies. This is not to say that scholars who do not have black bodies cannot speak to the importance and complex nature of embodiment or have deep and clear insights into the histories of how black bodies have been viewed and rhetorically marginalized. However, it is to say that those thinkers and scholars who do have black bodies and who are capable of honestly analyzing their embodied experience have a unique understanding of what it feels like to be a black body in the world (i.e., an experiential understanding of black embodiment). Such a necessary and vital goal must be guided by a fitting framework of research methods and methods of analyzing data. In this chapter, I describe my thinking behind why I see choosing a methodology as a personal and performative act, describe why a hermeneutic approach is best for this project, and I describe my plan to find a concept of black embodiment in AE texts. 24

Personal Positionality and Africana Existentialism

Much of, if not the vast majority of, the research being done currently in the field of writing

studies regarding embodiment comes from a predominately white and/or feminist perspective.

For instance, this can be shown in Knoblauch’s (2012) seminal and regularly referenced work on embodiment, “Bodies of Knowledge: Definitions, Delineations, and Implications of Embodied

Writing in the Academy.” In it, the primary prospective taken is from a white feminist lens. This can be shown when she writes that:

Carol Mattingly has drawn attention to women’s bodies in Appropriate[ing] Dress; Cheryl

Glenn has noted how women such as Anne Askew were able to use their positionalities as

women, their female bodies, to subvert dominant ideas about authorship and power; Susan

Kates has dubbed elocutionist Hallie Quinn Brown an embodied rhetor; Katie Conboy, Nadia

Medina, and Sarah Stanbury brought together twenty-four pieces on female embodiment and

feminist theory (also the title of their collection); and in 1999, Jack Selzer and Sharon

Crowley. (p. 50)

This passage by Knoblauch shows how the feminist/white perspective is the prevailing point of view when it comes to embodiment in rhetoric and writing studies. The vast majority of the names mentioned by Knoblauch are white women. Moreover, these scholars often point to feminism as the lens through which they explore embodiment (see, “Embodiment: Embodying

Feminist Rhetorics”, 2015). Shining light on this prominent view in the field is not meant to denigrate or disparage the great work being done by such scholars. It is simply meant to reveal that the principal perspective, or the outlook that is most quoted or published in the field, is that of people with similar cultural standpoints and/or methodological perspectives.

It should be clearly stated that the arguments that these scholars make about how embodiment works and why it matters are extremely important. Their studies are important 25 because they seek to rediscover the rhetorical practices of groups that are often ignored, and such studies have had a deep, meaningful, and lasting impact because they illuminate exactly how specific marginalized groups have been expunged and disregarded throughout the history of rhetoric. For example, in Rhetoric Retold, Cheryl Glenn (1997) took up the issue of how female figures have been either demoted or erased in the rhetorical history books altogether due to their gender.

Glenn (1997) writes, “Canonical rhetorical history has represented the experience of males, powerful males, with no provision or allowance for females… And that view of rhetoric has remained one of a gendered landscape, with no female rhetoricians (theoreticians) clearly in sight” (p. 2). Glenn also gave numerous examples of how female rhetoricians have been expunged by many writing historians:

According to Jane McIntosh Snyder, ‘the earliest woman writer in the Western literature

whose work has—at least in part—survived the passage of time and the willful attempts to

silence the voices of women, Sappho is also the most famous’ (p. 21).

McIntosh Snyder points out the willfulness in the masculinization of rhetorical history. It was not the case that female rhetoricians did not exist during the time of Plato and Aristotle. It is the case that female rhetoricians were purposefully ignored when the histories of their eras were written.

Glenn’s project in Rhetoric Retold was to reevaluate the history of rhetoric to include important female rhetors and theoreticians. One woman Glenn highlighted in her book is Sappho. Glenn

(1997) writes, “Sappho… the only woman in all antiquity whose literary productions placed here on the same level as the greatest male poets, in other words, with Homer. She wrote nine books of lyric poems, nearly two hundred of which remain in fragments, only one poem surviving in its entirety” (pp. 20-21). The fact that Sappho was so prolific and famous in her own time, yet 26 nearly none of her work completely survived, speaks to the willful erasure of female rhetoricians by writing historians.

Moreover, the fact that Sappho was willfully erased from the history books speaks to why many envision rhetoric as a male dominant domain. As Glenn (1997) puts it, “Whenever a woman has accomplished the same goals as her male counterpart (theorizing, public speaking…), the stakes immediately rise. She may have achieved X, but she needs X plus I to earn a place in rhetoric” (p. 15). Consequently, if histories erase individuals like Sappho, it becomes easier to suggest that males are the main inventors of rhetorical theory. Glenn’s project in Rhetoric Retold can be seen as an outline or guide which helped me shape this dissertation.

Moreover, Glenn’s perspective has been extremely useful as it pushes back against the homogenous histories of rhetoric and writing. This perspective is indispensable because it outlines—with very clear historical examples—how individuals and groups are systematically marginalized. Though, as I mentioned above, this push back is not about black people in particular or from a black perspective, explicitly.

To give an in-depth analysis of how being black may impact one’s embodied experience and thus one’s embodied perspective on the world and the college classroom, something other than a white feminist perspective may be needed. As Gordon (2000) writes in Existentia Africana,

“Implicit in the existential demand for recognizing the situation or lived context of Africana peoples’ being-in-the-world is the question of value raised by the people who live that situation”

(p.10). Black bodies, particularly black male bodies, have not been analyzed with the same energy as some other groups or with the same regularity as other cultures have been in the field of rhetoric and writing studies, and this particular dissertation, at least partly, is meant to remedy 27 that fact. Studying the embodied claims of black people, and black men in particular, necessarily means considering performativity in relation to the role of the researcher.

To Perform or Not to Perform? Is There an Option?

For me, the introspective knowledge surrounding the complexity of performativity and anti-performativity goes all the way back to my undergraduate years. I took a lot of philosophy courses, and many of my classmates would ask me why I was taking such courses. In my mind, I took the courses because I enjoyed the questions that were being asked, the attention to detail and clarity, the search for intellectual consistency, and the intricate argumentation. But the questions would persist: “Why are you taking philosophy?” some would say. I must say that no one ever asked the question with clear malice or intolerance, but I could often hear in their voices that there was something out of place about my choice, something which did not fit their preconceived notions and expectations.

Was I not performing the role they imagined for or anticipated of me? Did they mean what is a rough black man from the “inner city” doing in philosophy classes? Although I did not seem to be enacting the role they may or may not have expected me to play, was I also rejecting my own cultural expectations, as well? Was I rejecting my responsibility as a proud black man, or was I asserting it? When I would answer the questions about why I was taking so many philosophy courses, it seemed that I was not just answering a question about a class like Intro to

Algebra. There were social and cultural roles being expected, suggested, and diverted in the question and in my answers.

Looking back I may have been attempting to do two things at once: I may have been choosing not to perform the role those who asked the questions with confusion or skepticism in their voices expected me to play, but also, I may have been rejecting my own cultural 28 expectations of myself, my own inner voice which might have said, “Why are you taking classes where 99% of the readings are by deceased—almost always European—white men? That doesn’t apply to you!” (Their experiences, almost unfailingly bourgeois and middle to upper-class, didn’t apply to me, but the questions did. The biographies of these men would not deter me from pondering and plodding through major questions of politics, ethics, and existence.) Some kind of performance was happening, whether I understood it or not. What I chose to do was seen as a performance even if it was not meant to be. Thus, my first deeply self-aware experience with the complexity of performativity and anti-performativity.

I assume that for most introspective black scholars, thinkers, and intellectuals, with each reflective choice one makes, there comes with that choice a level of or awareness of performativity or anti-performativity. I know that is the case for me. That is, as a black thinker, I am keenly aware that each intellectual (and even physical) choice I make can or will play to or against a particular stereotype or preconception of blackness writ large. For example, on the one hand, I am aware that a black scholar talking about “black issues” can easily be seen as plaintive scholarship or an attempt to capitalize on the small black corner of the academic market: two sides of a complicated spectrum. Furthermore, I can hear an “Oh, here we go again, more stuff about race?” from the voices in my past (and present) who see discussions on issues of race as old hat and who think/want the world to exist in an “anti- or post-racial” epoch1. This exhaustion

(among people of importance and power such as those who decide which works are worthy of

publication) with discussion and examination of how race functions in the world and what should

be done about it can lead black scholars to veer away from such topics in the hopes of avoiding

1 This section was written before the death of George Floyd and the social unrest which occurred thereafter. 29 being seen as plaintive. And it can also incentivize them to do their work on less contentious matters.

On the other hand, though, as a black man, to not speak to a topic that is important to me, and, even more importantly, to not speak to a topic that I think could be enlightening and beneficial to other scholars, educators, and students could be a betrayal of my duties as a responsible and reflective black person. What is more, not just the fact that I might choose to talk about the particular subject of race and ethnicity has an impact on my choices, but the way I talk about it can have certain implications for how I must approach such a project, as well. Talking about issues of race and/or color in a way that speaks to multiple groups and factions is a complicated, if not impossible, task. That may be why scholars choose to avoid the subject altogether or choose to talk about race in a way that appeals to a very specific faction.

In the film Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (Greenfield-Sanders, 2019), Morrison reflects on this same kind of issue, i.e., “How should I talk about race and to whom should I speak, and in what way should I speak,” in the works of African American literary authors.

Speaking on this self-reflective, and even self-censoring, choice in writing, Morrison begins by saying, “Many books, particularly in the forties and fifties, you could feel the address of the narrator talking to somebody white. I could tell because they were explaining things they wouldn’t have to explain if they were talking to me.” Morrison’s statement points to the choice black writers have regarding how to go about discussions on race. Next, Morrison gives

Frederick Douglass as an example of an African American author who chose to write about race but did so in a way that appealed to or would not offend a white audience. Concerning Douglass,

Morrison says: 30

Even Frederick Douglass, he’s not talking to me. I can feel him holding back. And I

understand that because the people who were supporting him were abolitionists, white

people. And sometimes he even says it: “these things too terrible to relate,” like rape. He

didn’t talk about it. (Greenfield-Sanders, 2019)

Lastly, Morrison goes on to describe how Ralph Ellison, the author of Invisible Man, wrote a book which specifically deals with how a black man, unnamed in the story, felt overwhelmed by and invisible in white society. “Invisible Man, invisible to whom?” she says.

Here, Morrison is pointing out that the main character of the story was only invisible in the context of white culture, and that Ellison was trying to explain this feeling to a white audience

(because he would not have to explain such a feeling to a black audience). This conundrum about to whom a black author should speak, only adds to the complexity of the when, how, and if one should take up such subjects in general.

On the other side of the academic spectrum, far from those who are exasperated or exhausted by discussions on race, are those who may perform their identities in such a way that is rewarded by or palpable to scholars outside their race. That is, to be very performative in one’s discussions of blackness or ethnicity in matters of race may be rewarded as “authentic” in some circles. Performing one’s thought and views in an extremely orthodox way can have its benefits with certain sets, and it can fill a special niche or have a specific function in elevating one’s opportunities. Namely, this kind of performativity can put certain sectors of the academic community at ease. Because they see it as work which does not impact them or their scholarship, some prominent scholars may see this sort of scholarship as a kind of entertainment and not a

“threat” to the work they do or their position in the field. This may be a controversial or even 31 taboo take on how discussions of ethnicity and race play out, but I believe that I have witnessed this choice in some quarters.

Consequently, it appears that one can speak on race in a way that might irritate many people who have the ability to choose who gets published and promoted and who does not, or one can forget the issue of race altogether and let negative status quos remain, or one can speak to race in a way that entertains and allows those in power to see scholarship about race as nonthreatening and niche: therein lies the rub. All of these options are fraught with danger, personal sacrifice, and conflicting consequences. There is a constant reflection on the impossible choices of how one should proceed.

Herein lies the context from which I write this particular study. To constantly have such an awareness can be in itself exhausting. To know that your choices will be seen as performative or anti-performative can be challenging. It may be true that all forms of rhetoric have a bit of this constant awareness of audience and rhetorical performance involved in them, but due to the extremely long history of black people being stereotyped in stark binaries, in danger of and for offending or challenging those with power (and, thus, having to face the penalties of such a choice), and forced to perform and entertain in stereotypical, unflattering ways (particularly in

America), I believe that it is uniquely complicated for black authors and scholars to navigate such troubled waters, in and outside of the academic context.

So, why bring this discussion of the complex nature and ubiquitous awareness of performativity and anti-performativity up during the methods section of a dissertation? I do this to lay my cards on the table. I believe that even the choice of a particular research method can be seen as performative or anti-performative. While selecting the topic and the methodology with which to approach this study, I was keenly aware of this dilemma. My choice is to attempt the 32 impossible: to speak to two different groups throughout this study. One of the major goals of this study is to analyze the writing of some of the greatest thinkers and writers in black (and any other) culture concerning what they have to say about the subject of embodiment and how they see it impacting one’s existence. But the goal is not just to analyze, but also to let the words of each author speak; to show their insights in a way that does not impinge or overdetermine their concepts of embodiment.

Their insights will be laid out in their own words in the appendices (following copyright regulations), an approach which will hopefully lend clarity and understanding to individuals inside and outside of black culture. However, specifically, letting these authors communicate in their own words may be particularly liberating for black students and scholars who have not articulated a theory of embodiment and its implications for themselves. This could help those scholars and students recognize and articulate their own black embodiment and understand it in a broader context of black history and literature. As Toni Morrison discussed in The Pieces I Am

(Greenfield-Sanders, 2019), some of these black authors in this study may be addressing a black audience, while others may be addressing a white one. Regardless of the audience they have chosen to address, their words concerning the concept of embodiment will be shown in detail, in their own words, and this portion of the paper could speak to, and perhaps crystallize in new terms the personal experiences of those who also live life as/in black bodies.

The second goal of this study is to give those who teach students of color and do scholarship on embodiment in the field of rhetoric and writing a new group of voices to hear on this very vital topic, perhaps leading them to a new, fuller perspective. In the field of rhetoric and writing, those who teach students of color are predominantly white. Giving these educators and researchers a new set of scholarship on embodiment to analyze could hopefully give them a new 33 and richer perspective on how to understand and listen to black and minority students. As mentioned in Chapter 1, further investigating the relationship between race, color, and embodiment in the field of rhetoric and writing studies could have major implications for classroom interactions, the understanding of embodiment as a whole, and future scholarship on the concept of embodiment. How an individual distinguishes their own embodied experiences may have a significant impact on how one views and relates to the world. If color or race plays a major role in how one understands embodiment, writing studies educators would need to be mindful of and responsive to the various ways in which embodiment is experienced, understood, and expressed. A new perspective and understanding on the topic might also lead to a more antiracist, truly inclusive environment for all.

Hermeneutics as Methodology in its Relationship to AE

In T. Kenny Fountain’s work Rhetoric in the Flesh: Trained Vision, Technical Expertise, and the Gross Anatomy Lab, Fountain “ethnographically studies the anatomical dissection lab to explore how discourse, visuals, and embodiment merge in scientific training environments”

(LeMesurier, 2015, p. 85). Fountain’s use of ethnography as a method for analyzing how these anatomy students learned and grew to embody expertise makes sense because being immersed in the space and practices afforded Fountain the opportunity to see what the subjects of his study actually saw. Seeing what the students saw allowed Fountain, in a way, his own embodied understanding of how learning was taking place in the anatomy lab. As LeMesurier (2015) writes, “Fountain draws together insights about how multimodality and visuals function together to foster trained ways of seeing,” (p. 85) and Fountain may not have gleaned this insight had it not been for the specific ethnography method he chose. 34

The methodology Fountain used could be applied to the kind of study I am undertaking here. One way to approach this kind of research on black embodiment could be to start with a research method like ethnography which immerses the researcher in a group of people who experience black embodiment. I did not select ethnography, however, because I want to study what some of the most brilliant black minds of all time (such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Frantz Fanon) have to say on the subject, and to collect some of those thoughts in a single study. It could also be understandable for scholars to choose methods which have a history of pushing back against traditional interpretations of black and minority experiences for a study about black embodiment. For example, using postcolonial theory, or critical discourse analysis, or critical race theory as a methodology for a project on black embodiment would be possible and understandable. Such theories have been used in several projects on race and some on embodiment. All of these methodologies have their own affordances such as they could immerse me in a living community, or they could help take oppression into account regarding the black experience. Yet, none of them afford me the opportunity to analyze AE scholars with the methodology that I think fits their corpus the best.

Moreover, it can be the case that methods such as postcolonial theory, or critical discourse analysis, or critical race theory presuppose or superimpose intrinsic and/or extrinsic viewpoints on the work. That is to say, some of these methodologies have underlying epistemologies (which will be discussed at length in Chapter 4) which would imply or mandate some specific kinds of results from the study. That being said, the goal of the particular project I have conceived of is to find or let emerge a definition or multiple definitions of embodiment from the writings of

Africana existentialists. This is not to suggest that the research will be completely objective or free from my own point of view, for as I mentioned, I have a connection to the writings and 35 perspectives of those known as Africana existentialists. Nonetheless, by using the principles of a hermeneutic or Africana hermeneutic methodology, this project could better fulfill its objective of “letting develop/emerge” a theory of embodiment from Africana existentialism. That is, I will look in the texts for examples of how the authors formulate, describe, and discuss the black body in the works, and I will examine the impact their elaborations of embodiment has on the worldview of the characters in or the writers of the text.

In Chapter 3, I put forth a hermeneutic analysis of approximately three monographs which are historically classified as AE. The intent of the analysis is to uncover a theory (or theories) of embodiment from a uniquely black, AE perspective. Finding a clear, uniquely black view of embodiment is important because if race plays a major role in how some students and scholars understand embodiment, that perspective will have implications for future scholarship on embodiment and classroom interactions. Moreover, AE scholars and writers have had a long history of closely examining the connection between embodied experience and knowledge, and they are uniquely qualified to describe their understanding and experience of embodiment. Thus, if there can be a theory of embodiment induced from the works of AE intellectuals, it might expand and or complicate how rhetoricians and writing studies scholars comprehend and discuss the topic of embodiment.

Several methodologies were carefully considered for this study; however, as previously suggested, the methodology which best fits the task of this study is a hermeneutic/Africana hermeneutic analysis. A hermeneutic analysis takes into account both the subjectivity of the researcher and the objectivity of the historical context. Secondly, a hermeneutic analysis helps scholars analyze historical and philosophical texts which deal with existential questions, hence its long history with interpreting religious and philosophical texts. Since this study seeks to find a 36 theory of embodiment from the select works of Africana existentialist thinkers, hermeneutics is the best method for examining their existential claims.

Likewise, hermeneutics is a valuable research methodology when examining topics like black embodiment because it takes into account the subjectivity of the interpreter, and the

“meaning” and historical context of the text, while other methods can devalue one or more of the aforementioned components. As Strain (1993) puts it in “Toward a Hermeneutic Model of

Composition History,” “[R]ather than viewing historical events as links in a chain, a hermeneutic model regards an event as a locus through which other events are continuously woven” (p. 220).

Strain goes on to state that a hermeneutic “methodology relies, in part, on the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer in extending our notion of what might count as interpretable data to include a text, a work, a trace…” (p. 220). Hans-Georg Gadamer did a great deal to develop how scholars approach and interpret texts, but Serequeberhan’s concept of hermeneutics through the lens of Africana philosophy will also be invaluable during this study.

Hermeneutics as a Research Methodology

Before Serequeberhan’s insight into the connection between Africana philosophy and hermeneutics is further detailed, a brief explanation of how hermeneutics has emerged as a valuable method for interpreting philosophical texts like AE and why it fully fits the goal of this particular study should be explained. In many ways, the current view of hermeneutics is deeply connected and inexorably linked to phenomenology. Edmund Husserl, a German philosopher from the early 1900s, did field-changing research in phenomenology. As Garrett (2002) writes:

Phenomenology begins with Edmund Husserl’s proclamation of attending ‘to the things

themselves.’ This directive means that the practitioner of phenomenology requires

attention to lived experience as it is lived. The phenomenologist begins with bodies in 37

experience but uses the term ‘body’ in a way radically different from prior traditions such

as British empiricism, which claim to only examine bodily datum. (p. 7)

Garrett (2002) goes on to say that before Husserl’s version of phenomenology which takes into account the lived experience of the human subject, most European philosophers viewed the body in a dualistic way which was detached and ”void of any perspective in which they are lived and experienced by the human subject” (p. 7). Since Husserl’s reformation of phenomenology, this detached way of looking at the body has changed: “From Husserl to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and from Jean-Paul Sartre to Lewis Gordon, phenomenology attends to the meaning of bodies as lived and experienced” (Garrett, 2002, p. 7). This new Husseralian form of phenomenological perspective and its importance in evaluating one’s personal, lived experience is invaluable in this study.

Martin Heidegger, who was also a German philosopher and a student of Edmond

Husserl’s, did innovative work in the arena of phenomenology, he was one of the foremost voices in what could be considered the second wave of existentialism (although he did not consider himself an existentialist), and he was a vital voice in the resurgence of hermeneutics as a method for analyzing texts. This rebirth of hermeneutics, from a method for examining

religious texts to what F. D. E. Schleiermacher described as “a ‘collection of observations’ that

are specific to particular fields of discourse into a systematic set of procedures applicable to any

field,” (Warnke, 2016, par. 4) stems from the work of Heidegger, Schleiermacher, but most of

all, from Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Gadamer was one of Heidegger’s students, and he took up the mantel of hermeneutics

and expanded it. “Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer refocus away from the

procedures conducive to understanding and towards the conditions under which understanding 38 occurs: namely, in the context of our ongoing projects and purposes and the interrelations they involve” (Warnke, 2016, par. 1). Additionally, Gadamer’s project was an expansion or development of Heidegger’s theory of hermeneutics and fore-structure. Gadamer argues that due to the fact that human behavior and knowledge are linguistically and historically situated, a person’s understanding of the world is always enabled and constrained by that individual’s linguistic-historical tradition (Warnke, 2016). This means that the prejudices or prejudgments of that tradition are an inescapable and necessary part of individual’s attempts to understand themselves as well as other historical traditions. This does not, however, mean that people are trapped in a prison of language. Rather, Gadamer argues that a dialogue with the other encourages openness to the experience of other historical traditions. “The result is a fusion of horizons that transcends previous understandings” (Darity, 2008, p. 463). Thus, hermeneutics is not an imposition, it is a synthesis.

The key point illuminated here is that Gadamerian hermeneutics attempts to synthesize the linguistic tradition, the historical tradition, and the insights of the historian. There is a dialectic between the hermeneutic practitioner, the text, and the historical context. Gadamer maintains that he also conceives of understanding as “a divinatory process, a placing oneself within the whole framework of the author, an apprehension of the ‘inner origin’ of the composition of a work, a recreation of the creative act” (Warnke, 2006, par. 7). Therefore, a hermeneutic analysis not only seeks to understand the linguistic and historical context of a work, but it also attempts to value the current knowledge of the hermeneutic practitioner and views the practice of interpretation as a creative act.

This insight helps researchers escape the dichotomy of examinations which are either purely positivistic or purely relativistic. Both extremes are minimized in a successful 39

hermeneutic analysis. As Fuat Firat (1987) writes in “Historiography, Scientific Method, and

Exceptional Historical Events”:

Hermeneutics, therefore, understanding the past, or for that matter, the present, requires

that the ideology or the consciousness be considered. Without consciousness, and the

perspective that it instills onto the perceiver, no fact can be registered. Therefore, not

only the culture of who documented, but the culture of the user of the document must be

regarded. (p. 21)

Such a synthesis could be used to understand AE texts. Understanding the culture, philosophy, and context in which AE writers composed their work will be an integral part of the methodology of this study. Also, taking into account my own consciousness, my own understanding of what it means to live life in/as a black body will be essential to my

interpretation of the texts. Thus, the authors’ past and my present will both be closely regarded.

As touched on above, another reason that a hermeneutic analysis should be used for this

project is because it helps scholars evaluate historic and philosophical texts which have to do

with existential questions. Serequeberhan (1994), author of The Hermeneutics of African

Philosophy, writes, “From within the limits of this lived finitude, philosophical hermeneutics

explores the possibilities of mortal existence. In so doing it appropriates the ancient truth of myth

long lost to philosophy since the days of Plato” (p. 9). Here, Serequeberhan is asserting that

hermeneutics is uniquely situated to examine texts which exceed the limits of the analytic

tradition and extend into the realm of myth. Such an assertion of the value of hermeneutics and

its relationship to AE fits seamlessly with the previously stated goal of the theory of

existentialism writ large: to analyze texts and topics which often deal with questions beyond the

purely analytical, and to understand the past and the present (Fuat Firat, 1987). 40

Hermeneutics, unlike some other research methodologies, is well equipped to handle existential queries because historians have used it to examine questions of life, death, personal experience, and despair since its inception. Due to the fact that the corpus of Africana existentialism explicitly deals with existential questions, as Serequeberhan suggests, hermeneutics is an ideal perspective for interpreting such works. Lastly, hermeneutics is the best fit for this particular study because, as Warnke (2016) points out, “From the point of view of philosophical hermeneutics, the most important facet of our engagement with a text… is the way it encourages reflection on issues in which we take an interest…” (par. 35), and I am most deeply interested in how AE thinkers see the relationship between blackness and embodiment. Using hermeneutic principles will allow me the opportunity to clearly interpret philosophical texts, integrate my own personal insights and judgements regarding what it means to live as a black body, and I will examine if there are overarching principles or descriptions of the black embodied experience in the works.

Turning to the Texts

A provisional mapping schema could be to track and count how many times an AE writer mentions experiencing positive interactions due to their black body, or one could map how often the characters in the literature look at their own black bodies as problematic; however, I look at three specific things in the next chapter. First, I examine each work to see if there are overarching descriptions or key features of black embodiment in the texts. For example, does an author repeat (or illustrate) that “being black is psychologically onerous”? If so, I mark and explain how such a theme emerged from the text. Secondly, I analyze how many key features there are in each work. Lastly, I divide each mention of or reference to the body into specific groups by using Knoblauch’s (2012) three forms or classifications of embodiment which I 41 described in Chapter 1: embodied language, embodied knowledge, and embodied rhetoric.

Again, embodied language consist of “terms, metaphors, and analogies that reference, intentionally or not, the body itself,” embodied knowledge is “knowledge that is very clearly connected to the body,” and embodied rhetoric is the “purposeful effort by an author to represent aspects of embodiment within the text he or she is shaping” (pp. 51-58).

Each work receives a table (in the appendices) quoting the majority of their references to the black body and a pie chart showing a complete comparison between each use of embodied terminology. Breaking down the examples of embodiment in AE texts this way serves as a great bridge between the literature of AE and how rhetoric and writing scholars usually, according to

Knoblauch, use, divide, and understand the concept of embodiment. It also shows which kind of embodied terminology each author finds most useful or persuasive and if it is consistent between texts. If the authors do prefer a particular kind of embodied terminology, and there is consistency in the way black embodiment is described or illustrated, then I believe that a clear concept of AE embodiment will have emerged (in this sampling). This could lead to a new understanding or way of approaching conversations about black embodiment from the perspective of AE thinkers.

Three monographs which have traditionally been placed in the corpus of AE have been selected for this hermeneutic analysis of AE discourse on embodiment: 1) Black Skin, White

Masks by Frantz Fanon (which is 206 pages), 2) The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (128 pages), 3) The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (224 pages). Both Black Skin, White Masks and The

Fire Next Time are books of philosophical social commentary, whereas The Bluest Eye is a novel about black identity in the years after the Great Depression. Each of these works fit into the corpus of AE and/or deals with the primary themes that AE is concerned with such as dread, 42 anxiety, and the black embodied experience, and I give a clear overview of each book so as to contextualize the embodiment schema in Chapter 3.

Each monograph was analyzed and examined for explicit and implicit discussions of and references to embodiment. Beyond that, several questions will guide the analysis of each work:

What do these authors say about embodiment? What do the authors say about blackness in relation to embodiment? Are their descriptions of embodiment similar or dissimilar to the other books being analyzed? Is there an overall theory on embodiment that can be gleaned from the various texts? What does a theory (or multiple theories) of embodiment mean for how rhetoricians and writing studies scholars view and discuss embodiment in the field? Such questions should be a bridge between AE and the embodiment research that is currently taking place in rhetoric and writing studies.

This chapter served several functions. It has given background into my thinking on why I chose hermeneutics for this project and the aspects of performativity that come with such a selection. If selecting a method can be seen as performative, then a hermeneutic analysis fits best who I am and what I believe, and it will lead to an honest, authentic presentation. But not only do

I believe that hermeneutics fits perfectly with what I am attending to do in this study, I argue that a hermeneutic analysis is truly the best methodology for examining AE texts. In the next chapter, using hermeneutics, I look at each work to see if there are overarching descriptions or key features of black embodiment in the texts, analyze how many key features there are in each work, and divide each mention of or reference to the body into specific groups by using

Knoblauch’s (2012) three forms or classifications of embodiment in order to glean a concept of

AE embodiment. 43

CHAPTER 3: ANAZLYZING EMBODIMENT THROUGH AFRICANA EXISTENTIALISM

To think about rhetoric, we must think about bodies. (Johnson, et al., 2017, p. 49)

In Chapter 2, I described the ways in which personal positionality impacts methodology, and I explained why hermeneutics is the best methodology for this study. In this chapter, the goal is to use hermeneutic methodology to investigate three works which classify as Africana existentialism in order to find or induce a view or views on the concept of embodiment from the works. By a concept of embodiment, I mean how the authors formulate, describe and discuss the black body in the work, and what impact does the elaboration of embodiment have on the worldview of the characters in or the writers of the text. As Johnson (2017) writes, depending on

“the specific bodily makeup” of a certain being, “particular situations will provide for the organism what Gibson called ‘affordances’—patterns for meaningful perception and action relative to the nature of the [being’s] needs, and its purposive activity in the world that it inhabits” (p. 19). Thus, the body is deeply connected to perception, meaning-making practices, what Samuel (2000) calls one’s perspective of the world, and these complex interactions are explored in this chapter.

Furthermore, the strategy for examining the three works is to divide each reference to the black body into specific groups by using Knoblauch’s (2012) three embodiment classifications: embodied language, knowledge, and embodied rhetoric. I do this in order to connect how rhetoricians and writing studies scholars understand the ways in which embodied terminology is used in the field with how the authors use the different classifications of embodiment in their crucial works. I use direct quotes and references from the Africana existentialists works themselves (following copyright regulations). Separating the examples of embodiment this way 44

(in the appendices), I believe, serves as a clear and useful breakdown of how embodiment is used by black authors to describe the embodied experiences of black people. This strategy also makes it easier for the reader to see the most used and/or most valued kind of embodied terminology in each work. Once this analysis is finished, a theory or theories of AE embodiment will have emerged.

In “EEFR,” Maureen Johnson, Daisy Levy, Katie Manthey, and Maria Novotny (2019) detail how a new way of understanding rhetorical agency might be valuable in reconceiving how we view embodiment. They write, “But what if we could recontextualize bodies and experience the physical body as an entity with its own rhetorical agency? This re-vision can provide insights, experiences, and questions into areas like ethics, community, pedagogy, and meaning- making” (p. 39). This re-visualization of which they write is very similar to the goal of this study: to provide new insight into the experiences and meaning-making practices of black people. A recontextualization or expansion of embodiment can, as they suggest, provide insights into numerous avenues which rhetoric and writing scholars constantly traverse. What is more, the work goes on to explain how one of the authors, Katie Manthey, used information from several areas of study in order to theorize a new concept of rhetorical practice: “Katie [took] a methodological approach that combines dress studies, fat studies, and cultural rhetorics to theorize dress as forms of rhetorical practice” (p. 41). This kind of interdisciplinary fusion is very similar to what this study is attempting to do. Specifically, in the same way that Katie

Manthey used a feminist methodology to theorize dress as a form of rhetorical practice, I will use hermeneutic methodology in order to theorize blackness and/or black embodied experience through three works of Africana existentialism. 45

As mentioned above, each monograph was examined for explicit and implicit discussions of and references to embodiment. Several questions guide the analysis of each work:

 What do the authors say about blackness in relation to embodiment?

 Are their descriptions of embodiment similar or dissimilar to the other books

being analyzed?

 Is there an overall theory on embodiment that can be gleaned from the various

texts or multiple theories of embodiment?

 What does a theory or theories of embodiment mean for how rhetoricians and

writing studies scholars view and discuss embodiment in the field?

The questions posed should be a bridge between AE and the embodiment research that is currently taking place in rhetoric and writing studies. This chapter, following hermeneutic principles, will give a brief background for the historical context of AE writings on embodiment.

Secondly, the chapter looks at each of the three works in order to find key principles of black embodiment.

Abolitionist Rhetoric and AE Embodiment

AE Writings by US Authors

The authors whose works are analyzed are Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Frantz

Fanon. These authors were selected because 1) Their works are historically canonized as AE works (see, Gordon). 2) Each author speaks to what it means to be in/a black body in the works.

3) Each author comes from a different cultural positionality (one author is female, one author is queer, and one author is from a colonized European settlement), and this variation of backgrounds/identities will be useful in determining if there can be a single concept from such a diverse group of writers. To fully understand the context in which two of the three writers, Toni 46

Morrison and James Baldwin, wrote their monographs, it is vital to comprehend the lineage from which their works came. Therefore, it is important to give a brief synopsis of African American abolitionist rhetoric, for this is the rhetorical soil and context out of which their writings came.

Frantz Fanon’s work, on the other hand, came out of a much more French/European and

North African intellectual lineage, but his work, in its focus on otherness and alienation, also has a connection to black abolitionist rhetoric. As Strain (1993) indicates in “Toward a Hermeneutic

Model of Composition History,” it is important for hermeneutic practitioners to situate “a focal text [or texts] within larger social and cultural networks” (p. 220). To situate the Africana existentialist works that will be analyzed would be impossible without a brief overview of abolitionist rhetoric. Here, then, it is valuable to start with how abolitionism and its rhetoric grew out of the unforgettable horrors of American slavery.

During the time of slavery in America, black people were generally thought of as less than human beings. They were rarely given the opportunity to speak in public or civic forums, particularly in slave states. By those who supported the moral abomination of slavery, black people and their bodies were seen as property and tools. During this time, African Americans were not allowed to be educated. To learn to read and to write was a luxury most could not afford, and it was often against the law (Douglass, 2001, p. 35). The racist ideology on which

American chattel slavery was built can be clearly seen in the twisted and morally incoherent speech by George McDuffie (1835), a fervent white supremacist who argued that slavery was natural and completely compatible with Judeo-Christian teachings and values:

No human institution, in my opinion, is more manifestly consistent with the will of God,

than domestic slavery, and no one of his ordinances is written in more legible characters

than that which consigns the African race to this condition, as more conducive to their 47

own happiness, than any other of which they are susceptible. Whether we consult the

sacred Scriptures, or the lights of nature and reason, we shall find these truths as

abundantly apparent, as if written with a sunbeam in the heavens. (par. 1)

McDuffie’s racist rhetoric goes on to suggest that being a slave in America was somehow preferable to being free in Africa. This is the kind of vicious ideology that abolitionists and their rhetoric went up against. In the face of such immorality and irrationality, black writers and rhetors sought to battle for freedom, and the hearts and minds of the American public.

Even with countless cards stacked against them, African American abolitionist rhetoricians believed that telling their harrowing stories could persuade fair-minded white

Americans to reject the abomination of slavery and join the abolitionist movement. As Wilson

(2006) writes, “[T]he contribution of black abolitionists is profound… their rhetoric comprised the center of the U.S. antislavery struggle. They were the first to articulate the hypocrisy of early

American ‘liberty.’ They persuaded white abolitionists to abandon gradualism and colonization”

(par. 1). These rhetors were not just writing and speaking to tell their personal stories, they often spoke to expose the immoral and incoherent arguments of those who fought to keep them enslaved. As the passage suggests, their aim was to persuade.

The theory of black abolitionist rhetoric was to use argumentation and their traumatic and painful experiences of rape, physical beating and brutality, and daily oppression by their captors to illuminate the horrors of the institution and to push back against the myth that slavery was somehow benign, natural, or helpful. Wilson (2006) states, “The success of their rhetoric resulted largely from their status as living examples of slavery's cruelty and the potential of African

Americans once free. The testimony of escaped slaves led to a distinct literary genre, the slave narrative” (par. 6). Many slave narratives were widely read in and outside of America, and some 48 of the most famous narratives were written by and/or about some of the most persuasive abolitionist rhetors of the time. What is more, this idea that abolitionists rhetors were “living examples” shows a clear connection to the concept of embodiment. They were personified depictions of their people. These rhetors were embodied representatives of the difficulty which arose from being a black body in America.

Additionally, abolitionist rhetoric dates back to before America’s founding and extends to

Europe where writers and rhetors like Olaudah Equiano described the “miseries” of slavery to a public audience (Equiano, 2004, p. 6). Nonetheless, African American abolitionist rhetors, individuals like Fredrick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, had a dangerous and nearly insurmountable task. Telling their personal stories often placed them in jeopardy of being recaptured and placed back into slavery or killed by those who were desperate to maintain the status quo. Not only did African American abolitionists have to persuade people who were on the fence about slavery or those who supported the cruel institution, they often clashed with their own allies: “Black abolitionists recognized that white abolitionists sometimes viewed them as the

Other; therefore, their rhetoric often challenged the abolitionist community” (Wilson, 2006, par.

8). Thus, abolitionist rhetoric had to fight to persuade people on multiple fronts.

They had to persuade friends, foes, and those on the fence. Not only were they seen as other by the people who wanted to objectify, abuse, and even kill them, they were often seen as other by those who appeared to want to help them. This theme of otherness or othering appears to be at the heart of the connection between abolitionist rhetoric and Africana existentialist works. Despite the odds, these black abolitionists used rhetoric as an instrument for social change perhaps better than most. The stakes they faced in order to have the opportunity to speak 49 were higher than most. These thinkers, organizers, and orators used rhetoric as a tool of liberation from the bonds of chattel slavery.

Perhaps one of the best examples of abolitionist rhetoric came from Sojourner Truth.

Sojourner Truth was one of the best-known African American women orators of her time. She was born into slavery, but after slavery was abolished in New York, she supported herself by becoming a domestic servant. In 1843 she condemned slavery and renamed herself Sojourner

Truth. Although she never learned to read or write, she was able to influence large audiences of white people with her words; most notably her words had a great impact on white women as she convinced them that the rights for all people must be pursued at the same time (Covino &

Jolliffe, 1995, p. 90). Her life and speeches demonstrated that despite the horrors of slavery, many African Americans were brilliant, logical, witty, and immensely persuasive; traits their captors often denied but clearly feared.

In perhaps her most famous speech, “Ain’t I a Woman” (also known as “Aren’t I a

Woman”), Truth used her unique style of invention and argumentation to persuade her audience.

At the time, Truth’s speech was seen as moving and persuasive. As Jones-Royster (2012) puts it,

“As documented by media accounts of its own day, the rhetorical event, widely recognized now as the “Ain’t I a Woman” speech, was deemed successful.” Jones-Royster goes on to say that

“Most powerfully though, through the decades this speech has come to function instrumentally in race and gender discourses as a mythological display of equity, justice, and action” (p. 33).

Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech is a prime example of the power behind abolitionist rhetoric.

She used her personal experience to show both the power of her womanhood and the depravity and injustice brought about by slavery. Through the speech she also questioned the double standard in the way white women and black women were treated. The speech, although 50 autobiographical, spoke to the immorality of a whole nation. Speaking of her inability to read words—she was illiterate—but her ability to read the moral character of America, “Truth once told Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s children, ‘I don’t read much small stuff as letters, I read men and nations’” (Covino & Jolliffe, 1995, p. 90). Her speech had to speak to the duality of a nation, and it had to be convincing on many fronts in order to persuade audiences with multiple concerns.

Similar to the point made by Glenn (1997) in Rhetoric Retold, it took a very long time for rhetorical historians to grant abolitionists and their theories the credit and recognition they deserved. As Wilson (2006) explains: “Rarely have historians granted the black community such authority, although some of its leaders, like Frederick Douglass, have received considerable attention since the revisionist histories of the 1960s” (par. 1). As with many female rhetoricians, many of the abolitionists’ accomplishments are not spotlighted in mainstream text and/or history books. While abolitionist rhetoric may get a chapter or two in books on rhetorical history, the full story of abolitionist rhetors, writers, and the theories they used to debate and persuade are rarely in the foreground.

The abolitionists’ available means of persuasion could hardly be conceived of by many of the ancient Greek theorists who saw rhetoric as predominately a male and public undertaking. In ancient Greek culture, to be a citizen one had to be male, Greek, and own property. Furthermore, slavery was justified through cultural products like plays, and brutality toward the enslaved was the norm (Wrenhaven, 2012, pp. 1-8). Using one’s experience of being routinely beaten and brutalized could hardly be seen as good ethos in the Greek rhetorical schema. In the same way that some Greek philosophers like Aristotle believed that good and/or moral rhetoric should be able to defeat bad and/or immoral rhetoric, abolitionist rhetoricians believed in the same principle. Some of them bet their lives on this notion. Speaking harshly against the immorality of 51 slavery and the people who profited from and excused it took immense courage and was the hallmark of abolitionist rhetoric:

The story of an African-American rhetorical tradition not only depicts the transmutation

and enactment of African styles… but it specifies an American moral lack. Houston

Baker Jr. (1987) refers to an African-American discursive “sounding” that ingenuously

calls attention to such silences through an elaborate play of indirection and guile. (Watts,

2006, par. 3)

Abolitionist rhetors consistently pointed out that few other social ills could match the moral depravity of slavery. It is clear that black abolitionist rhetors believed that having moral character helped their arguments. Not only did character bolster their rhetoric, immoral character showed the flaws and inconsistency in the arguments and lack of integrity of their adversaries.

For instance, “In a remarkable letter to Thomas Jefferson dated 19 August 1791, the self-taught astronomer Benjamin Banneker quoted from the Declaration, chiding Jefferson for not extending his principles to people of color” (Wilson, 2006, par. 3). Banneker’s bold move was meant to expose the moral double standard set out in the Declaration of Independence. Abolitionists saw rhetoric as valuable because it could be used for the sake of moral good. They saw good rhetoric as not just a matter of persuasive ability, but they saw it as a matter of ethical value and character. However, abolitionists did not just believe such principles in theory: they lived them.

Additionally, many black abolitionist rhetors used the strategy of pointing out their othering in order to show that their society was unethical and/or not living up to its ideals. As

Wilson (2006) points out, “Frederick Douglass' ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July’ (5 July

1852) is perhaps the best-known black abolitionist speech… it illustrates how black identity 52 affected its invention. The text first positions Douglass as an outcast from America's civic community” (par. 9). In the incredible speech, Douglass (1852) courageously states:

What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Fellow-

citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? … Are

the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that

Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring

our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout

gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? (p. 4)

Douglass (1852) skillfully illustrates in “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?” that there are two

distinct groups: those who have a valid reason to celebrate the independence of the United States

of America, and those who do not: the other, the slave. He believes that this is highlighted by the

fact that he, a man who fled from the evil clutches of slavery, is being asked to give a celebratory

speech while slavery is still enshrined in law. In the speech, he goes on to point out how absurd it

would be to spend the duration of his time arguing whether or not black people are humans (he

gives countless examples of how clear this fact is by illustrating the incoherence and inconsistency of laws pointed at holding black people more accountable for crimes than white

people). He also adamantly points out the ludicrousness of debating if humans are drawn to or

deserve liberty, because, as he says: “You [Americans] have already declared it” (p. 5).

Again, it is clear that the idea of being the other or being othered by society at large

preceded and likely greatly influenced the Africana existentialist works that will be

hermeneutically analyzed below. Douglass’s speech shows that there is a constant need or

burden to address the fact that being in a black body puts one outside of or in direct opposition to

various social in-groups or enclaves of social power, and to explain how this fact impacts one’s 53

point of view. Truth also used a similar tactic of highlighting her otherness when she pointed out

her treatment compared to the treatment of white women. Truth (1851) said, “That man over

there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the

best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?” (par. 2). Pointing out their position as social outcasts, abolitionist rhetors highlighted the ubiquitous moral double standard at play in America.

Abolitionist rhetors often used their lack of normative ethos as a means of persuasion.

This brief overview of their rhetoric is, I believe, indispensable in understanding the cultural and philosophical linkage between abolitionist rhetoric and that of AE. As Warnke

(2016) writes, we “inherit literary traditions; they are part of our cultures and histories before we encounter or read any of the texts that compose them” (par. 11), and this is also true for the monographs below. This background lends us some cultural and rhetorical intertextuality which may be left out in the actual AE texts. This small review is not meant to show the comprehensive scope or impact of abolitionist rhetorical work, but it clearly shows that there is a familial connection between the two. Both groups deal with the concept of embodiment, both are clearly concerned with how the (black) body impacts rhetoric and the means of persuasion, and, as will be revealed below, both point out how being in a black body is comparable or, in many societies, equal to being “the other.” And they are also concerned with how this otherness impacts one’s overall existence. This short history of abolitionist rhetoric is the context and lineage from which

AE writers took up their pens. 54

Embodiment in The Bluest Eye

Introduction

The first work that was examined is The Bluest Eye, which is 206 pages long, and it is written by Toni Morrison. The groundbreaking novel “focuses on a forlorn young African

American girl, Pecola Breedlove, who believes that her devastating world will improve substantially if only she can wish and pray hard enough to make her brown eyes turn blue”

(Yohe, 2017, par. 45). At the time of the novel’s publication, Morrison was a mother of two, and she was working full-time as an editor while writing fiction in her spare time. Morrison moved to “Syracuse, New York, where she began her editing work… initially as a textbook editor and then as a senior editor at the New York City offices” (Yohe, 2017, par. 19), and she published her debut novel during this incredibly work-filled time. When the novel was released, it was seen as important work, and it garnered a book review in the New York Times (Frankel, 1970); although, in some circles the novel was seen as controversial due to “the rawness of the language and graphic sex” (Henly, 1993, p. 14).

The Bluest Eye is not autobiographical; however, it is set in Morrison’s hometown of

Lorain, Ohio, and the original idea for the novel came from a conversation she had as a child with one of her young friends. Speaking about the novel in the film Toni Morrison: The Pieces I

Am (Greenfield-Sanders, 2019), Morrison says: I remember an incident from my own childhood, when a very close friend of mine and I,

we were walking down the street. We were discussing whether God existed or not. And

she said he did not. And I said he did. But then she said she had proof. She said, ‘I had

been praying for two years for blue eyes, and he never gave me any.’

Morrison goes on to say that her friend was very black and pretty, so she was sad that the friend seemed to detest her eye color and herself. Morrison also describes how during the conception of 55 the book she was toiling with several important questions: “How does a child learn self-loathing?

Where does it come from? Who enables it? And how is it infectious?” (Greenfield-Sanders,

2019). These questions are explored and depicted throughout the work, and many of the answers to the aforementioned questions, my research suggests, boil down to being a black body/being black in a white dominated society.

Morrison also spoke a great deal about the impact that race/color played in her personal life, specifically during her childhood. One particular incident which she described on multiple occasions stands out. She tells the story in The Origin of Others (2017) of how her grandmother who was the matriarch of the family, a woman who was “black as tar” (p. 2) and very proud, insinuated that she and her sister were not black enough or possibly mixed race. She writes,

“Then, staring at my sister and me… she frowned, pointed her cane at us, and said, ‘These children have been tampered with’” (p. 2). Her grandmother’s statement was meant to denote that she was “not pure” black. This interaction appeared to have a major impact on her and her understanding of the importance of skin color in life. Skin color mattered to people, including black people, and her grandmother’s accusation appeared to have crystalized this fact for her.

Furthermore, Morrison experienced violent racism during her childhood: “One poignant example is that, one month when [her parents] were unable to pay the rent on their house, the hostile landlord tried to burn it down with the family inside” (Yohe, 2017, par. 12). It is clear from these events, events which spotlighted how race can impact life, proved to Morrison that being black was meaningful yet complicated, and often difficult.

During the late 1960s/early 1970s, the time in which The Bluest Eye was published,

American society was fractious, troubled, and reaching a boiling point. As Verney (2003) writes: In the late 1960s America was a country at unease with itself. In 1965 peace protesters

organized the first concerted demonstrations against the Vietnam War. By 1968 opinion 56

polls showed that the majority of Americans were against the conflict. Racial

confrontations spread outside the South. In the ‘five long hot summers’ of 1964–8 there

were serious urban disorders in some 200 American cities, most of which were in the

North or on the West Coast. (p. 68)

This is the cultural milieu leading up to and during Morrison’s writing of The Bluest Eye. This background, as well as the insight into Morrison’s own life, is important to note because, as stated previously, in hermeneutics there is a dialectic between the hermeneutic practitioner, the text, and the historical context. As Schleiermacher suggests, hermeneutics necessitates that practitioners “understand the context of an author’s expression or utterance and therefore understand it in terms of an author’s life and individuality. Interpreters need two ‘talents’: a talent for ‘research into language’ and a talent for ‘grasping … the individual’” (Warnke, 2016, par. 3). Thus, it is important to grasp at the outset of this analysis that Morrison’s life inspired questions into the nature of race and embodied race, and her work primarily dealt with questions of blackness. Her main goal as a writer was to bear “witness for her target audience, African

American readers” (Yohe, 2017, par. 1), and The Bluest Eye clearly fulfils that goal.

Another necessary task for seeking insight into embodiment in The Bluest Eye is to separate Morrison’s purely literary imagery from the actual accounts of or insights into the black body. In truth, this was a difficult task. Here is where the hermeneutic concept of the useful prejudgments of the interpreter comes into play. I have used my own understanding as a writer of literature such as the novel Soliloquy to distinguish when I believe Morrison is writing to give the reader tools and space to envision the fictional world she is creating and when she is writing to provide the reader her own philosophical insights into the broader world (on subjects like black embodiment). Here, my experience as a writer led me to believe that these are two distinct 57 uses of language and imagery in the work, and I used my own familiarity and understanding to distinguish the two in her text. Furthermore, the concept of embodied language is ambiguous and hard to apply to the novel. The specific language can apply to many other things like animals and inanimate objects. For example, humans, objects, and animals all “hold positions.” Because of this ambiguity, applying this concept was extremely difficult. Therefore, I only apply it to direct references to the “body,” not all possible analogies and metaphors.

Analysis and Findings

After reading each of the works fully, I went back through the texts and looked for every relevant reference to the black body. Using hermeneutic principles, I contextualized each reference in the larger framework of the monographs, and this broader reading led to clear key principles on black embodiment from the works. Moreover, I created tables and figures for each work which accounts for all relevant references to embodiment. For as I mentioned in Chapter 2, the goal is not just to analyze each work in order to find a clear concept or concepts of embodiment, but also to let the words of each author speak and to show their insights in a way that does not impinge or overdetermine their concepts of black embodiment. The tables do not show every quote from the texts (due to copyright regulations), but there are numerous references from each text. The tables split each reference to embodiment into Knoblauch’s three key embodied terminology categories in order to determine which type of embodied terminology is used the most and why.

My hermeneutic analysis of embodiment (meaning, how do the authors formulate, describe, and discuss the black body in the work, and what impact does their elaboration of embodiment mean for the worldview of the characters in the text and/or the author of the text) 58 argues that there are three key or foundational features of black embodiment (that is, living in/as a black body) in the work:

1) The white body is valued and praised in American culture (exemplified by Shirley

Temple in the novel), in contrast to the black body (which is often seen as ugly and loathsome).

2) Due to a mass American culture which deifies and promotes the preeminence and beauty of whiteness, many black people come to believe in and experience the devaluation of their own black bodies and themselves. Thus, being in/a black body can be psychologically onerous).

3) There is a phenomenological—"Being-in-the-world”—or experiential realness and impact to being black. And this, what I will term “experiential facticity2” of blackness, goes far beyond purely theoretical concepts and discussions of color, difference, and race.

These foundational features of black embodiment in The Bluest Eye are based on the notes I took on the novel, shown in Table 1 (in Appendix A), along with my analysis. An example of the first fundamental feature of black embodiment, The white body is valued and praised in American culture, in contrast to the black body (which is often seen as ugly and loathsome), can be seen through examining the character of Shirley Temple in the text. Shirley

Temple is indispensable in understanding how whiteness is praised (and blackness as beautiful is absent, and/or unworthy of praise). To the adolescent girls in the story, Temple is the ideal of young beauty, the ideal look all girls should aspire to. The love American culture—“Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world…” (Morrison, 1970, p.

20)—has for Temple and her appearance seems to have seeped into the black girls’ youthful

2 There is a quote by Harry Belafonte that expresses the concept of experiential facticity perfectly. Speaking of what it was like being a black man in a racist movie industry, he says, “Unless you’re of color, you will not truly understand the depth of what I am saying because it’s not something you can intellectually speak of. You had to be black in order to know what the subtleties are of that fact” (Frederick, 2018). 59 consciousnesses, almost subliminally or involuntarily. Pecola, in particular, has an affection and near obsession with Shirley Temple and her appearance. This fondness or obsession of Pecola’s causes a serious disturbance in the MacTeer household when she drinks three quarts of milk simply so she could have a reason to use the family’s Shirley Temple mug.

Conversely, the narrator, Claudia, hates Shirley Temple and white girls and dolls writ large because she did not understand what made them and whiteness so special. She destroyed her white dolls because, as she puts it:

[I wanted] to discover what eluded me: the secret of the magic [white girl] weaved on

others. What made people look at them and say, ‘Awwwww’, but not for me? The eye

slide of black women as they approached them on the street, and the possessive

gentleness of their touch as they handled them. (Morrison, 1970, pp. 22-23)

This passage, a passage which clearly and notably echoes the tone and sentiment of Truth’s

“Ain’t I a Woman” speech, speaks to the notion in the novel that the white body, specifically

Shirley Temple, is valued and praised in American culture.

But despite Claudia’s violent dislike for white dolls and white girls, she says that eventually, through a sense of shame (and likely cultural inculcation), “I learned much later to worship [Shirley Temple]” (p. 23). Therefore, going back to the first questions Morrison had in mind when she began writing the book, “How does a child learn self-loathing? Where does it come from?”, the answer is that many of the characters in the book learn it from mass American culture. They come to learn to hate themselves because they are steeped in a culture, TV shows, dolls, and even drinking mugs with white faces, which elevates or deifies whiteness and ignores, erases, and often vilifies blackness. 60

Next, the second fundamental feature of black embodiment in the work, Due to a mass

American culture which deifies and promotes the preeminence and beauty of whiteness, many black people come to believe in and experience the devaluation of their own black bodies and themselves. Thus, being in/a black body can be psychologically onerous, can be seen in the

Breedloves’ unwavering belief that they were all ugly. Morrison (1970) writes:

The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty

adjusting to the cutbacks at the plant. They lived there because they were poor and black,

and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly. (p. 38)

The phrase “believed they were ugly” connotes a sense of misconception or falseness concerning their ugliness. This is not only a brilliantly careful use of language, but it gets to the point that they are being deceived or lied to by someone or something into believing in this false narrative regarding their appearances, their black bodies. Morrison (1970) goes on to write, “No one could have convinced them that they were not relentlessly and aggressively ugly… it was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one of them a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they… accepted it without question” (pp. 38-39). Where did their complete conviction come from? Again, it appears to have come from American mass culture, the “all-knowing master” of omnipresent culture. Thus, the answer to the questions “Who enables it? And how is it infectious?” are mass culture enables it and not having the recourse to refuse or the tools to push back against that mass narrative makes it infectious.

The Breedloves were, therefore, pressurized or indoctrinated into believing that they were ugly and valueless. This belief in their ugliness and lack of worth was psychologically taxing, and it caused a of kind of familial depression which spilled out in the destructive and indifferent actions of various members of the family. Despite the fact that there are numerous examples in 61

the story of how being black led to an experience of the devaluation of self, and how individuals

and families felt psychologically taxed by this devaluation, this example alone points to the

second principle of black embodiment in The Bluest Eye.

Lastly, the third fundamental feature of black embodiment in the work, There is a phenomenological or experiential realness and impact to being black. And this experiential facticity of being black goes far beyond purely theoretical concepts and discussions of color, difference, and race, can be seen in Morrison’s description of Pecola’s blackness. During an interaction with a white male shopkeeper, Pecola realizes that the shopkeeper does not recognize her as a human being, a person worthy of attention (Morrison, 1970, p. 48). As she tries to converse with him and he refuses to meet her eyes, she comes to realize that this lack of acknowledgement or consideration is not new, she has experienced it many times before. This lack of human recognition is due to her blackness, and the exchange leads Pecola to recognize that the only thing about her that is invariable and fixed is her blackness.

Blackness is the most permanent feature of Pecola’s identity. Morrison (1970) writes,

“So. The distaste must be for her, her blackness. All things in her are flux and anticipation. But her blackness is static and dread” (p. 49). The importance of this passage cannot be overstated.

The idea that Pecola’s blackness is static is telling and should not be passed over. This is what is meant by experiential facticity; Pecola experiences, feels, lives her blackness as an incontrovertible, fundamental fact of her identity. Her blackness is experienced as the quality of being a fact. Thus, there is a facticity to Pecola’s embodied experience, and it cannot be intellectually explained away by mere theories. 62

The Main Form of Embodied Terminology

The main form of embodiment in the work is embodied rhetoric (see Figure 1 and Table

1). Once more, embodied rhetoric is “clearly the purposeful effort by an author to represent aspects of embodiment within the text he or she is shaping… [and] the author attempts to decipher how these ‘material circumstances’ (Royster 228) affect how he or she understands the world” (Knoblauch, 2012, p. 57). Despite the fact that The Bluest Eye is a work of fiction,

Morrison clearly states truths about what she knows concerning the black experience of the world. The book is placed in her hometown, the idea for the work came out of an actual conversation she had as a child (and the conversation inspired philosophical questions in her mind about blackness, culture, and the infectiousness of self-loathing), so her personal positionality in the work appears clear. Moreover, Morrison’s book depicts at length the

“material circumstances” through which the self-loathing of black youths grow, and these—not theoretical—but material circumstances speak to what I see as a misunderstood or simply ignored notion in many discussions of color or race: the experiential facticity or lived experience of blackness.

Figure 1

Total References to Embodied Terminology in The Bluest Eye 63

Embodiment in The Fire Next Time

Introduction

The Fire Next Time (1962), written by James Baldwin, is a short (106 page) book which is part autobiography, part social analysis of American culture. In the work, James Baldwin tells the story of his youth, his insights as an adult, and his view on what it means to be black in

America. He gives his philosophical perspective into the social burden and inequality that black people (particularly black males) experience in American society. Published eight years before

The Bluest Eye, Baldwin fearlessly and openly writes about how, as a young boy, he realized the burden of being black in America. Growing up in Harlem in the 1930s and 40s, Baldwin, witnessed crime, violence, and police brutality. He writes about witnessing a soapbox preacher from the Nation of Islam, surrounded by a large crowd of black people. He rarely ever paid attention to these street preachers, but the reaction of the police who were standing back from the crowd grabbed his attention: the cops were afraid. “I might have pitied them if I had not found myself in their hands so often and discovered, through ugly experience, what they were like when they held the power and what they were like when you held the power” (Baldwin, 1962, p.

48). Indeed, the topic of power is a major theme throughout the book, and how blackness and whiteness interact in the dynamic interplay of power is one of his main foci.

Baldwin writes about how, as a child he, took refuge from the police and the pressure and hopelessness of the streets in the church. Young, smart, and ambitious, Baldwin found his niche in the church as a child preacher. Being a young preacher not only kept him off the streets and away from the pimps and prostitutes who routinely propositioned him on his way home from school, it accomplished many other personal ambitions. It allowed him to outshine and escape 64 his abusive father, it allowed him to read and write veraciously outside the rigged, unwinnable game of school, and it helped him master the arts of communication and persuasion.

Nevertheless, he eventually became disillusioned with the church, and he began to realize just how tenuous his salvation and freedom really were. Due to the fact that around this time, as he says, “School began to reveal itself, therefore, as a child’s game that one could not win, and

[black] boys dropped out of school and went to work” (Baldwin, 1962, p. 18), his options were limited, and his prospects for the future were scarce. Baldwin had a revelation that he too could become a criminal at any moment, seemingly without volition. He became aware that he was using the church as a haven from the real world, a world that habitually contradicted itself, a world that was rigged on all levels, a world which saw black people as little more than a serious problem.

Baldwin brilliantly recounts the summer when he became aware of the perils of his own predicament, aware that the line between crime and freedom were not as far apart as he expected:

It turned out, then, that summer, that the moral barriers that I had supposed to exist

between me and the dangers of a criminal career were so tenuous as to be nearly

nonexistent… Crime became real, for example—for the first time—not as a possibility

but as the possibility. (p. 21)

This passage sheds light on what Baldwin thought about how trapped many economically disadvantaged African American males feel. One is always walking under the shadow of so- called criminality, one’s labor is never enough to truly get ahead, and even with money, one may never be able to acquire enough cultural capital to be free from one’s cultural caste and/or color.

More than simply an autobiographical account, Baldwin (1962) gives philosophical insights into what it is like to be black in American society. He describes, at length, how white 65 culture purposefully and unwittingly oppresses and destroys black people. Baldwin writes that the American structure of power has “destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it” (p. 5). Baldwin believes that this destruction of black lives is done in order to maintain power and cultural dominance, and he gives numerous personal examples to support his belief, and he also explains the mechanisms, strategies, and consequences of such an institution of power.

Analysis and Findings

My examination of The Fire Next Time argues that there are three key/foundational features of black embodiment in the work.

1) American/Western society attempts to, wittingly and sometimes unwittingly, “limit” and “destroy” people with black bodies in order to maintain power.

2) Due to an American/Western culture which opposes and oppresses black people, and attempts to emasculates black men, many African Americans come to believe in and experience the devaluation of their own black bodies and themselves. Thus, being in/a black body can be psychologically onerous.

3) Although he sees “color” or “race” as being socially manufactured, there is a phenomenological or experiential realness and impact to being black. And this experiential facticity of blackness goes far beyond purely theoretical concepts and discussions of color, difference, and race.

These foundational features of black embodiment in The Fire Next Time are based on the notes I took on the work, shown in Table 2 (in Appendix B), along with my analysis. An example of the first fundamental feature of black embodiment, American/Western culture attempts to, wittingly and sometimes unwittingly, “limit” and “destroy” people with black bodies 66 in order to maintain power, can be seen from the outset of the work. Baldwin starts the book with a letter to his nephew, and the letter is meant to dissuade him from believing what the white world has to say about him. He tells his nephew, “You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever” (p. 7), and Baldwin states that if his nephew believes what white culture has to say about him, it could ruin him in the same way it destroyed his grandfather and father. Baldwin goes on to write: “The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you” (p. 8). This quote is extremely similar to Morrison’s (1970) passage about how “[a]dults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world…,” cultural details and symbols, led the young black girls in The Bluest Eye to see the appearance of whiteness as superior or more appealing than that of blackness (p. 20). Hence, both Baldwin and Morrison see American culture being used as a means to pressurize, limit, and damage black people in order to maintain a regime of power.

The second fundamental feature of black embodiment in the work, Due to an

American/Western culture which opposes and oppresses black people, and attempts to emasculates black men, many African Americans come to believe in and experience the devaluation of their own black bodies and themselves. Thus, being in/a black body can be psychologically onerous, can be seen when Baldwin describes the life of his father. In the letter to his nephew, Baldwin describes how his father was defeated by the nefarious narratives white culture put forth about him/black people in general.

Speaking of his father to his nephew, he writes, “Well, [your grandfather] is dead, he never saw you, and he had a terrible life; he was defeated long before he died because, at the 67 bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him” (1962, p. 4). Being defeated, here, means being psychologically and emotionally conquered by narratives put forth by mass culture in America. Yet again, this is extremely similar to Morrison’s point about the

Breedlove family’s acceptance of the narrative of their unreal ugliness. Both the Breedloves and

Baldwin’s father experienced the devaluation of their black selves due to negative and omnipresent narratives. Furthermore, on the topic of how such a devaluation happens, Baldwin explicitly writes that black people in America “are taught really to despise themselves from the moment their eyes open on the world” (p. 25). Accordingly, it is clear that Baldwin believes that trusting or internalizing what white culture has to say about black people can have a terrible and defeating impact on what such people think about themselves and their reality. Nonetheless, he also believes that black people have power because white culture’s will to dominate comes out of fear; fear of losing the falseness of their superiority, and he believes that black people, due to their experience with suffering, have the capacity to know themselves and know joy on the deepest level.

Lastly, the third fundamental feature of black embodiment in the work, Although he sees

“color” or “race” as being socially manufactured, there is a phenomenological or experiential realness and impact to being black. And this experiential facticity of blackness goes far beyond purely theoretical concepts and discussions of color, difference, and race, can be seen in the dueling ways in which he describes the reality of his blackness. On the one hand, in various sections of the work, he clearly states that the value placed on blackness or “color” has been manufactured or constructed (as an opposition to whiteness). For example, Baldwin (1962) writes: 68

For the sake of one’s children, in order to minimize the bill that they must pay, one must

be careful not to take refuge in any delusion—and the value placed on the color of the

skin is always and everywhere and forever a delusion. I know that what I am asking is

impossible. (p. 104)

The first half of this passage points to the speciousness of the value of color (which is not the

same as saying there is no such thing as color). He is asserting, in short, that we are all just humans, the same.

On the other hand, though, the second part of this passage speaks to the difference between the theory of race or color and the reality of living in a black body which one feels experientially (and the distinction between theory and lived experience, which I find lacking in these kinds of debates). Although he sees, theoretically, that the value of color is a “delusion,” it is “impossible” to see it as such in practice. It is impossible because i n practice, in lived reality, color has experientially empirical significance. In the lived reality of being black, as he says, the white world “has innumerable ways of making this difference known and felt and feared” (p. 4).

As has been demonstrated in the previous chapters, “felt” and “feared” are embodied ways of knowing, and this embodied or experiential understanding goes beyond purely intellectual ways of understanding race and/or color. Consequently, he seems to be saying two things: 1) the value of color should not matter because it is socially constructed, and 2) Color matters more than the vast majority of things in American and Western society, and this has extremely significant experiential consequences for those with black bodies. This distinction between what is in theory and what is in phenomenological reality is rarely if ever made, resolved, or stated clearly in rhetoric and writing studies, and I attempted to do so in Chapter 4. 69

The Main Form of Embodied Terminology

The main form of embodiment in the work is that of embodied rhetoric see Figure 2 (and

Table 2 in Appendix B). Due to the work being mainly autobiographical, Baldwin talks at length

about how his material circumstances impact what he knows about the world. He gestures to his

body and his life in the work (Knoblauch, 2012, p. 58). As Hindman (2002) believes, embodied

knowledge is employed “by calling to the surface at least some of the associations that [our] thinking passes through, associations evoked by [our] gender, race, class, sexual orientation, politics, and so on” (as cited in Knoblauch, p. 104), and this is what Baldwin does throughout the entirety of the work. He spotlights the connection between his race/color with his understanding of politics, culture, and existence. The book is at its core about what is means to be in a black body in America, and this speaks to the value he places on his own lived experience for understanding and meaning-making. He makes sense of the world as a black man, and this is important to acknowledge when trying to understand how embodiment works in AE.

Figure 2

Total References to Embodied Terminology in The Fire Next Time 70

Embodiment in Black Skin, White Masks

Introduction

Black Skin, White Masks (1952), like The Fire Next Time, is a short (206 page) work which is part autobiography and social commentary. The work is also a psychoanalytic analysis of the black experience in colonized territories. Frantz Fanon was an activist, revolutionary, social philosopher, psychoanalyst, and one of the primary figures in postcolonial philosophy. He was born in 1925 in Fort-de-France, Martinique (Appiah, as cited in Fanon, 1952, p. vii). Being born black in a colonized French territory had a major impact on how he saw the relationship between black and white peoples, and it influenced his writings, work, and his activism throughout his life. In a book entitled Frantz Fanon, My Brother: Doctor, Playwright,

Revolutionary, Joby Fanon (2014) describes Frantz as brilliant, passionate, and “obsessed with death,” among other things.

His brother writes, “If I were to try to sum up Frantz in one line, I would say that his entire life was a perpetual quest to elevate his actions to the height of his words and thoughts” (p.

5). Frantz’s thoughts were deep and fierce, and his fearlessness extended to his life, and it was clear that he was a fighter. Joby Fanon writes, “He was labeled a dangerous little vagabond from the day when, set upon by three brothers who were beating him to a pulp, he produced his pencil sharpener, a Gillette razor blade, and landed several cuts on the oldest of the three. There was a great scandal” (p. 13). He did not only fight against bullies, however; he fought against cultural power structures that attempted to relegate black men to second or third class human beings, he fought for “the equity of man in the world” (p. 90), and he fought for Algerian liberation.

Aside from being a fighter, Fanon was a genius. In his youth, he skipped ahead in school because he was quote “bored stiff” with the curriculum (J. Fanon, 2014, p. 13). At university in 71

Lyon, “Frantz studied for three degrees: a doctorate in medicine, a bachelor in arts [sic] and a bachelor in sociology,” he had his own medical practice in Le Valuclin, Martinique (J. Fanon,

2014, pp. 44-67), and eventually “he was appointed to run the psychiatry department of the

Blida-Joinville hospital in Algeria” at the age of twenty-eight (Appiah, as cited in Fanon, 1952, p. vii). During his studies in France, Fanon encountered racism from some of his classmates, and his thesis which became Black Skin, White Masks (originally titled Essay on the De-alienation of the Black Man) was rejected by the University of Lyon (J. Fanon, 2014, p. 63). It is clear that his immense intellect activated his philosophy, and his various encounters with racism and colonialism occupied his work.

Fanon’s connection to European existentialism is closer than that of Morrison and

Baldwin. Frantz was personally acquainted with Sartre and his work, and Sartre wrote an introduction for The Wretched of the Earth. Many scholars, such as Haddour (2019), think that

Fanon’s work should be understood as being “predicated on Sartreanism” (p. 33). And although there are numerous works which interpret Fanon’s thought through the lens of Hegelian or

Sartrian philosophy, this will not be the case for this study. In this work, I am not interpreting

Fanon’s philosophy (per se), I am examining his rhetoric, specifically what he says about the black body. This is a clear and important distinction. Nonetheless, one useful quote by Haddour

(2019) from Frantz Fanon, Postcolonialism and the Ethics of Difference, is that “‘Fanon clearly concurs with Merleau-Ponty’s insight that the self and the world are constructed through the work of the schema… but finds Merleau-Ponty’s conceptual frame inadequate to apprehend the facticity of blackness” (p. 49).

This inadequacy of the frame is why I have documented the majority of the statements

Fanon and the other authors make about the black body, why I will interpret Fanon’s words 72 about black embodiment without the lens of European philosophers, and why I have attempted not to over intellectualize what the writers in this study have to say about the black experience.

Moreover, this is why this study and method of interrogation are needed: because various intellectual approaches often do not clearly encounter black experience and/or experiential facticity.

Analysis and Findings

My analysis of Black Skin, White Masks asserts that there are, again, three key or foundational features of black embodiment in the work:

1) Whiteness and the white body are valued in Western, colonized culture, as opposed to the black body (which is often seen as “problematic”).

2) Due to a Western/colonial culture which opposes and oppresses black people, many individuals come to believe in and experience the devaluation of their own black bodies and themselves. Thus, being in/a black body can be psychologically onerous.

3) There is a phenomenological or experiential realness and impact to being black. And this experiential facticity of blackness goes far beyond purely theoretical concepts and discussions of color, difference, and race.

These foundational features of black embodiment in Black Skin, White Masks are based on the notes I took, shown in Table 3 (in Appendix C), along with my analysis. Firstly, an example of one fundamental feature of black embodiment, Whiteness and the white body is valued in Western, colonized culture, as opposed to the black body (which is often seen as

“problematic”), can be seen in Fanon’s account of the role culture plays in the problematizing of the black body. In a statement that is strikingly similar to that of Morrison’s concerning how white culture elevates whiteness (and, therefore, denigrates or problematizes blackness), Fanon 73 describes this issue in extremely similar ways. Whereas, Morrison (1970) points out the influence “[a]dults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world…” has on young black girls’ idea of beauty (p. 20), Fanon (1952) points to how cultural products such as books, comics, and films influence the mind of young black colonized children (p. 17).

Fanon (1952) writes, “[W]e read white books and we gradually assimilate the prejudices, the myths and the folklore” (p. 168). Moreover, Fanon’s point echoes Baldwin (1962) when he explains to his nephew that “[t]he details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you” (p. 8). Fanon goes on to state:

In the magazines the Wolf, the Devil, the Evil Spirit, the Bad Man, the Savage are always

symbolized by Negroes or Indians; since there is always identification with the victor, the

little Negro, quite as easily as the little white boy, becomes an explorer, an adventurer, a

missionary “who faces the danger of being eaten by the wicked Negroes.” (p. 124)

Fanon and the other authors are in unison regarding how a hierarchy of color is created: mass culture is the culprit. Due to these cultural products, symbols, and performances, from an early age, black people (and white people) come to believe that there is a hierarchy of race and/or color. And this hierarchy is manufactured by and maintained through mass cultural products, myths, symbols, and performances.

Fanon (1952) goes on to examine how, due to culture, many people see blackness and whiteness “as two poles of the world, poles in perpetual conflict” (p. 27). This is where the concept of other or othering becomes most apparent. Seeing whiteness as good and the black body as bad is meant to alienate, thus, making blackness problematic. As Fanon (1952), quoting

Jean Veneuse, writes: 74

To be “the Other” is to always feel in an uncomfortable position, to be on one’s guard, to

be prepared to be rejected and… unconsciously do everything that’s needed to bring

about the anticipated catastrophe. (p. 57)

This creation of “the Other” is meant to, as Sartre (1947/2007) asserts, “make people ashamed of their existence” (p. 59) or to make blackness be felt as a stain (p. 63). The creation of the other is meant to make whiteness the protagonist and blackness the antagonist in a mass cultural production or narrative. Although Fanon sees Veneuse as having an individual neurosis, this feeling of otherness applies to many black people who live in predominantly white societies.

Secondly, another fundamental feature of black embodiment in the work, Due to a

Western/colonial culture which opposes and oppresses black people, many black individuals come to believe in and experience the devaluation of their own black bodies and themselves.

Thus, being in/a black body can be psychologically onerous, can be seen in Fanon’s description of how colonialism has negatively impacted the black consciousness. As a trained psychoanalyst,

Fanon (1952) was keenly situated to examine how dominant culture and colonialism effected the psyche of black people:

It would be easy to prove and have acknowledged that the black man is equal to the white

man. But that is not our purpose. What we are striving for is to liberate the black man

from the arsenal of complexes that germinate in a colonial situation. (p. 14)

For Fanon, these “complexes” which arise from having one’s original culture intentionally destroyed include feelings of inferiority, anger, and a longing for a supposed freedom that whiteness affords. Nonetheless, he believes that this, what he calls “psychic alienation,” can and should be resolved. Fanon (1952) writes that the “black man has to confront a myth—a deep— rooted myth. The black man is unaware of it as long as he lives among his own people; but at the 75 first white gaze, he feels the weight of his melanin” (p. 128). Again, the theme of otherness arises. The black man has to fight against the culturally created myth that blackness is otherness or somehow inferior to whiteness. He goes on to say, “[W]e said rather too quickly that the black man feels inferior. The truth is that he is made to feel inferior” (Fanon, 1952, p. 127). This distinction cannot be overlooked. To constantly have to fight back against “all the world” and

“all the details and symbols of the world” (Morrison, Baldwin) is alienating and psychologically taxing.

Lastly, the third fundamental feature of black embodiment in the work, There is a phenomenological or experiential realness and impact to being black. And this experiential facticity of blackness goes far beyond purely theoretical concepts and discussions of color, difference, and race, can be seen in his focus on physical existence and the lived experience.

Although much of Fanon’s writing is semi-poetic and sometimes contradictory, it is clear that at the root of this rhetoric the experience of being black is paramount. Despite the fact that Fanon, like Baldwin, believes that the value placed on color is created in order to maintain cultural status quos, he insists in the unambiguity of the black bodily experience: “But the black man is attached in his corporeality. It is his tangible personality that his lynched. It is his actual being that is dangerous,” and he states that people attempt “imprisoning [the black man] as the eternal victim of his own essence, of a visible appearance for which he is not responsible” (p. 142, p.

18).

Fanon goes on to write, “The universal situation of the black man is ambiguous, but this is resolved in his physical existence… wherever he goes, the black man remains a black man”

(Fanon, 1952, p. 150). This statement is extremely similar to Morrison’s (1970) declaration that

“[a]ll things in [Pecola] are flux and anticipation. But her blackness is static and dread” (p. 49). 76

The similarities between these descriptions is astonishing. Both authors clearly see

components of being in a black body as irrefutable and/or irrevocable. Furthermore, one of the

most important quotes in Black Skin, White Masks concerns the inability of many to grasp the lived experience of black people, and he points to the inadequacy of theory or the unwillingness of philosophies and philosophers to comprehend the experiential facticity of the black body.

Fanon (1952) writes, “Ontology does not allow us to understand the being of the black man, since it ignores the lived experience” (p. 90). Thus, if one wants to truly talk about embodiment in a comprehensive or inclusive way, the lived experience of the black body cannot be ignored.

The Main Form of Embodied Terminology

As with Morrison and Baldwin, the main form of embodiment in Fanon’s work is that of embodied rhetoric (see Figure 3 and Table 3). Like Baldwin, Fanon talks at length about how his material circumstances (as a colonized subject and) as a black man impacted what he knows about the world. Yet, he goes even further by analyzing, through his understanding of philosophy, culture, and psychoanalysis, the psychological impact that being black and a white society has on the mind. Fanon calls to the surface the relationship between being black, alienation, colonialism, language, and more. And he did not only witness these psychological

“complexes” as a doctor, he experienced them as a black man who had to feel the weight of his own melanin. Just like The Fire Next Time, Black Skin, White Masks is at its essence about what it means to be in a black body. Fanon makes sense of the world as a black man in a colonized culture, and he puts a premium on understanding lived experience. 77

Figure 3

Total References to Embodied Terminology in Black Skin, White Masks

This chapter explored how important it is to understand AE in relation to or as being in the linage of an abolitionist rhetoric which constructed the social and cultural background and backdrop of the three works. Additionally, this chapter analyzed The Bluest Eye, The Fire Next

Time, and Black Skin, White Masks in order to find a concept or concepts of embodiment in the works. There were three findings worthy of note. Firstly, I found in each work that there were key principles which illuminated and outlined what it felt like and meant to be a black body.

Secondly, I found that the main form of embodied terminology was consistent among each of the works: embodied rhetoric. And thirdly, I found that, taken together, my research demonstrates that there is a consistent and coherent concept of embodiment in and among each of the three works which were examined. In Chapter 4, we turn to the philosophical implications which emerge from this analysis of embodiment in AE. 78

CHAPTER 4: A CONCEPT OF BLACK EMBODIMENT FROM AFRICANA EXISTENTIALISM AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS AND

IMPLICATIONS FOR RHETORIC AND WRITING STUDIES

Ontology does not allow us to understand the being of the black man, since it ignores the lived experience. -Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

A Concept of Embodiment in AE

Based on the analysis done in Chapter 3, I aver that there is a cohesive concept of embodiment in and amongst all three of the works that were analyzed. All three point to a context in which blackness exists as opposition, in contrast to the narratives, materials, and symbols put forth by Western mass culture and its products. All three describe how these cultural products (and the overall cultural context) can negatively impact many people who exist in/as black bodies, and each work points to the importance and irreducibility of experiential facticity.

Due to this clear concept of black embodiment in these works of AE, I believe that it is important for rhetoric and writing scholars to rethink and/or expand their view of how people see their embodied existence and the circumstances under which they derive their embodied understanding. What is more, from a close look at my research in the previous chapter, it is necessary to see that there are specific kinds of phenomenological experiences which lead to unique suppositions about reality and experiential facticity. Over intellectualizing or ignoring these expressions of embodiment, I feel, can have profoundly negative effects on cross-cultural communication, classroom interactions, and scholarship. This chapter will give a clear outline for the concept of embodiment gleaned from the analysis in Chapter 3. This chapter will also take up how different views of epistemology (ontology and ideology) might underlie and complicate discussions regarding embodiment. 79

Like Water, Like Culture: The Omnipresence of Culture

In the analysis of The Bluest Eye, The Fire Next Time, and Black Skin, White Masks, all of the key features of embodiment were strikingly and demonstrably similar. In each work, the first key feature deals with how culture works to create a hierarchy of color (Fanon, 1952, p. 64) and division, while the second key feature points to how such a culture can negatively impact the psyche of black people. However, upon a closer look, these first two features are almost indivisible. The first feature for each author is as follows. For Morrison: The white body is valued and praised in American culture, in contrast to the black body (which is often seen as ugly and loathsome). For Baldwin: American/Western society attempts to, wittingly and sometimes unwittingly, “limit” and “destroy” people with black bodies (in order to maintain power). And for Fanon: Whiteness and the white body is valued in Western, colonized culture, as opposed to the black body (which is often seen as “problematic”). Each of these authors point to the role culture plays in shaping black embodied experience.

The second feature in each work is almost identical: Due to an American/Western culture which opposes and oppresses black people (and attempts to emasculate black men), many black people come to believe in and experience the devaluation of their own black bodies and themselves. Thus, being in/a black body can be psychologically onerous. Features one and two are two sides of the same coin, because as Fanon (1952) writes, blackness is always seen as in contrast to something else: “In the white world… the image of one’s [black] body is solely negating” (p. 90). Namely, the black body is in negation to (the culture and narratives of) whiteness. 80

There is a short parable which could make the near indivisibility of the first two features of black embodied experience in the AE works clear. In a famous commencement speech to

Kenyon College, the speaker, David Foster Wallace (2005), begins with this short story:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish

swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How's the water?”

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at

the other and goes “What the hell is water?" (par. 1)

This short tale is meant to point out “that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about” (Foster Wallace, 2005, par. 1), and I believe that the parable can also illuminate how culture and black embodiment are inseparable. In the same way that the young fish were unaware of water because of its ubiquity which as always surrounded them, black people like Pecola and the girls from The Bluest Eye are unaware of the ubiquity of white culture in relation to their own understanding of their embodied existence. Once more, as

Baldwin (1962) states: black people in America “are taught really to despise themselves from the moment their eyes open on the world” (p. 25), and culture is the mechanism by which it can happen.

In the same way that it would be inadequate to talk about the life of fish without accounting for water, it is inadequate or impossible to understand the lived experience of black people without accounting for Western mass culture and its products and symbols such as news, books, films, magazines, narratives, details, symbols and the like, which are imposed on them from the start. Like the fish in the story who were unaware of water in their lives, many black people are unaware of just how pervasive and persuasive culture can be to their lived experience.

Furthermore, these mass cultural products are mostly material, not theoretical, and this not only 81 has an impact on how black people experience the world, but it appears to influence the way AE authors used embodied rhetoric in their works in order to illustrate the overarching importance of lived experience.

What is more, the negative pressure which Western mass culture puts on the black body and which is then experienced as depression, self-devaluation, and psychological exhaustion, is what clearly connects it to existentialism as a whole. Recalling the basic framework of existentialism: it can be seen as an amalgam of theories and methods which deal with themes of dread, anxiety, and death, it emphasizes the real life and lived experience, particularly the negative aspects of experience, and it conveys a deep aversion to purely academic, analytic, and theoretical philosophy. My research shows that black people like Pecola, the young Baldwin, and

Fanon experience dread and anxiety because they are black bodies living in cultures where whiteness is the ideal. Moreover, the main form of embodied terminology in each of the works, embodied rhetoric, focuses on the lived experience black people face. Finally, all of the authors express their philosophical insights about their existence in nontraditionally analytical, non- academic ways. Their focus on lived experience instead of philosophical theory directly connects to the importance and values these authors place on the experiential facticity of blackness.

Experiential Facticity

The third feature of embodiment in the three works of AE dealt with experiential facticity, and the authors often used embodied rhetorical terminology to express this feature. The feature can be defined as follows: There is a phenomenological or experiential realness and impact to being black, and this experiential facticity of blackness goes far beyond purely theoretical concepts and discussions of color, difference, and race. I assert that it may be the most important of the three key features. This feature is important because it is more concerned 82 with the phenomenological, while many other approaches on the subject are concerned with the theoretical and appear to leave out the most important part of black embodiment: real life experience. “In The Rhetoric of Antiblack Racism: Lewis R. Gordon’s Radical Phenomenology of Embodiment,” Garrett (2011) illustrates this difference clearly when he writes:

To say we live in a post racial world is all well and good until racialized bodies

encounter the Other, or various institutions. When a body perceived as Black enters a

particular space there is a very real lived experience that still occurs that does not occur

for other bodies… You are taught don’t shop with your hands in your pockets for fear

that one’s body is mistaken for a shoplifter; don’t run through an affluent neighborhood

for fear of being mistaken for the body of a thief, and don’t behave “ambiguously” with a

White spouse or partner for fear of being mistaken as a rapist. (p. 14)

Here again is a description of color which attempts to illuminate, in the strongest of terms, the difference between lived experience and theory. This description focuses on what being in/a black body is like in real life, and it supersedes purely theoretical concepts and discussions of color, difference, and race. The discrepancy between theory and real life is pointed to when

Garrett specifically and intentionally contrasts the theory of a “post racial world” with the lived reality of being black in the world. Each book analyzed in this study spends considerable time trying to point out the impact of lived experience and its importance to truly understanding what it is to be black.

In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon (1952) does a powerful job of pointing out details of his lived experience as a black man in a colonized culture. Fanon speaks to experiential facticity with lines such as, “I am fixed,“ “I am overdetermined from the outside. I am a slave not to the

‘idea’ others have of me, but of my appearance,” and “I made up my mind to assert myself as a 83

BLACK MAN. Since the Other was reluctant to recognize me, there was only one answer: to make myself known” (p. 95). These lines demonstrate the important point that Fanon experiences his blackness as a fact, a lived fact, and despite his clear and comprehensive understanding of psychoanalytic and philosophical theories, he sees fit to hammer home the experience of his black facticity.

I argue that there is a deep connection between experiential facticity and the AE author’s use of embodied rhetoric in the analyzed works. Also, I suggest that their insight into the critical quality of experiential facticity leads to unique kinds of epistemic claims which are often not privileged in the field of rhetoric and writing (and this will be discussed at length below). Jones-

Royster, an African American scholar who has done work on Jim Crow and Civil War rhetorics, speaks to the bond between embodied rhetoric and knowledge/knowing when she writes that embodied rhetoric takes into account “ways of being and doing”:

[W]ays of being and doing shape the question of what counts as knowledge, what

knowing and doing mean, and what the consequences of knowledge and action entail. It

is important… to recognize who has produced the knowledge, what the bases of it are,

what the material circumstances of its production entail. (as cited in Knoblauch, 2012, p.

58)

In the reviewed works, each of the authors use experiential facticity as a form of, if not the most important form of, knowing what it is to be black, and they use embodied rhetoric which takes into consideration race, gender, and other components of personal positionality. Each author goes to great length to describe and explain what it means to live as/in a black body and what kinds of “knowledge and action” such embodiment entails. As I demonstrate, these claims which 84 the authors put forth in the works are not just personal or fictional stories, they are also epistemic claims meant to illustrate and illuminate their existential predicament.

Despite the existential crisis which many black people feel due to forms of culture which historically (wittingly and sometimes unwittingly) “limit” and “destroy” people in order to maintain social and cultural power, the black embodied experience is in no way hopeless. Fanon believes that there are ways to overcome alienation. He writes, “I am black: I am in total fusion with the world… losing my id in the heart of the cosmos… I am black, not because of all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of sun under the earth” (Fanon, 1952, p. 27). By understanding the mechanisms which are used to devalue or stigmatize his black body, and by embracing his blackness as a gift instead of as a curse or a stain, Fanon feels fulfilled. In various places in the book, Fanon states that he knows that he is equal to any other man, no matter the race or culture.

Through knowing the underlying mechanisms which cause black people’s psychological alienation and which promote negative myths about blackness, one can free the consciousness from such mechanisms and myths.

Also, there is another kind of hopefulness to the black experience. As stated in Chapter 3,

Baldwin believes that black people, due to their experience with suffering, have the capacity to know themselves and know joy on the deepest level. He states that despite the long history of horrifying mistreatment in America, there is “something very beautiful” about that history (p.

98). That beauty, he believes, stems from two points: 1) “[P]eople who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are,” and black people have long suffered so are capable of growth (Baldwin, 1962, p. 98). 2) The black man who fights against black hatred “achieves his own authority, and that is unshakeable” (Baldwin, 1962, p. 99). Thus, being black is not only an opportunity to participate as a protagonist in the correction of an incredibly long story of 85 injustice, there is also an opportunity to right a wrong and to be on the right side of history and morality. There is also the opportunity to gain an unshakeable authority. Existentialists might call this authority a form of true authenticity.

One could ask: Have things changed since the time of these writings? Weren’t the books you analyzed written a long time ago?3 The answer to the question of have things changed in the black experience is: yes and no. What has changed is there is a massive new wave of black people who produce cultural products which push back against the myths, details, and creations which lead to a negative view of self. These black creators participate in what I call cultural

cultivationism: The philosophical and/or creative approach that emphasizes the formation of cultural products (and culture itself), as a counteraction to negative myths, and these products give hope against the angst and dread of an oppressed existence. These black people, and those who collaborate with them, are creating new counter-products which show blackness in all its brilliance, abundance, goodness, complexity, and joy. Novelists, artists, academics, movie directors, TV show writers and producers, magazine writers, reporters, designers, and bloggers

are all producing work from a black perspective which makes it harder for people to pretend that

there is a color or cultural hierarchy. This was already the case, and it can be seen in the genius

of older works like The Bluest Eye, The Fire Next Time, and Black Skin, White Masks, but the

numbers of these cultural cultivationists keep growing exponentially. So, what has changed is

that because of the sheer scale of black cultural production, the equiponderance of blackness is

becoming ever more wide-spread, and those who still close their eyes to the equalizing

conclusions which these products command more clearly show their bias and nefarious goals.

3 Again, it should be noted here that I posed this question and drafted this chapter initially before the time of George Floyd’s death. But the ghastly events of his death reverberate throughout this study. 86

What has not changed is that negative narratives and deleterious cultural products still persist, malicious brutality against people with black bodies still exists, and there are new updated tools available to promote social inequality and an anti-black status quo. For example, In

Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil (2016) looks at the problem of inequality through the lens of mathematics and technology. Her work contends that many companies and governmental organizations use computer models (based on Big Data) to gain information about potential employees, customers, and even criminals. These businesses and organizations use proxy data to ascertain if a person is trustworthy, qualified for a loan or job, or even whether a person should be left in prison. These algorithms can impact nearly every aspect of a person’s life. Yet, computer models which use proxy data often measure the wrong things. O’Neil (2016) writes that “the folks building WMDs routinely lack data for the behaviors they’re most interested in. So they substitute stand-in data, or proxies” (p. 17). She goes on to write, “In

WMDs, many poisonous assumptions are camouflaged by math and go largely untested and unquestioned” (p. 7). Accordingly, data as proxy and “poisonous assumptions” can lead to a feedback loop which can reinforce the false findings, and these false findings almost always negatively impact minority groups and those at the bottom of the class hierarchy.

One example of how these WMDs work can be seen in how poor communities are policed. O’Neil writes that many police departments, in order to increase efficiency and save money, are using technologies like PredPol which map out the location and probability of where a crime will occur (p. 85). While using technology in such a way might seem like a sensible idea, it often leads to the over policing of poor populations and black communities. “When police set up their PredPol system, they have a choice. They can focus exclusively on so-called Part 1 crimes. These are the violent crimes… But they can also broaden the focus by including Part 2 87 crimes” such as loitering and panhandling (O’Neil, 2016, p. 88). By adding Part 2 data, the police are actually skewing the results of the data against black communities. Arresting and/or issuing people citations for petty crimes like turn-signal violations and selling individual cigarettes adds to the data which suggests that crimes are prevalent in that particular area. This skewed data can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Over-policing leads to more arrests which leads to more over-policing. Such a cycle is known as a feedback loop.

Another example of how WMDs lead to unequal treatment can be seen in how judges and parole boards use recidivism computer models to unfairly judge disadvantaged prisoners. O’Neil describes a questionnaire that inmates are frequently given upon entering jail or prison, the LSI-

R. This questionnaire asks inmates a slew of personal questions in order to determine the likelihood that the inmate will commit another crime. The location of where a person was born and whether members of a person’s family have ever committed a crime (among other things) are used to calculate the likelihood of recidivism. After completing the questionnaire,

“[C]onvicts are categorized as highly correlated to high, medium, and low risk on the basis of the number of points they accumulate” (O’Neil, 2016 p. 26).

Intentionally or unintentionally, the proxy data used to determine recidivism is regularly little more than a proxy for race and/or class. After looking at an inmate’s LSI-R score, “Judges then look to this supposedly scientific analysis, crystallized into a single risk score. And those who take this score seriously have reason to give longer sentences to prisoners who appear to pose a higher risk for committing other crimes” (O’Neil, 2016, p. 97). If bias is smuggled in at the creation of the computer model, that same bias will gain the mask of mathematical objectivity, and the results of the data will often go unquestioned. 88

WMDs like the ones described combine to create an inter-related web of oppressive circumstances. O’Neil’s research shows how bias can become codified while also gaining the veneer of scientific objectivity. As O’Neil’s work demonstrates, many in the criminal justice system have bought into the problematic practice of using algorithms to justify harsher sentencing, which disproportionally effects black people and the poor. It is clear that although there is a new wave of black cultural creators who are debunking and counteracting anti-black myths by creating their own products, there are new, more sophisticated and undetectable tools which seek to maintain myths and the old social hierarchy. With the advent of the internet, new symbols and tools have been developed, and the old products are still being used to create an atmosphere where blackness is maliciously devalued, and the black body is still at risk of harm and/or annihilation.

How a Philosophical Split Led to Different Expressions of Embodiment and Knowledge

Although in the works here (and/or elsewhere), these AE writers have hinted at the culturally constructed nature of the valuation of color and/or race, they all clearly state the importance of the experiential facticity of black embodiment. Arguments stating that race is not really real or ignore phenomenological experience intrudes on and even disrespects the experiential facticity of blackness. This should be considered when trying to account for concepts of embodiment which are different from generally accepted interpretations. These sorts of expressions which skirt or ignore the lived quality of being black are rampant in many academic conversations of race. Many discussions about race and/or color also seem to ignore the possibility that embodied existence may have an effect on how people view what is knowable or the nature of being. 89

Some scholars suggest that Africana philosophy has a distinct epistemology. For example, in “Africana Studies’ Epistemic Identity: An Analysis of Theory and Epistemology in the Discipline,” McDougal (2013) explains the principles of Africana epistemology, writing,

“African epistemology involves the use of the five senses, cognition, and tangible reasoning to arrive at information” (p. 299). McDougal goes on to describe the separation between traditionally Western ways of knowing and Africana ways of knowing such as “affect symbolic imagery”:

When a listener says to a speaker “I feel you” s/he is communicating something different

than what is indicated in the statement “I understand what you have said.” The latter

indicates a cognitive-logical process of knowing, while the former indicates an

experiential/empathetic or spiritual knowing of the speaker’s meaning. Similar to the

ideology of “I think therefore I am,” Affect Symbolic Imagery adds that “I feel

phenomena, therefore, I think and I know.” (p. 240)

In these two examples experience, body, feeling, and understanding are inexorably linked.

McDougal’s passage is consistent with what has been described in this study as phenomenology, experiential facticity, and the other descriptions of black embodiment which I have found in the research. Moreover, I argue that these ways of knowing are different than the way it is often described in rhetoric and writing studies, and as Johnson (2017) explains, this split involves a philosophical division between phenomenology and postmodernist philosophy. Therefore,

Africana existentialism may conflict with or sound very different than many current notions of epistemology in the field of rhetoric and writing studies that discuss and explain embodiment in purely postmodernist ways. 90

This disjunction of fundamental beliefs about knowing is extremely important because if this is true, scholars will not only need to understand why black people may express their thoughts on embodiment in different terms or focus on experiential facticity (rather than theories of color and race), they will need to also make room for beliefs about epistemology and ontology which that view of embodiment is built on. The different ways in which individuals view their bodies and their embodied experience can lead to massively different ways in which they understand and explain their own existence and view the world. Viewing one’s body in a certain way can, I believe, be based on different phenomenological experiences, ontologies, epistemologies, and ideologies.

Many scholars of rhetoric have sought to understand the conditions under which the canon of rhetoric is made. The power structures within rhetorical studies, however, could have a major bearing on why some explanations and expressions of embodiment are privileged over others and why some theories of knowing are privileged, as well. Although Fanon (1952) said,

“Ontology does not allow us to understand the being of the black man, since it ignores the lived experience,” (p. 90) currently, it would be more apt to apply his statement to ways of knowing, expressions of what black people claim to know (i.e., epistemic claims). Epistemology can be understood as follows:

[The] science involving the study of (1) the nature of reality; (2) how truth is defined; (3)

the relationship between the knower, knowing, and the known; (4) what can be known;

and (5) what should/could be done with the known. Epistemology is a means of

approaching knowledge and coming to know what is real from a culturally informed

perspective (Kambon 1999). (McDougal, 2013, p. 240) 91

Based on my research in this project, it has been shown that many black people assert knowledge of the facticity of their experience and they use this as a form of knowledge of and meaning- making in the world. It is extremely important to discuss this here because I believe that such expression and claims to knowledge are often over intellectualized or simply ignored. Ignoring the kind of knowledge and/or knowledge claims discussed here may emanate from the privileging of postmodern epistemologies, and discounting this conflict between phenomenological and postmodern descriptions of knowing would be to disregard what writers like Morrison, Baldwin, and Fanon are fervently trying to express and explain in the reviewed works. Ignoring this conflict not only makes it harder to understand the explanations of what embodiment means for people who believe and experience what the AE writers describe, it avoids a very difficult conversation about what kind of knowledge claims are privileged in academia: a conversation which needs to be had4.

In Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason, Johnson (2017) argues that there was a split in

philosophy which led to two different camps: the analytic camp (or the “linguistic turn”) and the

phenomenology camp. Johnson believes that one of these camps tends to diminish the body in

theories on knowledge much more than the other. After taking classes with “a brilliant

phenomenologist and hermeneutic thinker,” Paul Ricoeur, Johnson began to realize that

analytic/linguistic philosophy gave an inadequate “account of the richness and visceral depths of

human meaning” (pp. 12-13). In rhetoric and writing studies, the dominating theoretical

viewpoint comes out of the analytic/linguistic stream of philosophy Johnson describes, and due

to the fact that AE views of embodiment appear to be based in phenomenology, the AE focus is

very different and often in opposition to the most asserted epistemic stance in the field.

4 Steps are discussed in Chapter 5 such as analyzing personal ideology, rhetorical listening, and embodied practice. 92

For example, In Invention In Rhetoric and Composition, Lauer (2004) writes that, due to the postmodern turn, many rhetoric scholars came to believe that:

“Rhetoric may be viewed not as a matter of giving effectiveness to truth but of creating

it” …. asserting that truth is… contingent, “a process of interaction at any given moment”

(p. 13). [These thinkers reject] the idea that one first knows the truth and then makes it

effective through rhetoric… [arguing] that in the face of uncertainty humans create

situational truths that entail three ethical guidelines: toleration, will, and responsibility.

(p. 77)

Such bold assertions about truth have huge ramifications. Lauer sees Scott’s and the postmodern view of truth as a turning point in how rhetoricians and writing studies scholars understand invention, and a turning point for how many in the field view or use epistemology in general.

Another example of the dominance of postmodern epistemology in rhetoric and writing studies in use can be seen in Flower’s (2003) work “Intercultural Knowledge Building: The

Literate Action of a Community Think Tank.” In it, Flower mirrors Scott’s view of truth, writing that “the more important recognition is that new knowledge is itself a tool, mediational means, which is evaluated, not by its abstract rational structure or truth to nature, but by its consequences for human activity” (p. 271). By rejecting a “truth to nature” concept of truth,

Flower is pushing back against the modernist notion that truth is a reflection of objective realities. Both Scott’s and Flower’s accounts appear to assert that there is something slippery, subjective, and transactional or tool-like about truth due to its rhetorical nature. To these scholars, truth appears to be a tool mediated by language, not an objective or knowable feature of reality. This belief seems to suggest that what can pass for truth, is true. 93

This epistemological shift, from modernism/positivism to postmodernism, often arose from a good-faith belief that modernist epistemology was (and is) monolithic, moralistic, and oppressive. As Best and Kellner (1991) put it, postmodernism is “more pluralistic and less serious and moralistic than modernism” (p. 10). The idea that modernist epistemology is judgmental and unitary suggests that the postmodern epistemological view is more inclusive and allows for various perspectives which take into account one’s personal positionality. “Pluralism,”

“toleration,” and “responsibility” are all ethical concerns intimately connected to and combined with the postmodern epistemological shift, and these principles are meant to push back against what postmodernists see as modernism’s cold, logically positivistic, scientism.

However, postmodern epistemology, numerous scholars suggest, has its own ideological underpinning which often closely reflects the problems of its predecessor, modernism. Rhetoric scholars Rhodes and McFawn Robinson (2013) point this out in the article “Sheep in Wolves’

Clothing: How Composition’s Social Construction Reinstantiates Expressivist Solipsism (and

Even Current-Traditional Conservativism).” When detailing their deep concerns with one of postmodernism’s most notable formations/offspring, social constructionism, Rhodes and

McFawn Robinson state that some forms of postmodernism have the exact opposite consequences of which they intend. They believe that social constructionism, which usually contains the exact same epistemological and ethical concerns as postmodernism, can be exclusionary and intellectually stifling. As O’Donohue (2013) puts it when describing the range of postmodern theories, there is a family tree which connects “postmodernists, social constructionists, post-structuralists,” theories (p. 119), and the roots and trunk of this family tree is postmodern epistemology. Many postmodernist theories attempt to focus on different aspects 94 of reality such as perspective, interpretation, and fallibility, but they all seem to eventually assert the subjectivity or slipperiness of truth.

Additionally, like Crowley’s (2016) view that many rhetorical theories are deeply ideological, Rhodes and McFawn Robinson (2013) also see social constructionism/postmodern epistemology as ideological. They see it not only as possibly alienating to scholars who do not adhere to its philosophical principles, but they also see it as dangerous because it has the propensity to stifle debate about its own viability. They write:

The root of the problem with social construction is easily stated: if reality is what the

discourse community says it is, then what the present community believes is, by

definition, right. The only way to enter the conversation is to join the established in-

crowd. (p. 7)

If one does not join the community, one cannot debate the community. And if one does join the community, one has nothing to debate. Rhodes and McFawn Robinson go on to say that, in such a framework, “nobody can ever be wrong,” accept by rejecting the theory itself (p. 9). This kind of circularity puts such a theory outside the realm of debate. For these scholars, this is one of the main problems and dangers of social constructionism, and it would follow that it is one of the primary problems they have with postmodern epistemology. Thus, although one of its main ethical tenets is inclusivity and pluralism, Rhodes and McFawn Robinson see it differently. They see it as rendering itself “beyond critique” by requiring, nearly always implicitly, a loyalty pledge (p. 9).

Their critique of social constructionism’s insular qualities easily extends to postmodern epistemology. Their critique also strikes a blow at the ethical assumption imbedded in postmodern epistemology which supposes its broadmindedness and cultural pluralism. 95

Postmodern critiques of the modernists’ theories of old as a rigid and monolithic project, if

Rhodes and McFawn Robinson are correct, may also extend to postmodernism, as well. For them, the rigidity and moralism of modern epistemology is reincarnated in postmodernism as unquestionable in-group hegemony. If this is correct, postmodern epistemology appears to, at least to those who adhere to its principles, exist on the plain of unquestionable truth, and this is problematic for those who believe in (or at least express themselves in) non-purely-postmodern epistemologies like the ones described above.

Another issue which could arise for some Africana existentialists thinkers regarding postmodern epistemology is, without truth, power may be all that matters. Without what some epistemologists call a truth-concept (Haack, 2013), those in power appear to be free to make reality as they see fit. What is more, it appears that those with all the power have little need to negotiate fairly with others. Why would those in power negotiate fairly with groups they could simply ignore or oppress? This question seems like a very important one for rhetoricians and writing studies scholars, yet it is rarely discussed. Saying that power is negotiated is not the same as saying truth is negotiated. Conflating the two may be unnecessary.

Rejecting a truth-concept because groups of powerful people in the past have told lies and dominated other groups under false pretenses may actually do more harm than good. In fact, saying that there are no “real” truths may take away power from the weak. To believe that the statement “blacks are subhuman” is neither true nor false in some absolute sense, but merely a negotiable utterance that has no validity or truth values outside of a specific argumentation field, is a dangerous and befuddling consequence of not having a truth-concept. Again, the inclusive nature of postmodernist epistemologies appears to fall short here. There are two ways this impasse between postmodernist and non-postmodernist epistemic concerns could be dealt with in 96 a way which does not alienate individuals. The first is there are different philosophical arguments which get around or clarify the difference, and the second is dealing with practices in a way which makes room for meaning-making (almost) irrespective of specific epistemologies.

The latter focus will be described at length in Chapter 5, but first, I provide some much needed clarification on what some scholars see as the confusion hidden behind the impasse.

Getting Past the Impasse

I believe that Susan Haack’s (2013) chapter on “The Unity of Truth and the Plurality of

Truths” does a fantastic job of explicating the debate between modernism and postmodernism and showing the issues which arise from each. I believe that Haack’s analysis may reach the root of the problem. Haack’s philosophical framework is very useful for describing a truth-concept and its values. Haack’s exposition of truth is as follows: “[T]here is one truth, but many truths: i.e., one unambiguous, non-relative truth-concept, but many and various propositions, etc., that are true” (pp. 53-54). To put it simply, there are multiple kinds of truth, but truth is not relative or nonexistent. Haack goes on to say that “[t]hose who think that truth is relative to the individual, or to culture, community, theory, or conceptual schema… would, or should, also deny that there are any true propositions” (p. 54). This point refers to the reductio ad absurdum fallacy that many postmodernists appear to fall into when speaking about truth in relativistic terms. Hence,

Haack declares that without a belief in a truth-concept, propositional truth is ungrounded.

What is more, Haack describes one of the fundamental pieces of confusion which leads to a rejection of a truth-concept: equivocating the idea of truth with the idea of belief. She writes,

“Sometimes we say that something is ‘true for you, but not for me’; but this is just a careless way of saying either that you believe what-it-is, but I don’t, or else that whatever-it-is is true of you, but not of me.” Haack believes that her description, “simple as it is, points to two main sources 97 of the idea that truth is subjective or relative, and hence that there is no one truth… a confusion of truth with belief, and a confusion of truth with truth-of’ (p. 56). This distinction is extremely important when trying to untangle expressions of postmodern epistemology. Making the simple mistake between belief, truth, and truth-of has huge intellectual ramifications, and confusing the truth-concept with a truth-of concept can lead to perplexed and confusing epistemic expressions.

Haack’s (2013) final claim deals with another fallacy that underlies arguments for relativistic concepts of truth, the “Passes-for Fallacy,” and she takes direct aim at the rhetorical view of truth which currently dominates the field of rhetoric and writing studies:

The rhetoric of truth, moreover, can be used in nefarious ways. Hence the idea that truth

is nothing more than a rhetorical device for the promotion of claims that it would serve

the interests of the powerful to have believed: the seductive but clashingly invalid

argument I have dubbed the “Passes-for Fallacy.” (p. 61)

This description of truth appears to be in direct opposition to how Scott and Flower describe truth above. Haack argues that just because people do not like what can pass as true, does not mean they should reject the concept of truth as a whole. In this argument and the ones above,

Haack gives multiple examples of how the relativistic view of truth came about, why such claims can be fallacious, and why a truth-concept is essential. This understanding of truth, I believe, gets us out of the consensus-makes-right paradigm. What is more, the philosophical debate over concepts of truth is still underway at the highest academic levels. Haack, regarded as one of the top philosophers of all-time (King, 2004, p. 180), theorizes in direct opposition to another world- renowned philosopher, Richard Rorty, who is often cited (as a key postmodernist) and promoted in academic circles. Therefore, assuming the debate is settled in the field of rhetoric and writing when it is still not settled in the field of philosophy seems very problematic. 98

Rhodes and McFawn Robinson (2013) also assert a possible solution to the epistemic gridlock. In “Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing,” the authors aver that Robert Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality gives social constructionists a way out of what they define as a “rut.” They believe that

“Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance… provides a useful gloss on composition’s current impasse” regarding issues of epistemology (p. 16). Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality, in short, rejects both modernist and postmodernist epistemology, replacing them with the concept of “Quality.” Quality, they believe, has three main markers which avoid modern/postmodern duality. First, Pirsig’s philosophy “recasts reality not as an objective fact nor a subjective construct, but as a third entity, Quality, that is neither. The subjective and objective are not pitted against each other as incompatible worldviews. Instead, both are contained under Quality” (p.

18). Such a focus skips the epistemic stalemate.

Secondly, “Pirsig’s philosophy eliminates the romantic/classical dualism by showing that both are merely ways of reading the same Quality.” Lastly, “Quality is dynamic and temporal. It exists in the moment-by-moment choices people make when ordering their world, the precise way subjective readings play off of objective facts” (p. 18). Therefore, Pirsig’s metaphysics gets around the impasse concerning issues of epistemology by focusing on and emphasizing Quality as a means of knowing as opposed to arguing about what can be known. Despite the very clear and comprehensive summation of the problems which arise from social constructionism given by

Rhodes and McFawn Robinson, and notwithstanding their attempt to reconcile them by viewing it through the lens of a metaphysics of Quality, Pirsig’s philosophy may not reach the root of the problem. I believe that Haack’s view gets to the root of the issue in ways that should be accounted for. But one might wonder if all this talk of theory and epistemology really matters? If showing that AE and traditional expressions of knowing could be in conflict is not reason 99 enough, I will also set out a clear example of how these differences in epistemic theory can play out in the classroom. Moreover, it will become clear that the issues discussed above matter vis-à- vis issues of inclusion and power.

Imagine Pecola in the Classroom

In “Power, Authority, and Critical Pedagogy,” Bizzell (1991) describes how ideas about expressions of power can play out in the classroom, stating: “[Teachers] want to serve the common good with the power we possess by virtue of our position as teachers, and yet we are deeply suspicious of any exercise of power in the classroom” (p. 54). The problem with such thinking, however, is that it presupposes that forces of power are not already playing out in every classroom. As Delpit (1988) argues, whether it is obvious or not, power is always at play when teaching students, and “those with power are the least aware of—or least willing to acknowledge—its existence. [While] [t]hose with less power are often most aware of its existence” (p. 283). Delpit goes on to point out that many teachers, by ignoring their own expressions of power, often silence minority students. And this is one of the major problems when one’s own positionality and/or ideology is taken for granted in the classroom.

Bizzell (1991) goes on to emphasize that writing studies teachers and scholars “have not yet sufficiently examined the question of the content of composition courses; we have… supposed that the controversy over cultural literacy did not have much to do with us.” “On the contrary,” she states, “I will suggest that we look at what notions of cultural literacy we are implicitly conveying in the way we teach composition, and what alternate notions we might want to convey” (p. 55). Bizzell’s project is admirable for its straightforward introspectiveness, and I argue that we still have not sufficiently examined what kinds of epistemic expressions we are implicitly (or explicitly) conveying in our courses, and I suggest that we look at what alternate 100 notions we might want to try to understand and allow. This will be necessary if we want to understand and possibly apply the AE concepts that were analyzed.

Now, how might the epistemic conflict laid out above play out in practice, and how could totally postmodern expressions (or simply rejecting modernists expressions) of identity or embodiment impact students who see their embodiment in the ways explained in the key features of AE? Looking back to Chapter 1, I described how Toward A New Rhetoric of Difference

(Kerschbaum, 2014) attends to some of the most multifaceted and significant issues concerning identity in contemporary rhetoric and writing studies. The interchange between identity, diversity, and classroom interaction is at the core of what Kerschbaum’s book attempts to untangle. In her treatment of these complex issues, Kerschbaum endeavors to develop a new framework for discussing difference that decouples identity from fixity and introduces her audience to the concept of “markers of difference.” Marking difference looks to shift the paradigm of how we understand identity.

Kerschbaum’s book attempts to avoid fixating on difference. She believes that students and teachers should view difference “as dynamic, relational, and emergent… in so doing, it resituates the problem away from learning about, and thus needing to know students, toward learning with, and thus always coming-to-know students” (p. 57). To mark difference is to present and reply to rhetorically situated events. In these events, individuals “create versions of themselves that they display for others, and because these selves emerge during interaction, all participants contribute to their emergence” (p. 83). Again, in this framework, students and teachers focus on the how of identity (i.e., how people cue their difference during rhetorical situations) rather than the what of identity (i.e., what properties individuals may or may not

“possess”). 101

This conception of identity attempts to mitigate the nuisance of categorical identification, and it is clearly based on postmodern theories of identity. I assert that her view actually contradicts the way black identity is described in the three AE texts which were examined.

Imagine Pecola in a writing classroom where such a view is stated as the correct view of identity.

In the lesson, color and/or identity are described as not “stable,” not “objectively real,” or “fixed” in order to “resist the fixity” often ascribed to race and ethnicity (Kerschbaum, 2014, p. 39). Now remember back to what Pecola knows (or claims to know) about herself. From her lived experience, Pecola knows that blackness is the truest, most permanent feature of her identity:

Everything in Pecola was flux, except her blackness (Morrison, 1970, p. 49). (Or think back to

Fanon (1952) saying, “I am fixed,“ “I am overdetermined from the outside. I am a slave not to the ‘idea’ others have of me, but of my appearance” (p. 95)). During Pecola’s interaction with the white male shopkeeper, who refused to meet her eye and recognize her as a human being worthy of attention (Morrison, 1970, p. 48), does Pecola have the opportunity to “contribute to the emergence” of her identity in such a situation? How might Pecola feel about this lesson on identity?

If I, an African American male, had been introduced to Kerschbaum’s framework of difference as an undergraduate student, her theory would have been extremely difficult for me to wrap my head around, let alone accept. The idea that my blackness is not stable contradicts my experiential facticity. Such a suggestion about the rhetorically situated nature of my black identity, regardless of how well intended, would have seemed to me a trivialization and misrepresentation of my existence. I would not have seen my blackness as “yet-to-be,” I would have seen it as always been. I would have said that my blackness is primarily experiential fact, not simply a social, biological, or rhetorical construct. I would repeat Fanon’s (1952) 102 proclamation: “The universal situation of the black man is ambiguous, but this is resolved in his physical existence… wherever he goes, the black man remains a black man” (p. 150). Here, in clear terms, is what can happen when one epistemic schema comes into contact with another.

The one which is coming from the person in power might be presupposed, therefore alienating the person with less power.

What is more, not only might such postmodern theories ignore black experiential facticity, they might also overlook an entire historical framework of knowledge or how knowing is expressed in that culture. For instance, there is a long history of African American thinkers who clearly posit modernists notions of knowing. Abolitionists rhetors like Fredrick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, who legally changed her name to Truth in 1843 (Kaufman, as cited in

Truth, 1997, p. iv), appear to have a quite different view of truth than most postmodernists.

Roughly around the same time Friedrich Nietzsche was rejecting the unity of truth by proclaiming that there were no such things as facts, only interpretations (as cited in Kaufmann,

1977), Douglass and Truth were giving speeches about the value and importance of truth. I would imagine that my mother and most of her friends believe in something close to a Haackian view of truth. Would those who believe in postmodern epistemology say that their views of truth are wrong? If so, how is such a statement different from what a modernist might say? Would they suggest that my mother’s and her friends’ epistemological views simply spring from their cultural positioning or perspective? If so, would not the same hold true for their postmodern epistemology? Would not their views come from their own cultural spring? The questions I am posing speak to how complicated it can be to disjoin epistemology from cultural perspective.

I am not suggesting that scholars do away with any and all insights gleaned from a postmodernist perspective. An ethic of inclusion, a new-found focus on how language impacts 103 perspective, a close analysis on an individual’s personal positionality, and the questioning of institutional power dynamics; all of these things are insights which different branches of postmodernism brought to the forefront, and each of them are extremely important. But the question should be asked: Can one who believes in a Haackian truth-concept believe in inclusion, the importance of language, and truth-of subjectivity? Is there room for AE expressions of experiential facticity in discussions of embodiment? I am not arguing that either modernism or postmodernism be thrown away. What I am suggesting is that scholars should be willing and eager to put their ideas up for honest discussion and debate, not, as Rhodes and

McFawn Robinson put it, cluster into in-groups and out-groups. If an honest discussion and/or debate cannot take place, that may be a clear sign of an ideology which has not accounted for other points of view.

In the end, I am arguing that if we look closely at the works of AE, those who study rhetoric and composition, should take other people’s ideas seriously, and analyze our own ideas for signs of ideology or dogma. We should look introspectively at our own beliefs. Do we engage in honest debate and dialogue, or do we hold positions which cannot be questioned and may alienate those from different backgrounds or those with different perspectives? Are those who believe in postmodern epistemology sure that all cultures view and/or interpret their ideology in the same way? I believe that these questions should be taken up and debated

(rigorously) in our field. As Rhodes and McFawn Robinson (2013) assert, without real discussion and debate, rhetoric and writing studies might have “built itself the perfect rut” (p.

10). And, as Žižek (1989) suggests, we should all be careful not to fall prey to the idea “that we live in a ‘post-ideological’ condition” (p. xxxi). 104

This chapter covers three matters, primarily. First, a clear summation of embodiment from the three analyzed works has been given and expanded to show the connectivity between

AE embodiment and how the three key features relate to embodied rhetoric. Secondly, I examine the different ways in which knowledge is used and understood in AE and the ways it is typically used in the field of rhetoric and writing studies, and I lay out how such differences are based on or spring from different epistemic programs. Finally, this chapter illuminates how the differences in epistemic expression or understanding (or privileging one program over another) could impact and possibly alienate students who believe in or articulate their knowledge of embodiment in nondominant ways. The next chapter will examine, knowing what we know now about AE embodiment, how pedagogies might be used to account for and respond to this new (and old) knowledge. 105

CHAPTER 5: PEDAGOGICAL POSSIBILITIES AND AN OLD EMBODIED PRACTICE

To teach writing is to argue for a version of reality. (Berlin, 1982, p. 766)

Chapter 4 examined and delineated the philosophical consequences regarding the ways in which embodiment is described in The Bluest Eye, The Fire Next Time, and Black Skin White

Masks. This study was created to find a concept or concepts of embodiment in the works of AE thinkers, and to see what such a concept could do to inform, extend, or complicate the ways embodiment is understood and written about in the field. As stated in Chapter 1, I undertook this study because I wanted to know “what insights rhetoric and writing scholars could obtain from analyzing the works of Africana existentialism regarding the concept of embodiment? And how might these insights impact our conceptual understanding of embodied practice and our ability to teach in a diverse classroom setting?” The findings from my research indicate that different groups of people (and even individuals among those groups) have unique embodied experiences and understandings, and these may lead to differing epistemological beliefs and knowledge claims about the world.

In the three works, the key features which make up the black embodied experience were described in very similar ways and this led to a clear concept of embodiment in and among the monographs. The three key features of embodiment are as follows:

1) All three works point to a context in which blackness exists as opposition or in

contrast to the theory and glorification of whiteness.

2) All three works describe how cultural products, narratives, and symbols put forth by

Western mass culture can negatively impact many people who exist in/as black 106

bodies. Moreover, these products, symbols, and narratives can have an onerous

psychological impact.

3) Lastly, all three works point to the importance and irreducibility of experiential

facticity. And the concept of experiential facticity goes beyond typical academic

arguments and discussions about the constructed nature of blackness.

Embodied rhetoric was the main mode of embodied terminology used to express the importance of experiential facticity. Due to these findings, this study should be important to the field of rhetoric and writing because the way black embodiment is described in the three works is quite different than the ways it is often understood or described in the field. This study illuminates the issues regarding how we talk about and understand claims about embodiment and knowledge.

Additionally, this chapter points to how teachers should check their own ideology for blind spots which could lead to students hiding their experiential insights, how and why they should listen to students about their own embodied knowledge, and how they might use general or heuristic pedagogical approaches which do not impinge on the personal positionality and experiences of students, but which lets students expand on their own knowledge and skillsets. First, however, I discuss the limitations of this study.

Research Limitations

There are two main limitations of this study, the limited number of monographs and the fact that it does not explicitly deal with other forms of identity such as class, geography, and gender identity, to name a few. (However, some of the limitations may lead to other scholarly paths and opportunities). First, this study is limited in the number of monographs which are analyzed. The study is not a comprehensive analysis of all the works of AE, but it deals with a relatively small sampling of what AE intellectuals have said about the topic/concept of 107 embodiment. Due to this limitation, the books that were chosen cross multiple eras, locations, genres, and genders in order to widen the conceptual framework.

While this study may not be a comprehensive analysis, it has sought a variety of perspectives on the topic of embodiment in order to develop a clear concept of AE embodiment.

Moreover, it is true that there may be works in the AE canon that directly conflict with the concept of black embodiment determined here. But this study could just be a beginning. At some point, perhaps the whole corpus of AE can be examined in the way it is here in order to produce a comprehensive concept (or concepts) of embodiment. Perhaps, moreover, this sort of analysis should be done for other bodies of literature and philosophy, as well. This could be a task I undertake in my future scholarship. And although this study is limited in the number of monographs which are analyzed, it is a deep and detailed dive into how some of the greatest black writers and thinkers understood black embodiment.

Secondly, this project does not speak to all the ways in which embodiment is experienced, meaning gender, class, weight, and so on. This study concentrates on how AE scholars explain black embodiment and its implications. This is partially due to the fact that several other explications on embodiment and its relationship to identity components such as gender and weight have already been taken up. Still, none of these explications (that I have found) focus solely on the work of AE scholars and/or the black embodied experience. But despite its limitations, the study should add new voices into the rhetoric and writing studies conversation on embodiment and identity. Also, it has become clear to me from this analysis that the three forms of embodiment need to be clarified or delineated even further to make it easier to distinguish between the three. This is also a project that I think scholars should take up in future research. Notwithstanding these limitations, I believe that this study does clear work on 108 explaining how AE works describe embodied experience, and it has implications for the topic as a whole.

Checking Blind Spots, Rhetorical Listening, and Heuristic Practice

One might ask: “How can all this information about AE, embodiment, and epistemology impact the writing classroom (or classrooms in general)?” I think that my research points to three paths forward which extend directly from the analysis and findings in Chapters 3 and 4, three steps teachers can take in order to apply AE and its philosophical consequences, thus, making the classroom space more open, more inclusive, and more antiracist. First, I think it is extremely important for teachers to check their own ideological blind spots for beliefs and approaches which may stifle views which sound different than their own. Perhaps teachers should ask themselves, “Does my point of view leave room for students who have a perspective which is different than my own or similar to the one put forth in AE?” As demonstrated in Chapter 4, postmodern language is not the only way some people express their embodied experience, and if such language is the only language that is recognized or respected, it could stifle classroom conversations. In the late 1980s, Lisa Delpit pointed to exactly how the unreflective ideology of some professors can negatively impact and stifle the voices of black students. From my own experience, what she said then is still as relevant as ever.

In the second step, teachers should use rhetorical listening in order to improve cross-cultural communication. In the third step, teachers can develop and use heuristic practices or theories of acquisition which will let people apply concepts to their own personal, situated experience. Such an approach is contrary to telling students what they experience, or turning them into repositories of dominant ideology. Such an approach would allow students to explore and define their own experiential understanding, and these practices could help them maneuver through different 109 rhetorical situations, help them explain their personal positionality, and help them develop their own understanding of embodiment. For this sort of practice, I will use Aristotle’s insights into the acquisition of concepts like kairos. First, however, I will go deeper into how hidden ideology could silence debate about students’ beliefs and knowledge claims.

Checking for Ideological Blind Spots

The first step in applying the insights from the research done in Chapters 3 and 4 would be to reflect on how one’s own ideology impacts their own worldview and theory of knowledge.

Rhetoric and ideology are intimately connected. In “Contemporary Composition: The Major

Pedagogical Theories,” James Berlin (1982) describes the relationship he believes underlies all of the major theories of pedagogy. He described this foundational relationship as the “writer- reality-audience-language” relationship. While he believes that all contemporary pedagogical theories share this writer-reality-audience structure, each theory differs in its view of the various concepts and the relationship between each concept. As Berlin (1982) puts it, “Rhetorical theories differ from each other in the way writer, reality, audience, and language are conceived— both as separate units and in the way the units relate to each other” (p. 766). Since writing instructors differ in their conceptions of what it means to be a writer, the nature of reality, which audiences are worth addressing, and the nature of language and which languages are seen as worthy of use, for Berlin, an individual’s teaching practices cannot be completely separated from one’s worldview or ideology.

Berlin (1988) echoed a very similar sentiment in “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing

Class” when he writes that “[a] rhetoric can never be innocent, can never be a disinterested arbiter of the ideological claims of others because it is always already serving certain ideological claims” (p. 477). Although this declaration may be somewhat overstated, there are many cases in 110 which rhetoric is not innocent and is not a disinterested arbiter of reality. While Berlin’s work does go into great detail about the different historical philosophies such as Neo-Aristotelianism or Classicism, Positivism or Current-Traditionalism, Neo-Platonism or Expressivism, and New

Rhetoric which underlie the differing pedagogical worldviews, the main focus here is in how various worldviews or ideologies impact the teaching process. For many of the scholars who focus on the relationship between the way individuals see the world or their cultural perspective and different writing practices, Berlin’s point regarding the interplay between worldview, teaching, and writing is extremely important, and often under explored. Because such interplay is often left on the back burner, or dealt with only in the abstract, various problems which deal with epistemology, ideology, and power persist. However, some scholars have shined a very bright light on how culture and writing interact in order to alleviate some of the problems individuals experience in the classroom.

As briefly touched on in the previous chapter, Delpit’s (1988) work “The Silenced

Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children” dealt with how under- examined cultural hegemony undergirds many of the problems and issues of miscommunication which often take place in the classroom and which often squelches the voices of minority students and teachers. In the seminal work, Delpit points out that there are power dynamics at play when process approaches to writing are privileged over so-called “skills-based” approaches, and when objections to such approaches are ignored, minorities often feel “silenced” (p. 282).

Delpit believes that these process-centered approaches to composition are privileged because they support and reinforce the “culture of power” which already has access to and mastery of skills-based pedagogical approaches. Delpit’s point is not a technicality because she believes that when minorities students are refused access to skills-based pedagogies they often suffer. By 111 refusing skills-based approaches to writing, these students do not received the access to the cultural capital they need to succeed outside of the academy. I argue that Delpit’s point about dominant ideologies, power relationships, and the silencing effect they have on students can be easily connected to language-use and epistemologies. As demonstrated in Chapter 4 with the

Pecola example, her concept of embodiment would have been much different than the way it was taught and/or defined in a classroom that discussed embodiment in postmodern terms.

Delpit (1988) starts her work with several poignant testimonials of minority students and teachers who feel silenced and/or ignored when attempting to discuss their own perspectives on reality. For instance, a black graduate student told Delpit that he was tired of arguing about matters of race and culture with his white colleagues because they do not listen to him when he speaks (p. 280). He says:

Well, I don’t really know if they really don’t listen or if they just don’t believe you. If

you don’t quote Vygotsky or something, then you don’t have any validity to speak about

your own kids. Anyway, I’m not bothering with it anymore, now I’m just in it for a

grade. (p. 280)

This young man’s testimonial detailing how his view of reality was ignored by his colleagues speaks directly to Berlin’s point about how teachers argue for a specific version of reality. In this example, the student firmly believes that his professor’s version of reality goes something like this: “The voice of black students don’t matter, unless they are quoting white scholars who hold my same point of view.” Delpit’s example shows how real-life minority students feel when their views or their personal perspective of reality is ignored in the classroom or academic setting.

This example shows what happens when one’s view of “reality” is assumed over another. Many 112 minorities stop trying to engage in actual dialogue and instead keep their views to themselves.

This reinforces the views that are already in power, thus strengthening a vicious feedback loop.

Delpit (1988) goes on to argue five key points regarding how power structures impact students and teachers in the composition classroom: 1) Issues of power are enacted in classrooms. 2) There are codes or rules for participating in power; that is, there is “a culture of power.” 3) The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the rules of the culture of those who have power. 4) If you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier. 5) Those with power are frequently least aware of—or least willing to acknowledge—its existence (p. 282). Each of these points show how culture and ideology interact in the classroom, and why these structures often negatively impact those outside the culture of power.

Many of Delpit’s key points illuminate how the culture of power keeps those outside that culture in a state of confusion or frustration. Delpit’s third and fifth point might be the two most important. Namely, “the rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the rules of the culture of those who have power” sounds very similar to Rhodes and McFawn Robinson’s (2013) point about how ideological in-groups work to alienate those on the outside. Delpit’s fifth point shows that if teachers reflect on their own ideology and acknowledge their power in shaping and framing classroom discussions, they may actually find ways to empower their students, rather than alienating them. But if teachers are unwilling to see how their ideology impacts their students, silencing will persist. In summation, Delpit believes that minorities are forced into silence when cultural dynamics are ignored in the writing classroom. When those in the culture of power assume that their ideology is the one true reality, those outside the culture of power are almost always the ones who suffer the consequences. I assert that the research I have done in the 113 previous chapter points to different power dynamics concerning the way embodiment is discussed. If teachers do not allow for different expressions (or theories of knowledge about) embodiment, the same kind of silencing can happen in their own classrooms.

Another scholar who sought to examine the ways power and pedagogy relate to one another is Paulo Freire. Freire elaborated on very similar concerns about pedagogy and culture in

Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire (1968/2000) suggests that traditional pedagogical processes exist as a form of oppression. In a strikingly similar point of view to that of Delpit, Freire argued that the “culture of domination” keeps individuals oppressed in order to reinforce and sustain their cultural position (p. 40). This claim is almost identical to Delpit’s point about the “culture of power.” Freire believed that overthrowing a state of oppression must occur in two stages. In the first stage, those who are oppressed analyze and deconstruct the situation or the reality which allowed for their oppression (through education); in the second stage, after the oppressed have transformed their material situation, they will take their pedagogical practices to others who need to be liberated (Freire, 1968/2000, p. 40).

Further, Freire (1968/2000) suggests that teachers should pose problems to students in order for the students to be more critically engaged and not just passive receptacles of dominant ideology. This idea of critical engagement (as opposed to ideologically assertive pedagogy) will be elaborated on in the section on kairos and Aristotle’s theory of acquisition. Though Freire’s language and tone are very different from Delpit’s, it is important to see just how strikingly similar their views on the issues are. They both write about how structures of dominance are often used to keep some students from obtaining the culture of power. They both point out the different ways such power gets manifested in the classroom. These same issues about the 114 relationship between culture, power, and pedagogy also extend to how student writing is assessed.

Some scholars believe that the difference in culture should lead to a difference in the way students from different cultures are assessed. For example, speaking about the linguistic difference between African American English and Standard American English, Cunningham

(2017) states that, “African American Language, whether spoken or written, is not bad English.

In fact, African American Language follows many grammatical, phonological, and morphological patterns that do not exist in Standard American English” (p. 90). If African

American English and Standard American English follow very different linguistic structures or are actually separate and/or distinct languages, it would be understandable to see why some would want a new kind of assessment to account for a separate language. However, other scholars who are also interested in the plight of minority students believe that students should not be assessed differently, but instead, as Delpit (1988) suggested above, students should be given the proper tools to succeed in dominate culture. Furthermore, other scholars like Asao Inoue have worked to develop new pedagogical practices in order to account for cultural difference in the classroom.

Inoue (2012) took up the issue of how culture and assessment interact in numerous works. For instance, in “Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies,” he described how “[s]tudents are never just students. They are classed, gendered, and raced (among other dimensions)” (p. 128). Here, like Delpit and Freire, Inoue is speaking to the importance of cultural positionality as it pertains to being a student in the composition classroom. He believes that it is extremely important to take these cultural positionalities into account when developing research methods and methods of assessment. Furthermore, speaking directly about how such 115 positionality impacts writing assessment, he writes that assessment in rhetoric and writing studies “has yet to address explicitly and consistently ‘race’ as a theoretical concept or racial formations in and around a specific writing assessment, thus the field has not addressed racism as potentially structural and status quo” (Inoue, 2012, p. 127). Thus, for Inoue, race should be considered when developing methods for assessing student writing.

As demonstrated by the above examples of the various ways in which scholars view issues of culture and rhetoric, the relationship between culture, ideology, and pedagogical practice is a very complicated one with many layers. Despite the fact that numerous scholars believe that culture and many forms of multiculturalism play a significant role in pedagogical practices and in classroom interactions, these scholars differ widely in their views on which issues are the most pressing. For some pedagogues who focus on cultural concerns, the issue of which types of pedagogies take precedence in the classroom is paramount. For several other scholars, on the other hand, how writing is assessed in a culturally diverse classroom is at the forefront of their focus. The key is that all of these factors, power dynamics, pedagogical practices, and how to assess writing, are vitally important when trying to build a more egalitarian and engaging classroom setting, and each facet should be debated until more ground is gained. I also believe, however, that searching one’s own ideological point of view, particularly on what kind of embodied claims and/or knowledge claims one sees as valid, is incredibly important, as well.

Moreover, Berlin’s (1988) argument that “a rhetoric can never be innocent, can never be a disinterested arbiter of the ideological claims of others because it is always already serving certain ideological claims" (p. 477) can be seen as a fresh reminder that there are different ideologies undergirding various pedagogical theories and assessment strategies. Such a reminder 116 is not meant to vilify or scold teachers who see the world from a particular point of view. It is meant to remind those in positions of power to remember that their way of thinking is not the only way of thinking and that their cultural positioning may have something to do with the way in which they view the world. A pedagogical practice that would seek to remedy some of these complications or synthesize the multitude of troubles would first try to understand all of the various concerns. I think it is most important to start by keeping in mind that one’s experiential facticity, ideology, and claims about knowledge may be vastly different than the view of some students, and remembering this could be the first step in making room for views and claims like the one’s put forth in AE works. After one does this kind of introspective analysis, it is then important to listen, and the concept of “rhetorical listening” could be very instructive in this process.

Rhetorical Listening

After gaining knowledge of the major concerns involving ideology and power in the classroom, one could be bolstered by what Ratcliffe (1999) calls “rhetorical listening.” By rhetorical listening she means a listening process which requires empathy, understanding, and cross-cultural awareness. In “Rhetorical Listening: A Trope for Interpretive Invention and ‘Code of Cross Cultural Conduct,’” Ratcliffe (1999) describes it as a strategy that “may help us to hear discursive intersections of gender and race/ethnicity (including whiteness) so as to help us to facilitate cross-cultural dialogues about any topic” (p. 196). She goes on to write that “[a]s a code of cross-cultural conduct, rhetorical listening may further our understanding of gender and ethnicity intersections in ways that may promote cross-cultural dialogues on any number of topics” (Ratcliffe, 1999, p. 210). Ratcliffe (1999) envisions five key principles that will facilitate cross-cultural communications, writing: 117

The rhetorical listening that I am promoting is a performance that occurs when listeners

invoke both their capacity and their willingness (1) to promote an understanding of self

and other that informs our culture's politics and ethics, (2) to proceed from within a

responsibility logic, not from within a defensive guilt/blame one, (3) to locate

identification in discursive spaces of both commonalities and differences, and (4) to

accentuate commonalities and differences not only in claims but in cultural logics within

which those claims function. (p. 204)

Promoting an understanding of self and “other,” locating both commonality and difference, and accentuating commonalities and differences, are all useful tools when realizing that the ways in which embodiment is described may be much different among various groups.

As Delpit showed, one of the main problems that can arise in the composition classroom is that many students and educators from outside the culture of power feel like they are not being listened to and that they are not being taken seriously. If individuals from all over the identity spectrum, from different races, ethnicities, and genders, practice rhetorical listening, specifically in matters of culture, power, and knowledge claims, there might be fewer students and teachers who feel silenced. If people are to feel truly free to speak, the lanes of dialogue must be genuinely open, and these lanes must be a two-way street. Thus, it is paramount that those in power, if they truly seek a more equal and open classroom, practice rhetorical listening.

As the example from “The Silenced Dialogue” demonstrates, students can disengage from a course (and an instructor) when they feel that their concerns do not matter to the individuals they are trying to communicate with (Delpit, 1988, p. 208). Perhaps Cunningham

(2017) puts it best when she writes, “In order to value the diversity of communication and identities that exist in the U.S., we need to start teaching and envisioning writing as a cultural 118 and social activity” (p. 85). There are still issues of culture and power at play when students step into the classroom, and perhaps the best way to alleviate some of the issues is to understand that different ideologies and epistemologies are at play. Also, it is important to understand the relationship between power and pedagogy, and empathetically listen when others share their views.

Another way to use the information from the previous chapters in the classroom would be to focus on practices (or, even, theories of practice) that already account for or allow for one’s personal positionality, whatever that may be. One theory that deals with embodiment that could be applied on an individual basis and allows room for personal positionality is the concept of kairos. This sort of practice-based concept side-steps theories which assert or stipulate what one can know, and it can be applied in the way that an individual sees fit for their particular culture.

In “The Rhetoric of Antiblack Racism: Lewis R. Gordon’s Radical Phenomenology of

Embodiment,” Garrett (2011) writes:

As rhetoricians and communication scholars, one of the first things we teach students in

the lowest levels of rhetorical and speech communication courses are Aristotle’s three

proofs of logos, pathos, and ethos. Ethos, we teach, is credibility. We tell students to

stand a certain way, wear certain clothing, speak with a certain diction, and even gesture

certain ways to add to one’s credibility and believability. What Aristotle understood, and

is still part of our tradition today, is that embodiment matters. How we are perceived to

be in the world impacts Others’ interpretation of our internal states and how they relate to

us. (p. 13)

Aristotle’s theory of acquisition pushes past the logos, ethos, pathos paradigm. The theory of acquisition regarding kairos, I believe, is a great way to help students develop embodied 119 understanding without asserting epistemic claims which might violate or negate their personal experience of the world. It does not impose a one-size-fits-all approach. It attempts to give practical, personalized guidance, and it uniquely applies to a person’s embodied situatedness, in their moment-to-moment actions.

Kairos, Virtue Ethics, and Embodied Practice

The concept of kairos is as old as the study of rhetoric itself. Kairos can be

“provisionally… defined as the right or opportune time to do something, or right measurer in doing something” (Kinneavy, 1986). Although the emphasis rhetoric scholars place on kairos has waxed and waned over the centuries, its historical significance cannot be overlooked. As

Kinneavy (1986) asserts, “[A] strong case can be made for the thesis that kairos is the dominating concept in sophistic, Platonic, and, in a sense, even in Ciceronian rhetoric” (p. 80).

Kinneavy speaks to how multiple rhetorical systems have used kairos as the foundation of their approach. Aristotle also thought that kairos was important to rhetoric and embodied ability.

Although Aristotle’s On Rhetoric does touch on the topic of kairos slightly, and he does attend to other valuable concepts in the work, his rhetorical theory does not give a detailed account of how one should go about obtaining the ability to capture the kairotic moment. Is obtaining, possessing, or applying kairos a skill, practice, or an innate gift? Is there a “theory of acquisition” one can infer or deduce from Aristotle’s philosophical or rhetorical works? The answers to these questions may reside in Aristotle’s ethical treatise, Nicomachean Ethics.

In many ways, capturing the kairotic moment seems qualitatively different from employing other rhetorical concepts such as ethos, logos, and pathos. Kairos is a concept about practices, not about pure theory. There seems to be a functional difference between the application of kairos and the application of pathos, logos, and ethos. To illustrate this point, one 120 can point to Pythagoras’s view of kairos as an essential element in all actions. The Pythagorean maxim: “The most important thing in every action is kairos” (Kinneavy, 1986, p. 81) suggests that kairos is a precursor to (or prerequisite for) proper action. Before one acts, one should possess kairos. To use the same adage regarding pathos and ethos leads to incoherence. One need not possess pathos or ethos in every action because one must apply these concepts to specific situations, not have them in every situation. Kairos could be thought of as the ability to know exactly when to apply concepts like ethos and pathos, thus superseding them. Consequently, action is an integral facet of kairotic facility and application, and action is also an integral part of

Aristotle’s ethical philosophy and theory of acquisition.

Garver (1994), a rhetorical historian, believes that On Rhetoric is itself “philosophic,” and he draws the connection between ethical character and rhetoric in Aristotle’s works. Garver believes that:

On Rhetoric should “be read as a piece of philosophic inquiry and judged by philosophic

standards. Certainly, many others have used the Rhetoric to illuminate the Ethics,

Poetics, or his logical writings, but no one has yet presented a reading of the Rhetoric as

a philosophic work with its own integrity, and its own philosophic interest. (p. 3)

Garver goes on to advocate for the synthesizing of Aristotle’s views on rhetoric with his views on philosophy, and he insists that On Rhetoric be read “in the light” of the rest of Aristotle’s works.

Garver believes that Aristotle’s rhetorical framework implies his ethical system. That is, many of the questions which arise regarding morality in On Rhetoric presupposes a moral or ethical rhetor (like the virtuous individual Aristotle describes in the Ethics). Garver (1994) writes, “If there were a complete identity between artful and ethical guiding ends, then the 121 abilities which comprise the art of rhetoric… would simply coincide with what a decent man would do anyway” (p. 78). This shows the implicit connection between ethical character and the successful rhetorician. To be an efficacious rhetor implies having a good ethical character.

Aristotle speaks directly to the connection between the ethical character of a rhetor and one’s persuasive abilities when he writes:

The orator persuades by moral character when his speech is delivered in such a manner as

to render him worthy of confidence… But this confidence must be due to the character;

for it is not the case, as some writers of rhetorical treatises lay down in their “Art,” that

the worth of the orator in no way contributes to his power of persuasion; on the contrary,

moral character, so to say, constitutes the most effective method of proof. (Aristotle, as

cited in Kinneavy & Eskin, 2000, p. 440)

Here, Aristotle explicitly links rhetoric to ethical character. The above rationales which connect ethics and rhetoric, therefore, demonstrate the clear relationship between Aristotle’s On Rhetoric and the Nicomachean Ethics. These examples are not simply intended to justify a line of inquiry regarding Aristotle’s virtue ethics and rhetoric; they are also meant to illuminate the original interplay between rhetoric and embodied practice. As Garver (1994) puts it, the relation of rhetoric to Aristotle’s other philosophical works offer an opportunity for noticing useful and neglected connections, and these connections can illustrate new ways to interpret and employ old concepts.

For Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, embodied knowledge (i.e., mêtis) is deeply connected to embodied rhetoric and virtuous character. For Aristotle, the author or rhetor does not simply represent aspects of one’s embodied character through text and oratory. One lives as virtuous, embodied rhetoric. As Aristotle puts it, “[C]haracter is almost, so to say, the most 122 attractive form of persuasion” (Aristotle, 340BC/1999, p. 39). Aristotle’s ethics combines embodied knowledge, practice, and rhetoric under one roof.

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s overarching assertion is as follows: For an individual to reach the ultimate goal of human existence, happiness, one must live a life of virtue (guided by practical reason) because “virtuous activity CONTROLS (sic) happiness” (Irwin, 1999, as cited in Aristotle, 340BC, p. xvii). For Aristotle, living virtuously is an embodied practice. In the

Ethics, Aristotle goes on to map out the various types of virtues, and he describes the different ways individuals acquire virtuous character.

Aristotle’s virtue ethics framework is somewhat unique among ethical philosophies.

Virtue ethics are significantly different from other moral philosophies (such as Kantian ethics) because virtue ethics focuses on flexibility and situatedness, while many other ethical systems are based on maxims (such as the “ten commandments”) or rule governed. As Baggini (2015) writes, “[I]f you base behaviour (sic) on rules that you know from the outset will have to be bent or broken, too often the result is hypocrisy or confusion. Virtues, however, are inherently more flexible and adaptable to different situations and changing times” (p. 2). Hence, virtue ethics and kairos are similarly concerned with flexibility, situatedness, and timeliness. Both kairos and virtue ethics function beyond a system of definite rules where the situation and the individual’s judgement are key. This is extremely important because such a concept eliminates or side-step epistemic claims and issues, and it takes into account experiential facticity and personal positionality.

The Nicomachean Ethics is not simply a valuable supplement to On Rhetoric because it links kairos and virtue ethics, but Ethics also gives an unusually frank description of the relationship between embodied practice (actions, habits, and habits of action) and theoretical 123 concepts like ethics which can help us understand how to gain and/or employ concepts such as kairos. The notion of embodied practice is valuable because rhetoricians have often, as described in previous chapters, disconnected the body from the mind when discussing theory. One of the most important points made in the Ethics is that virtue is not simply a theory or a capacity; it is a state of being and a practice of doing. For Aristotle, the body and mind are inextricably connected through action and being. As stated above, virtue ethics are unique because they emphasize flexibility, timeliness, and situatedness, while many other ethical systems are often more rigid and prescriptive. “Capturing a moment” implies (physical) situatedness and holistic flexibility. Thus, facility and flexibility connect the three concepts of kairos, virtue ethics, and embodied action.

Aristotle’s Theory of Acquisition

One example of embodied practice expressed in Aristotelian ethics comes from the

“Virtue of Character” chapter in the Ethics. In this section of the book, Aristotle asserts that a person becomes just by practicing just behaviors. He states, “[T]o sum it up in a single account: a

[state of character] results from [ the repetition of] similar activities” (Aristotle, 340BC/1999, p.

19). In many ways, this statement appears somewhat simplistic and/or tautological. Nonetheless, the simplistic appearance of the statement may speak to its practical, embodied characteristics.

Namely, Aristotle’s statement emphasizes the value of doing and being over the value of rules or pure theory. He does not say: “One becomes just by following specific rules or dictates.” He appears to believe that one becomes just by doing just things and participating in just practices.

For example, if one wants to be a good wrestler, one must embody good wrestling practices. One does not become a good wrestler without doing good wrestling practices. Being a good wrestler, therefore, is an embodied practice. To be a good wrestler, one needs more than a 124 theoretical understanding of wrestling or a mental comprehension of or familiarity with the rules of the sport. One needs to be able to physically enact this conceptual understanding in corporeal space, as well. To be a good wrestler, one needs to possess conceptual knowledge and physical facility in (near) equal measure.

Another example of embodied practice comes in Aristotle’s discussion of the acquisition of virtue in Ethics. Aristotle asserts that obtaining virtues is similar to obtaining a craft. That is:

Virtues…, we acquire, just as we acquire crafts, by having first activated them. For we

learn a craft by producing the same product that we must produce when we have learned

it; we become builders, for instance, by building, and we become harpists by playing the

harp… brave by doing brave actions. (Aristotle, 340BC/1999, p. 19)

Aristotle again emphasizes the value of doing. However, his emphasis goes beyond the act of doing in specific cases and reaches into the realm of habit.

Aristotle suggests that good and/or bad habits are a reinforcement mechanism for human actions and behaviors. Habits ingrain behaviors. This means that habituation is vital to who a person becomes. In Ethics, Aristotle says that occasionally acting in a specific manner is not the way to obtain a craft or a truly virtuous character; being in the habit of acting in a specific manner reinforces the action. This is a vital component in Aristotle’s theory of acquisition. One becomes a virtuous person through habitual embodied (virtuous) practices. Using these examples as insights into Aristotle’s theory of acquisition as a guide, it could be said that for one to acquire the ability to act in a kairotic moment or possess kairos, one must get in the habit of acting in kairotic moments; one must physically be in places where one can engage rhetorically and apply the available means of persuasion. 125

What Aristotle describes in Ethics are embodied, habitual practices. Aristotle’s statements emphasize the value of doing and being over theory. If one wants to become proficient at a particular sport, one must habitually practice that sport well. One does not become a good athlete without doing good athletic practices. Therefore, seizing the kairotic moment

(which is an embodied practice) implies being in the right places at the right times, possessing the right rhetorical tools, and habitually practicing kairotic judgement. Only then can one embody kairos. Furthermore, it is clear that his theory of acquisition is personalized and situated.

I used the example of wrestling above, but the analogy could also apply to baseball. Namely, despite the fact that the two sports are vastly different, the theory of acquisition still holds. That is what makes his theory so valuable in teaching in a setting where people have different needs, experiences, and obstacles.

Kairos is a fascinating and complex rhetorical concept. It has many nuances to its meaning. As Kinneavy and Eskin (2000) suggest, kairos can be thought of as “situational context,” or the “right or opportune time to do something, or right measure in doing something,” or “subject-situational correlation.” Early Greek thinkers used this concept in both their philosophical and rhetorical systems. For Pythagoras, it was vital to have kairos in every action.

For Gorgias, the value of kairos sprung from his relativistic epistemology because he believed that truth could only be found in a given moment, and because he rejected the idea of truth as a philosophically universal principle (Higgins, 2017). And for Plato, kairos was a prerequisite for correctly applying one’s knowledge in various rhetorical situations. This shows that people from all over the philosophical spectrum saw value in this rhetorical idea. The value and importance of kairos superseded specific epistemologies. I believe that focusing on such concepts could help 126 alleviate the problems pointed out in Chapter 4, yet we can still talk about and examine the concepts this way.

Aristotle’s views on kairos were less explicit than his predecessors, yet kairos was still a valuable component of his overall rhetorical theory. As Kinneavy and Eskin (2000) write,

“Kairos plays an important role in Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric, the kinds of rhetoric, and the different arguments; and it is also included in his view of such related terms as virtue, equity, fitness, and occasion” (p. 433). All of these concepts combine to show an unusual level of consistency and interconnectedness in Aristotle’s thoughts. Furthermore, as Garver (1994) points out, Aristotle’s ethical theory is implied in his rhetorical theory. This section asserts that, if one looks closely at the Ethics, one can ascertain a theory of acquisition imbedded in the treatise.

Aristotle’s virtue ethics are significantly different from other ethical philosophies because virtue ethics focuses on flexibility and situatedness, and this situatedness is useful when it is applied to rhetorical circumstances.

In Ethics, Aristotle discusses the benefits of character and the various methods of obtaining it. Studying Ethics, one can see the value Aristotle placed on embodied character which proceeds from habitual action. Obtaining virtue implies embodied practices, and these embodied practices go beyond mental and theoretical comprehension and reach to an understanding one feels in a physical, holistic way. Aristotle (340BC/1999) says, “[W]hat we do in our dealings with other people makes some of us just, some unjust; what we do in terrifying situations, and the habits of fear or confidence that we acquire, making some of us brave and others cowardly” (p. 22). He also states:

The same is true for situations involving appetites and anger; for one or another sort of

conduct in these situations making some temperate and mild, others intemperate and 127

irascible. To sum it up in a single account: A state [of character] results from [the

repetition of] similar activities” (p. 19).

These passages stress “habit,” “situatedness,” “conduct,” “character,” “repetition,” and acquisition.

This detailed understanding of virtue can be applied directly to kairos. To act in the proper measure (rhetorically), one needs to be situated correctly in time, space, and habit. One needs to conduct oneself with a persuasive ethical character and with skill. To acquire this character, skill, and judgement, one needs habits which arise from proper repetition. Thus, kairos and virtue ethics appear to be streams which emanate from the same river of thought. Combining rhetorical and philosophical theories could allow us a deeper and fuller understanding of both rhetoric and philosophy. Also, a fuller understanding of rhetoric, philosophy, and historical terms like kairos could have pedagogical implications. It may be possible to develop different classroom activities or pedagogical schemas that can build on Aristotle’s theory of acquisition.

Understanding, applying, and expanding Aristotle’s theory of acquisition could be a valuable way to make ancient learning methods new again.

Teachers and scholars should use theories which inform inclusive practices. We should never forget that our theories may not be the same as those for other cultures, but that listening to the beliefs and theories of others may help us understand more about their cultures. Different theories spring from different cultural lenses and philosophies. This study reveals that among the three AE works which were analyzed, there is a clear concept of black embodiment. This clear concept of black embodiment, I believe, complicates the ways embodiment is discussed in the field of rhetoric and writing because of this focus on phenomenology and experiential facticity which pushes back against purely postmodern explanations of embodiment. This chapter deals 128 with three ways educators can adjust to information put forth in this study and apply this information in the classroom setting. First, one should reflect on one’s ideological framework.

Does the framework truly allow for different claims about experiential facticity and for cultural histories? Next, one should practice rhetorical listening in order to communicate in a truly empathetic way and to find common understanding. During the uprising which took place after the brutal murder of George Floyd, one of the things many white people who were allies of the movement did was participate in “Blackout Tuesday” in order to spend time listening to the concerns of black people and to reflect. That idea is very similar to the purpose of rhetorical listening. Lastly, teachers could implement practices which do not make claims about other people’s embodied experience but which allow for students to make their own claims about their cultural positionality, while still learning concept that can apply to their unique situatedness. If there is one thing that this study demonstrates, it is that black embodiment matters. 129

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APPENDIX A: ANALYSIS OF THE BLUEST EYE

Table 1

Embodied Terminology in The Bluest Eye

Embodied Language Embodied Knowledge Embodied Rhetoric

1. “We had dropped our 1. “Occasionally an item 1. “We had dropped our seeds

seeds in our own little plot provoke a physical reaction: an in our own little plot of black

of black dirt just as Pecola’s increase of acid irritation in the dirt just as Pecola’s father had

father had dropped his seeds upper intestinal tract, a light dropped his seeds in his own

in his own plot of black flush of perspiration at the back plot of black dirt.” p. 7

dirt.” p. 7 of the neck as circumstances 2. “Being a minority in both

2. “It takes a long time for surrounding the piece of caste and class, we moved

my body to heat its place in furniture were recalled.” p. 36 about anyway on the hem of

the bed.” p. 11 2. “The awareness, supported life, struggling to consolidate

3. “Daddy was smiling, and by ample evidence from the our weaknesses and hang on,

Mama’s eyes went soft as past, made Pecola tighten her or to creep singly up into the

they followed our hands stomach muscles and ration her major folds of the garment.

wandering over Mr. Henry’s breath.” p. 40 Our peripheral existence,

body.” p. 16 3. “These and other inanimate however, was something we

4. “The lowness of the stool things she saw and had learned to deal with-

made for my body, the experienced.” p. 47 probably because it was

security and warmth of Big abstract.” p. 17 138

Mama’s kitchen, the smell 4. “A peal of anticipation 3. “Propertied black people of the lilacs, the sound of unsettles her stomach.” p. 48 spend all their energies, all the music, and, since it 5. “All things in her are flux their love, on their nests.” p. 18 would be good to have all of and anticipation. But her 4. “Renting blacks cast furtive my senses engaged, the blackness is static and dread.” glances at these owned yard taste of a peach, perhaps, p. 49 and porches, and made firmer afterward.” p. 22 6. “Into her eyes came the commitments to buy

5. “Not long as I got picture of Cholly and Mrs. themselves ‘some nice little strength in my body and a Breedlove in bed. He making old place’.” p. 18 tongue in my head.” p. 24 sounds as though he were in 5. “Cholly Breedlove, then, a

6. “There was only the pain, as though something had renting black, having put his muted sound of falling him by the throat and wouldn’t family outdoors, had things, and flesh on let go.” p. 57 catapulted himself beyond the unsurprised flesh.” p. 43 7. “The picture show, you reaches of human

7. “’Please, God,’ she know. Where this mulatto girl consideration. He had joined whispered into the palm of hates her mother cause she is the animals; was, indeed, an her hand, ‘Please make me black and ugly but then cries at old dog, a snake, a ratty disappear.’ She squeezed the funeral. It was real sad. nigger.” p. 18 her eyes shut. Little parts of Everybody cries in it. Claudette 6. “Mrs. Breedlove, Sammy her body faded away.” p. 45 Colbert, too.” p. 67 Breedlove, and Pecola

8. “It had occurred to Pecola 8. “We knew immediately who Breedlove- wore their ugliness, some time ago that if her they were, and our flesh put it on, so to speak, although eyes, those eyes that held crawled.” p. 77 139 the pictures, and knew the it did not belong to them.” p. sights- if those eyes of hers 9. “The back of my neck 38 were different, that is to say, itched.” p. 77 7. “As long as she looked the beautiful, she herself would 10. “A cold wind blew way she did, as long as she was be different. Her teeth were somewhere in me, lifting little ugly, she would have to stay good, and at least her nose leaves of terror and obscure with these people.” p. 45 was not big and flat like longing.” p. 77 8. “Long hours she sat looking some of those who were 11. “The songs caressed her, in the mirror, trying to discover thought so cute. If she and while she tried to hold her the secret of the ugliness, the looked different, beautiful, mind on the wages of sin, her ugliness that made her ignored maybe Cholly would be body trembled for redemption, or despised at school, by different, and Mrs. salvation, and a mysterious re- teachers and classmates alike.”

Breedlove, too.” p. 46 birth that would simply happen, p. 45

9. “His lumpy red hand with no effort on her part.” p. 9. “It had occurred to Pecola plops around in the glass 113 some time ago that if her eyes, casing like the agitated head 12. “I hurt just like them white those eyes that held the of a chicken outraged by the women. Just ‘cause I wasn’t pictures, and knew the sights- loss of its body.” p. 49 hooping and hollering before if those eyes of hers were

10. “Their only respect was didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling different, that is to say, for what they would have pain.” p. 125 beautiful, she herself would be described as ‘good Christian 13. “How the black people different. Her teeth were good, colored women.’ The hollered, cried, and sang.” p. and at least her nose was not woman whose reputation 133 big and flat like some of those 140 was spotless, and who 14. “They slid about furtively who were thought so cute. If tended to her family, who searching for shelter, while his she looked different, beautiful, didn’t drink or smoke or run body remained paralyzed.” p. maybe Cholly would be around.” p. 57 148 different, and Mrs. Breedlove,

11. “A high-yellow dream 15. “The loathing that galloped too.” p. 46 child with long brown hair through him made him 10. “She has seen it lurking in braided into two lynch ropes tremble.” p. 151 the eyes of all white people. that hung down her back.” 16. “Dry-mouthed with So. The distaste must be for p. 62 excitement and apprehension, her, her blackness.” p. 49

12. “There was a hint of he went to the colored side of 11. “All things in her are flux spring in her sloe green the counter to buy his ticket.” p. and anticipation. But her eyes, something summery in 152 blackness is static and dread.” her complexion, and a rich 17. “His hatred of her slimed in p. 49 autumn ripeness in her his stomach and threatened to 12. “She points her finger at walk.” p. 62 become vomit.” p. 162 the Mary Janes – a little black

13. “The picture show, you 18. “Once there was an old man shaft of finger, its tip pressed know. Where this mulatto who loved things, for the on the display window. The girl hates her mother cause slightest contact with people quietly inoffensive assertion of she is black and ugly but produced in him a faint but a black child’s attempt to then cries at the funeral. It persistent nausea.” p. 164 communication with a white was real sad. Everybody 19. “As a young boy he had adult.” p. 49 cries in it. Claudette been greatly disturbed by this 13. “Their only respect was for

Colbert, too.” p. 67 revulsion which others did not what they would have 141

14. “What do I care about seem to share, but having got a described as ‘good Christian her old black daddy?” p. 73 fine education, he learned, colored women.’ The woman

15. “They are thin brown among other things, the word whose reputation was spotless, girls who have looked long ‘misanthrope.’” p. 164 and who tended to her family, at hollyhocks in the 20. “He abhorred flesh on flesh. who didn’t drink or smoke or backyards of Meridian, Body odor, breath odor, run around.” p. 57

Mobile, Aiken, and Baton overwhelmed him. The sight of 14. “I know a boy who is sky-

Rouge.” p. 81 dried matter in the corner of the soft brown. I know a boy who

16. “Nor do they know that eye, decayed or missing teeth, is sky-soft brown. The dirt she will give him her body ear wax, blackheads, moles, leaps for joy when his feet sparingly and partially.” p. blisters, skin crusts—all the touch the ground. His struts is

84 natural excretions and a peacock. His eye is burning

17. “While he moves inside protections the body was brass. His smile is sorghum her, she will wonder why capable of—disquieted him.” p. syrup drippin’ slow sweet to they didn’t put the 166 the last. I know a boy who is necessary but private parts 21. “Soaphead was revolted by sky-soft brown.” p. 58 of the body in some more Bob and wished he would hurry 15. “Black boys didn’t trip her convenient place- like the up and die.” p. 171 in the halls; white boys didn’t armpit, for example, or the 22. “His flesh crawled; in that stone her, white girls didn’t palm of the hand.” p. 84 hot, dim little room of worn suck their teeth when she was

18. “She will fondle that things, he was chilled.” p. 174 assigned to be their work soft hill of hair and let the partners; black girls stepped warmth of the animal’s aside when she wanted to use 142 body seep over and into the the sink in the girls’ toilet, and deeply private areas of her their eyes genuflected under lap.” p. 85 sliding lids.” p. 62

19. “Junior used to long to 16. “Black e mo. Black e mo. play with the black boys.” Yadaddsleepsneked. Black e p. 87 mm black e mo ya daddy

20. “On a day when he had sleeps necked. Black e mo…” been especially idle, he saw p. 65 a very black girl taking a 17. “To Pecola they are simply shortcut through the pretty. She eats the candy, and playground. She kept her its sweetness is good. To eat head down as she walked.” the candy is somehow to eat p. 88 the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love

21. “Pecola backed out of Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane.” p. the room, staring at the 50 pretty milk-brown lady in 18. “That they themselves were the pretty gold-and-green black, or that their own father house who was talking to had similarly relaxed habits her through the cat’s fur.” p. was irrelevant. It was their

92 contempt for their own

22. “We circled the proud blackness that gave the first house and went to the insult its teeth.” p. 65 back.” p. 106 143

23. “Mrs. Breedlove’s skin 19. “They seemed to have glowed like taffeta in the taken all of their smoothly reflection of white cultivated ignorance, their porcelain, white woodwork, exquisitely learned self-hatred, polished cabinets, and their elaborately designed brilliant copperware.” p. hopelessness and sucked it all

108 up into a fiery cone of scorn

24. “The songs caressed her, that had burned for ages in the and while she tried to hold hollows of their minds-cooled- her mind on the wages of and spilled over lips of sin, her body trembled for outrage, consuming whatever redemption, salvation, and a was in its path.” p. 65 mysterious re-birth that 20. “What do I care about her would simply happen, with old black daddy?” p. 73 no effort on her part.” p. 21. “Black? Who you calling

113 black?” p. 73

25. “…this melting pot on 22. “Safe on the other side, she the lip of America facing screamed at us, ‘I am cute! the cold but receptive And you ugly! Black and ugly

Canada- What could go black e mos. I am cute!’” p. 73 wrong?” p. 117 23. “We felt comfortable in our

26. “When I had the second skins, enjoyed the news that one, a girl, I ‘member I said our senses released to us, 144

I’d love it no matter what it admired our dirt, cultivated our looked like. She looked like scars, and could not a black ball of hair.” p. 124 comprehend this

27. “Holding Cholly as a unworthiness.” p. 74 model of sin and failure, she 24. “They are thin brown girls bore him like a crown of who have looked long at thorns, and her children like hollyhocks in the backyards of a cross.” p. 127 Meridian, Mobile, Aiken, and

28. “I can see in my mind’s Baton Rouge.” p. 81 eye his black arms thrown 25. “Such girls live in quiet back behind his head, the black neighborhoods where muscles like great big peach everybody is gainfully stones sanded down, with employed.” p. 82 veins running like little 26. “These particular brown swollen rivers down his girls from Mobile and Aiken arms.” p. 129 are not like some of their

29. “How the black people sisters. They are not fretful, hollered, cried, and sang.” nervous, or shrill; they do not p. 133 have lovely black necks that

30. “Four big white knots of stretch as though against as hair gave power and invisible collar; their eyes do authority to her soft black not bite.” p. 82 face.” p. 136 145

31. “Sweet amens fell from 27. “They go to land-grant her lips as she was chastised colleges, normal schools, and for all her sins. But her learn how to do the white body would not respond.” p. man’s work with refinement:

136 home economics to prepare his

32. “She stroked the knob food; teacher education to with the thumb of her right instruct black children in hand while she ran her left obedience; music to soothe the one over Aunt Jimmy’s weary master and entertain his body. The backs of her long blunted soul.” p. 83 fingers she placed on the 28. “What they do not know is patient’s cheek, then placed that this plain brown girl will her palm on the forehead. build her nest stick by stick,

She ran her fingers through make it her own inviolable the sick woman’s hair, world, and stand guard over its lightly scratching the scalp, every plant, weed, and doily, and then looking at what the even against him.” p. 84 fingernails revealed. She 29. “White kids; his mother did lifted Aunt Jimmy’s hand not like him to play with and looked closely at it— niggers.” p. 87 fingernails, back skin, the 30. “She had explained to him flesh of the palm she the difference between colored

people and niggers.” p. 87 146 pressed with three 31. “They were easily fingertips.” pp. 136-137 identifiable. Colored people

33. “They hugged the were neat and quiet; niggers memories of illnesses to were dirty and loud.” p. 87 their bosoms.” p. 137 32. “In winter his mother put

34. “The odor of their Jergens Lotion on his face to armpits and haunches had keep the skin from becoming mingled into a lovely musk; ashen. Even though he was their eyes had been furtive, light-skinned, it was possible their lips relaxed, and the to ash.” p. 87 delicate turns of their heads 33. “The line between colored on those slim black necks and nigger was not always had been like nothing other clear; subtle and telltale signs than a doe’s.” p. 138 threatened to erode it, and the

35. “Even at the graveyard watch had to be constant.” p. he felt nothing but curiosity, 87 and when his turn had come 34. “Junior used to long to play to view the body at the with the black boys.” p. 87 church, he had put his hand 35. “He wanted to feel their out to touch the corpse to hardness pressing on him, see if it were really ice cold smell their wild blackness, and like everybody said.” p. 143 say ‘Fuck you’ with that lovely

casualness.” p. 87 147

36. “Their slim black boy 36. “The nigger girls he did not wrists made G clefs in the pick on very much. They air as they executed the usually traveled in packs, and tosses.” p. 145 once when he threw a stone at

37. “When he was several some of them, they chased, days away he could go to caught, and beat him witless.” the back door of nice houses p. 88 and tell the black cook or 37. “On a day when he had white mistress that he been especially idle, he saw a wanted a job weeding, very black girl taking a plowing, picking, cleaning, shortcut through the and that he lived nearby.” p. playground. She kept her head

152 down as she walked.” p. 88

38. “Dry-mouthed with 38. “They sat in little rows on excitement and street curbs, crowded into pews apprehension, he went to at church, taking space from the colored side of the the nice, neat, colored counter to buy his ticket.” p. children.” p. 92

152 39. “’Get out,’ she said, her

39. “When he awoke it was voice quiet. ‘You nasty little very well into day, and a fat black bitch. Get out of my black lady was nudging him house.’” p. 92 148 with a biscuit gashed with 40. “Pecola backed out of the cold bacon.” p. 153 room, staring at the pretty

40. “There was more money milk-brown lady in the pretty in those black hands than gold-and-green house who was

Cholly had ever seen talking to her through the cat’s before.” p. 154 fur.” p. 92

41. “He only knew he was 41. “Black people were not fourteen years old, black, allowed in the park, and so it and already six feet tall.” p. filled our dreams.” p. 105

154 42. “Mrs. Breedlove’s skin

42. “The rigidness of her glowed like taffeta in the shocked body, the silence of reflection of white porcelain, her stunned throat, was white woodwork, polished better than Pauline’s easy cabinets, and brilliant laughter had been.” p. 162 copperware.” p. 108

43. “He abhorred flesh on 43. “One of these rapid, high- flesh. Body odor, breath note riffs that black boys make odor, overwhelmed him. up as they go while sweeping,

The sight of dried matter in shoveling, or just walking the corner of the eye, along.” p. 114 decayed or missing teeth, 44. “Up north they was ear wax, blackheads, moles, everywhere- next door, blisters, skin crusts—all the downstairs, all over the streets- 149 natural excretions and and colored folks few and far protections the body was between. Northern colored folk capable of—disquieted was different too. Dicty-like. him.” p. 166 No better than whites for

44. “A cinnamon-eyed West meanness.” p. 117

Indian with lightly browned 45. “Pauline felt uncomfortable skin.” p. 167 with the few black women she

45. “For all his exposure to met.” p. 118 the best minds of the 46. “But later on it didn’t seem

Western world, he allowed none too bright for a black only the narrowest woman to leave a black man interpretation to touch him.” for a white woman.” p. 120 p. 169 47. “She was never able, after

46. “Singly they found their her education in the movies, to way to his door, wrapped look at a face and not assign it each in a shroud stitched some category in the scale of with anger, yearning, pride, absolute beauty, and the scale vengeance, loneliness, was one she absorbed in full misery, defeat, and hunger.” from the silver screen.” p. 122 p. 172 48. “When I had the second

one, a girl, I ‘member I said I’d

love it no matter what it looked 150 like. She looked like a black ball of hair.” p. 124

49. “It must be the devil who looks like that- holding the world in his hands, ready to dash it to the ground and spill the red guts so niggers could eat the sweet, warm insides.” p. 134

50. “And now the strong, black devil was blotting out the sun and getting ready to split open the world.” p. 134

51. “Four big white knots of hair gave power and authority to her soft black face.” p. 136

52. “The odor of their armpits and haunches had mingled into a lovely musk; their eyes had been furtive, their lips relaxed, and the delicate turns of their heads on those slim black 151 necks had been like nothing other than a doe’s.” p. 138

53. “And the lives of these old black women were synthesized in their eyes- a puree of tragedy and humor, wickedness and serenity, truth and fantasy.” p. 139

54. “That undertaker that lays out black folks ain’t none too cheap.” p. 142

55. “’Get on wid it, nigger,’ said the flashlight one.” p. 148

56. “’I said, get on wid it. An’ make it good, nigger, make it good.’” p. 148

57. “Come on, coon. Faster.

You ain’t doing nothing for her.” p. 148

58. “’Wait,’ said the spirit lamp, ‘the coon ain’t comed yet.’” p. 149 152

59. “’Well, he have to come on his own time. Good luck, coon baby.’” p. 149

60. “They were big, white, armed men. He was small, black, helpless.” p. 150

61. “Running away from home for a Georgia black boy was not a great problem.” p. 152

62. “There was always an easy tale of woe to tell inquiring black adults, and whites didn’t care, unless they were looking for sport.” p. 152

63. “When he was several days away he could go to the back door of nice houses and tell the black cook or white mistress that he wanted a job weeding, plowing, picking, cleaning, and that he lived nearby.” p. 152

64. “Dry-mouthed with excitement and apprehension, 153 he went to the colored side of the counter to buy his ticket.” p. 152

65. “”I reckon I knows a lying nigger when I sees one, but jest in case you ain’t, jest in case one of them mammies is really dyin’ and wants to see her little old smoke before she meets her maker, I gone do it.’” p. 153

66. “He only knew he was fourteen years old, black, and already six feet tall.” p. 154

67. “What could a burned-out black man say to the hunched back of his eleven-year-old daughter?” p. 161

68. “He could go to jail and not feel imprisoned, for he had already seen the furtiveness in the eyes of his jailer, free to say, ‘No, suh,’ and smile, for 154 he had already killed three white men.” p. 159

69. “He had been reared in a family proud of its academic accomplishments and its mixed blood—in fact, they believed the former was based on the latter.” p. 167

70. “Being a gentleman by order of the King, he had done the civilized thing for his mulatto bastard—provided it with three hundred pounds sterling, to the great satisfaction of the bastard’s mother, who felt that fortune had smiled on her.” p. 167

71.“The bastard too was grateful, and regarded as his life’s goal the hoarding of this white strain.” p. 167

72. “She, like a good Victorian parody, learned from her 155 husband all that was worth learning—to separate herself in body, mind, and spirit from all that suggested Africa; to cultivate the habits, tastes, preferences that her absent father-in-law and foolish mother-in-law would have approved.” pp. 167-168

73. “Except for an occasional and unaccountable insurgent who chose a restive black, they married ‘up,’ lightening the family complexion and thinning out the family features. “ p. 168

74. “As the years passed, due to the carelessness of some of the Whitcomb brothers, it became difficult to maintain their whiteness, and some distant and some not so distant 156 relatives married each other.” p. 168

75. “He began to sink into a rapidly fraying gentility, punctuated with a few of the white-collar occupations available to black people, regardless of their noble bloodlines, in America: desk clerk at a colored hotel in

Chicago, insurance agent, traveling salesman for a cosmetics firm catering to blacks.” pp. 170-171

76. “A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power.” p. 174 157

APPENDIX B: ANALYSIS OF THE FIRE NEXT TIME

Table 2

Embodied Terminology in The Fire Next Time

Embodied Language Embodied Knowledge Embodied Rhetoric 1. “I have known both of you 1. “It was this last realization 1. “I keep seeing your face, all your lives, have carried that terrified me and—since it which is also the face of your your Daddy in my arms and revealed that the door opened father and my brother. Like on my shoulders, kissed and on so many dangers—helped him, you are tough, dark, spanked him and watched to hurl me into the church.” p. vulnerable, moody— with a him learn to walk. I don’t 24 very definite tendency to know if you’ve known 2. “Everything inflamed me, sound truculent because you anybody from that far back; and that was bad enough, but want no one to think you are if you’ve loved anybody that I myself had also become a soft.” p. 3 long, first as an infant, then source of fire and 2. “You can only be destroyed as a child, then as a man, you temptation.” p. 25 by believing that you really gain a strange perspective on 3. “He does not know what are what the white world calls time and human pain and the boundary is, and he can a nigger.” p. 4 effort.” p. 4 get no explanation of it, which 3. “You were born where you

2. “Remember that: I know is frightening enough, but the were born and faced the future how black it looks today, for fear he hears in the voices of that you faced because you you. It looked bad that day, his elders is more frightening were black and for no other

still.” p. 26 reason.” p. 7 158 too, yes, we were trembling.” 4. “The fear that I heard in my 4. “They have had to believe p. 7 father’s voice, for example, for many years, and for

3. “Owing to the way I had when he realized that I really innumerable reasons, that been raised, the abrupt believed I could do anything a black men are inferior to discomfort that all this white boy could do, and had white men.” p. 9 aroused in me and the fact every intention of proving it, 5. “Well, the black man has that I had no idea what my was not at all like the fear I functioned in the white man’s voice or my mind or my heard when one of us was ill world as a fixed star, as an body was likely to do next or had fallen down the stairs immovable pillar: and as he caused me to consider or strayed too far from the moves out of his place, myself one of the most house.” pp. 26-27 heaven and earth are shaken depraved people on earth.” p. to their foundations.” p. 9

17 6. “I was thirteen and was

crossing Fifth Avenue on my

way to the Forty-second

Street library, and the cop in

the middle of the street

muttered as I passed him,

‘Why don’t you niggers stay

uptown where you belong?’”

p. 19

7. “When I was ten, and

didn’t look, certainly, any 159 older, two policemen amused themselves with me by frisking me, making comic

(and terrifying) speculations concerning my ancestry and probable sexual prowess, and for good measure, leaving me flat on my back in one of

Harlem’s empty lots.” pp. 19-

20

8. “One would never defeat one’s circumstances by working and saving one’s pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful

Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account.” p. 21 160

9. “There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many

Negroes who are eager to be

“accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet.” pp. 21-22

10. “But the Negro’s experience of the white world cannot possibly create in him any respect for the standards by which the white world claims to live.” p. 22

11. “White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which 161 will not be tomorrow and may very well be never—the

Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.” p. 22

12. “Negro servants have been smuggling odds and ends out of white homes for generations, and white people have been delighted to have them do it, because it has assuaged a dim guilt and testified to the intrinsic superiority of white people.” p. 22

13. “Even the most doltish and servile Negro could scarcely fail to be impressed by the disparity between his situation and that of the people for whom he worked;

Negroes who were neither doltish nor servile did not feel 162 that they were doing anything wrong when they robbed white people.” p. 22

14. “Negroes had excellent reasons for doubting that money was made or kept by any very striking adherence to the Christian virtues; it certainly did not work that way for black Christians.” p.

23

15. “In any case, white people, who had robbed black people of their liberty and who profited by this theft every hour that they lived, had no moral ground on which to stand.” p. 23

16. “And those virtues preached but not practiced by the white world were merely another means of holding

Negroes in subjection.” p. 23 163

17. “Every Negro boy—in my situation during those years, at least—who reaches this point realizes, at once, profoundly, because he wants to live, that he stands in great peril and must find, with speed, a

“thing,” a gimmick, to lift him out, to start him on his way.

And it does not matter what the gimmick is .” p. 24

18. “…but it is also inevitable that a literal attempt to mortify the flesh should be made among black people like those with whom I grew up.” p. 25

19. “Negroes in this country—and Negroes do not, strictly or legally speaking, exist in any other—are taught really to despise themselves 164 from the moment their eyes open on the world.” p. 25

20. “This world is white and they are black.” p. 25

21. “White people hold the power, which means that they are superior to blacks

(intrinsically, that is: God decreed it so), and the world has innumerable ways of making this difference known and felt and feared.” p. 25

22. “Long before the Negro child perceives this difference, and even longer before he understands it, he has begun to react to it, he has begun to be controlled by it.” p. 26

23. “He does not know what the boundary is, and he can get no explanation of it, which is frightening enough, but the 165 fear he hears in the voices of his elders is more frightening still.” p. 26

24. “The fear that I heard in my father’s voice, for example, when he realized that I really believed I could do anything a white boy could do, and had every intention of proving it, was not at all like the fear I heard when one of us was ill or had fallen down the stairs or strayed too far from the house.” pp. 26-27 166

APPENDIX C: ANALYSIS OF BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS

Table 3

Embodied Terminology in Black Skin, White Masks

Embodied Language Embodied Knowledge Embodied Rhetoric 1. “Our colored brothers. . . 1. “This book should have 1. “Supply a single answer

.” p. 1 been written three years ago. . . and the color problem would

2. “I should prefer to warm But these truths were a fire in be stripped of all its

man’s body and leave him.” me then.” p. 2 importance.” p. 1

p. 2 2. “What does the black man

3. “I shall attempt a want?” p. 1

complete lysis of this 3. “At the risk of arousing the

morbid body.” p. 3 resentment of my colored

4. “And it is with rage in his brothers, I will say that the

mouth and abandon in his black is not a man.” p. 1

heart that he buries himself 4. “In most cases, the black

in the vast black abyss.” p. 7 man lacks the advantage of

5. Paul Valery knew this, being able to accomplish this

for he called language ‘the descent into a real hell.” p. 2

god gone astray in the 5. “The black is a black man;

flesh.’” p. 9 that is, as the result of a

6. When one reads that after series of aberrations of affect,

the age of twenty-nine a he is rooted at the core of a 167 man can no longer love and universe from which he must that he must wait until he is be extricated.” p. 2 forty-nine before his 6. “The problem is important. capacity for affect revives, I propose nothing short of the one feels the ground give liberation of the man of color way beneath one. The only from himself. We shall go possibility of regaining very slowly, for there are two one’s balance is to face the camps: the white and the whole problem, for all these black.” p. 2 discoveries, all these 7. “To us, the man who inquiries lead only in one adores the Negro is as “sick” direction: to make man as the man who abominates admit that he is nothing, him.” p. 2 absolutely nothing—and 8. “Conversely, the black that he must put an end to man who wants to turn his the narcissism on which he race white is as miserable as relies in order to imagine he who preaches hatred for that he is different from the the whites.” p. 2 other “animals.’” p. 12 9. In the absolute, the black is

7. “If a man who speaks no more to be loved than the pidgin to a man of color or Czech, and truly what is to be an Arab does not see done is to set man free.” p. 2 anything wrong or evil in 168 such behavior, it is because 10. “The black man wants to he has never stopped to be white. The white man think.” p. 20 slaves to reach a human

8. “No, speaking pidgin- level.” p. 3 nigger closes off the black 11. “The white man is sealed man; it perpetuates a state in his whiteness. The black of conflict in which the man in his blackness.” p. 3 white man injects the black 12. “There is a fact: White with extremely dangerous men consider themselves foreign bodies.” p. 23 superior to black men.” p. 3

9. “By this I mean—and this 13. “There is a fact: White applies particularly to my men consider themselves brothers of the Antilles— superior to black men.” p. 3 that when one of us tries, in 14. “There is another fact:

Paris or any other university Black men want to prove to city, to study a problem white men, at all costs, the seriously, he is accused of richness of their thought, the self-aggrandizement, and equal value of their intellect.” the surest way of cutting p. 3 him down is to remind him 15. “Indeed, I believe that of the Antilles by exploding only a psychoanalytical into dialect.” p. 24 interpretation of the black

problem can lay bare the 169

10. “And there one lies anomalies of affect that are body to body with one’s responsible for the structure blackness or one’s of the complex.” p. 3 whiteness, in full 16. “However painful it may narcissistic cry, each sealed be for me to accept this into his own peculiarity— conclusion, I am obliged to with, it is true, now and then state it: For the black man a flash or so, but these are there is only one destiny. threatened at their source.” And it is white.” p. 4 p. 31 17. “In spite of this it is

11. “So, since she could no apparent to me that the longer try to blacken, to effective disalienation of the negrify the world, she was black man entails an going to try, in her own immediate recognition of body and in her own mind, social and economic to bleach it.” p. 31 realities.” p. 4

12. “Uneasy and anxious 18. “It will be seen that the indeed. An anxious man black man’s alienation is not who cannot escape his an individual question.” p. 4 body.” p. 47 19. “The black man must

13. “On the one hand we wage his war on both levels: have one Jean Veneuse, Since historically they who resembles you like a influence each other, any 170 brother; on the other hand unilateral liberation is we have Mlle. Andrée incomplete, and the gravest

Marielle. Andrée Marielle, mistake would be to believe whose skin is white, loves in their automatic

Jean Veneuse, who is interdependence.” p. 4 extremely brown and who 20. “I shall try to discover the adores Andrée Marielle.” p. various attitudes that the

49 Negro adopts in contact with

white civilization.” p. 5

21. “I believe that the fact of

the juxtaposition of the white

and black races has created a

massive psychoexistential

complex. I hope by analyzing

it to destroy it.” p. 5

22. “Many Negroes will not

find themselves in what

follows.” p. 5

23. “I seriously hope to

persuade my brother, whether

black or white, to tear off

with all his strength the

shameful livery put together 171 by centuries of incomprehension.” p. 5

24. “The first three chapters deal with the modern Negro.

I take the black man of today and I try to establish his attitudes in the white world.” p. 6

25. “The last two chapters are devoted to an attempt at a psychopathological and philosophical explanation of the state of being a Negro.” p. 6

26. “The fifth chapter, which

I have called The Fact of

Blackness, is important for more than one reason. It portrays the Negro face to face with his race.” p. 6

27. “It will be observed that there is no common link between the Negro of this 172 chapter and the Negro who wants to go to bed with a white woman. In the latter there is clearly a wish to be white.” p. 6

28. “Here, in contrast, we observe the desperate struggles of a Negro who is driven to discover the meaning of black identity.

White civilization and

European culture have forced an existential deviation on the Negro.” p. 6

29. “I shall demonstrate elsewhere that what is often called the black soul is a white man’s artifact.” p. 6

30. “The educated Negro, slave of the spontaneous and cosmic Negro myth, feels at a given stage that his race no longer understands him.” p. 7 173

31. “Since I was born in the

Antilles, my observations and my conclusions are valid only for the Antilles—at least concerning the black man at home.” p. 7

32. “Another book could be dedicated to explaining the differences that separate the

Negro of the Antilles from the Negro of Africa.” p. 7

33. “That is why I find it necessary to begin with this subject, which should provide us with one of the elements in the colored man’s comprehension of the dimension of the other.” p. 8

34. “The black man has two dimension.” p. 8

35. “A Negro behaves differently with a white man and with another Negro.” p. 8 174

36. “No one would dream of doubting that its major artery is fed from the heart of those various theories that have tried to prove that the Negro is a stage in the slow evolution of monkey into man.” p. 8

37. “The problem that we confront in this chapter is this: The Negro of the

Antilles will be proportionately whiter—that is, he will come closer to being a real human being—in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language.” p. 8

38. “For the moment I want to show why the Negro of the

Antilles, whoever he is, has always to face the problem of language. Furthermore, I will broaden the field of this 175 description and through the

Negro of the Antilles include every colonized man.” p. 9

39. “He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle.” p. 9

40. “In the French colonial army, and particularly in the

Senegalese regiments, the black officers serve first of all as interpreters.” p. 9

The Negro who knows the mother country is a demigod.” p. 9

41. “The black man who has lived in France for a length of time returns radically changed.” p. 10

42. “For the Negro knows that over there in France there is a stereotype of him that will fasten on to him at the pier in Le Havre or 176

Marseille: “Ah come fom

Mahtinique, it’s the fuhst time Ah’ve eveh come to

Fance.” He knows that what the poets call the divine gurgling (listen to Creole) is only a halfway house between pidgin-nigger and

French.” p. 10

43. “By that I mean that

Negroes who return to their original environments convey the impression that they have completed a cycle, that they have added to themselves something that was lacking.

They return literally full of themselves.” p. 10

44. “The Negro arriving in

France will react against the myth of the R-eating man from Martinique.” p. 11 177

45. “A Martinique Negro landed at Le Havre and went into a bar. With the utmost self confidence he called,

‘Waiterrr! Bing me a beeya.’” p. 11

46. “Here is a genuine intoxication. Resolved not to fi t the myth of the nigger who-eats his-R’s, he had acquired a fine supply of them but allocated it badly.” p. 11

47. “Imprisoned on his island, lost in an atmosphere that offers not the slightest outlet, the Negro breathes in this appeal of Europe like pure air.” p. 11

48. “It is understandable, then, when at the news that he is getting into France

(quite like someone who, in 178 the colloquial phrase, is

“getting a start in life”) the black man is jubilant and makes up his mind to change.” pp. 11-12

49. “It would be equally interesting—and there are plenty of subjects for the study—to investigate the modifications of body fluids that occur in Negroes when they arrive in France.” p. 12

50. “When one reads that after the age of twenty-nine a man can no longer love and that he must wait until he is forty-nine before his capacity for affect revives, one feels the ground give way beneath one. The only possibility of regaining one’s balance is to face the whole problem, for all these discoveries, all these 179 inquiries lead only in one direction: to make man admit that he is nothing, absolutely nothing—and that he must put an end to the narcissism on which he relies in order to imagine that he is different from the other ‘animals.’” p.

12

51. “The black man who arrives in France changes because to him the country represents the Tabernacle; he changes not only because it is from France that he received his knowledge of

Montesquieu, Rousseau, and

Voltaire, but also because

France gave him his physicians, his department heads, his innumerable little functionaries—from the sergeant-major ‘fifteen years 180 in the service’ to the policeman who was born in

Panissières.” p. 13

52. “And the fact that the newly returned Negro adopts a language different from that of the group into which he was born is evidence of a dislocation, a separation.” p.

14

53. “Professor D.

Westermann, in The African

Today, says that the Negroes’ inferiority complex is particularly intensified among the most educated, who must struggle with it unceasingly.” p. 14

54. “On the basis of other studies and my own personal observations, I want to try to show why the Negro adopts such a position, peculiar to 181 him, with respect to

European languages.” p. 15

55. “I have known—and unfortunately I still know— people born in Dahomey or the Congo who pretend to be natives of the Antilles; I have known, and I still know,

Antilles Negroes who are annoyed when they are suspected of being

Senegalese.” p. 15

56. “This is because the

Antilles Negro is more

“civilized” than the African, that is, he is closer to the white man; and this difference prevails not only in back streets and on boulevards but also in public service and the army.” p. 15

57. “Any Antilles Negro who performed his military 182 service in a Senegalese infantry regiment is familiar with this disturbing climate:

On one side he has the

Europeans, whether born in his own country or in France, and on the other he has the

Senegalese.” p. 15

58. “And yet many Antilles

Negroes see nothing to upset them in such European identification; on the contrary, they find it altogether normal.” p. 15

59. “That would be all we need, to be taken for niggers!

The Europeans despise the

Senegalese, and the Antilles

Negro rules the black roost as its unchallenged master.” p.

15

60. “I was talking recently with someone from 183

Martinique who told me with considerable resentment that some Guadeloupe Negroes were trying to “pass” as

Martinicans.” p. 15

61. “It is said that the Negro loves to jabber; in my own case, when I think of the word jabber I see a gay group of children calling and shouting for the sake of calling and shouting— children in the midst of play, to the degree to which play can be considered an initiation into life.” pp. 15-16

62. “The Negro loves to jabber, and from this theory it is not a long road that leads to a new proposition: The

Negro is just a child.” p. 16

63. “What interests us here is the black man confronted by 184 the French language. We are trying to understand why the

Antilles Negro is so fond of speaking French.” p. 16

64. “Jean-Paul Sartre, in

Orphée Noir, which prefaces the Anthology de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, tells us that the black poet will turn against the French language; but that does not apply in the Antilles.” p. 16

65. “By refusing to multiply our elements, we take the risk of not setting a limit to our field; for it is essential to convey to the black man that an attitude of rupture has never saved anyone.” p. 17

66. “Purely and simply this:

When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for 185 certification as a teacher on the ground of his color, I say that philosophy has never saved anyone.” p. 17

67. “When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men, I say that intelligence has never saved anyone; and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.” p. 17

68. “Before going any farther

I find it necessary to say certain things. I am speaking here, on the one hand, of alienated (duped) blacks, and, on the other, of no less 186 alienated (duping and duped) whites.” p. 17

69. “If one hears a Sartre or a

Cardinal Verdier declare that the outrage of the color problem has survived far too long, one can conclude only that their position is normal.

Anyone can amass references and quotations to prove that

‘color prejudice’ is indeed an imbecility and an iniquity that must be eliminated.” Pp.

17-18

70. “Sartre begins Orphée

Noir thus: “What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that had muted those black mouths?” p. 18

71. “And if I cry out, it will not be a black cry. No, from the point of view adopted 187 here, there is no black problem.” p. 18

72. “It has been said that the

Negro is the link between monkey and man—meaning, of course, white man.” p. 18

73. “And only on page 108 of his book does Sir Alan Burns come to the conclusion that

‘we are unable to accept as scientifically proved the theory that the black man is inherently inferior to the white, or that he comes from a different stock. . . .’ Let me add that it would be easy to prove the absurdity of statements such as this: ‘It is laid down in the Bible that the separation of the white and black races will be continued in heaven as on earth, and those blacks who 188 are admitted into the

Kingdom of Heaven will find themselves separately lodged in certain of those many mansions of Our Father that are mentioned in the New

Testament.’” p. 18

74. “Or this: ‘We are the chosen people—look at the color of our skins. The others are black or yellow:

That is because of their sins.’” pp. 18-19

75. “Ah, yes, as you can see, by calling on humanity, on the belief in dignity, on love, on charity, it would be easy to prove, or to win the admission, that the black is the equal of the white.” p. 19

76. “But my purpose is quite different: What I want to do is help the black man to free 189 himself of the arsenal of complexes that has been developed by the colonial environment.” p. 19

77. “It is a rare Negro living in France who cannot duplicate it.” p. 19

78. “A priest, observing the black face in his flock, said to him, ‘You go ’way big

Savannah what for and come

’long us?’” p. 19

79. “But if we stop right here, we shall see that the fact that the priest spoke pidgin-nigger leads to certain observations.” p. 19

80. “‘Oh, I know the blacks.

They must be spoken to kindly; talk to them about their country; it’s all in knowing how to talk to them.” p. 19 190

81. “I am not at all exaggerating: A white man addressing a Negro behaves exactly like an adult with a child and starts smirking, whispering, patronizing, cozening.” p. 19

82. “To these objections I reply that the subject of our study is the dupes and those who dupe them, the alienated, and that if there are white men who behave naturally when they meet

Negroes, they certainly do not fall within the scope of our examination.” p. 19

83. “Talking to Negroes in this way gets down to their level, it puts them at ease, it is an effort to make them understand us, it reassures them. . . .” p. 20 191

84. “Then comes a Negro or an Arab: ‘Sit there, boy. . . .

What’s bothering you? . . .

Where does it hurt, huh? . . .’

When, that is, they do not say: ‘You not feel good, no?’” p. 20

85. “To speak pidgin to a

Negro makes him angry, because he himself is a pidgin-nigger-talker.” p. 20

86. “If a man who speaks pidgin to a man of color or an

Arab does not see anything wrong or evil in such behavior, it is because he has never stopped to think.” p. 20

87. “A black man who says to you: ‘I am in no sense your boy, Monsieur. . . .’

Something new under the sun.” p. 21 192

88. “’You—Africa? Dakar,

Rufi sque, whorehouse, dames, café, mangoes, bananas. . . .’” p. 21

89. “You stand up and leave, and your farewell is a torrent of abuse: ‘You didn’t play big shot like that in your jungle, you dirty nigger!’” p.

21

90. “But we can already state that to talk pidgin-nigger is to express this thought: ‘You’d better keep your place.’” p.

21

91. “When it comes to the case of the Negro, nothing of the kind.” p. 21

92. “This may be the reason for the strivings of contemporary Negroes: to prove the existence of a black 193 civilization to the white world at all costs.” p. 22

93. “Willy-nilly, the Negro has to wear the livery that the white man has sewed for him.” p. 22

94. “Look at children’s picture magazines: Out of every Negro mouth comes the ritual ‘Yassuh, boss.’ It is even more remarkable in motion pictures. Most of the

American films for which

French dialogue is dubbed in offer the type-Negro: ‘Sho’ good!’” p. 22

95. “In one of these recent films, Requins d’acier, one character was a Negro crewman in a submarine who talked in the most classic dialect imaginable. What is more, he was all nigger, 194 walking backward, shaking at the slightest sign of irritation on the part of a petty officer; ultimately he was killed in the course of the voyage.” p.

22

96. “And, even if it did, I can see no reason why, in a democratic France that includes sixty million citizens of color, dubbing must repeat every stupidity that crosses the ocean.” p. 22

97. “It is because the Negro has to be shown in a certain way; and from the Negro in

Sans Pitié—“Me work hard, me never lie, me never steal”—to the servant girl of

Duel in the Sun one meets the same stereotype.” p. 22

98. “Yes, the black man is supposed to be a good 195 nigger; once this has been laid down, the rest follows of itself. To make him talk pidgin is to fasten him to the effigy of him, to snare him, to imprison him, the eternal victim of an essence, of an appearance for which he is not responsible.” p. 22

99. “And naturally, just as a

Jew who spends money without thinking about it is suspect, a black man who quotes Montesquieu had better be watched.” p. 22

100. “Certainly I do not contend that the black student is suspect to his fellows or to his teachers. But outside university circles there is an army of fools: What is important is not to educate them, but to teach the Negro 196 not to be the slave of their archetypes.” p. 22

101. “When a Negro talks of

Marx, the first reaction is always the same: ‘We have brought you up to our level and now you turn against your benefactors. Ingrates!

Obviously nothing can be expected of you.’” p. 23

102. “What I am asserting is that the European has a fixed concept of the Negro, and there is nothing more exasperating than to be asked: ‘How long have you been in France? You speak

French so well.’” p. 23

103. “It can be argued that people say this because many

Negroes speak pidgin. But that would be too easy.” p.

23 197

104. “No, speaking pidgin- nigger closes off the black man; it perpetuates a state of conflict in which the white man injects the black with extremely dangerous foreign bodies.” p. 23

105. “Nothing is more astonishing than to hear a black man express himself properly, for then in truth he is putting on the white world.” p. 23

106. “But with a Negro he is completely baffled; the

Negro has made himself just as knowledgeable.” p. 23

107. “After all that has just been said, it will be understood that the first impulse of the black man is to say no to those who attempt to build a definition 198 of him. It is understandable that the first action of the black man is a reaction, and, since the Negro is appraised in terms of the extent of his assimilation, it is also understandable why the newcomer expresses himself only in French.” pp. 23-24

108. “I knew some Negroes in the School of Medicine ... in a word, they were a disappointment; the color of their skin should have permitted them to give us the opportunity to be charitable, generous, or scientifically friendly.’” p. 23

109. “We had no Negroes to condescend to, nor did we have anything to hate them for; they counted for virtually as much as we in the scale of 199 the little jobs and petty chicaneries of daily life.” p.

23

110. “The Antilles Negro who goes home from France expresses himself in dialect if he wants to make it plain that nothing has changed.” p. 24

112. “By this I mean—and this applies particularly to my brothers of the Antilles— that when one of us tries, in

Paris or any other university city, to study a problem seriously, he is accused of self-aggrandizement, and the surest way of cutting him down is to remind him of the

Antilles by exploding into dialect.” p. 24

113. “My theme being the disalienation of the black man, I want to make him feel 200 that whenever there is a lack of understanding between him and his fellows in the presence of the white man there is a lack of judgment.” p. 25

114. “It becomes evident that we were not mistaken in believing that a study of the language of the Antilles

Negro would be able to show us some characteristics of his world.” p. 25

115. “The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is.” p. 25

116. “Rather more than a year ago in Lyon, I remember, in a lecture I had drawn a parallel between 201

Negro and European poetry, and a French acquaintance told me enthusiastically, ‘At bottom you are a white man.’” p. 25

117. “Historically, it must be understood that the Negro wants to speak French because it is the key that can open doors which were still barred to him fifty years ago.” p. 25

118. “In the Antilles Negro who comes within this study we find a quest for subtleties, for refinements of language—so many further means of proving to himself that he has measured up to the culture.” p. 25

119. “Some other facts are worth a certain amount of attention: for example, 202

Charles-André Julien introducing Aimé Césaire as

‘a Negro poet with a university degree,’ or again, quite simply, the expression,

‘a great black poet.’” p. 26

120. “These ready-made phrases, which seem in a common-sense way to fill a need—for Aimé Césaire is really black and a poet— have a hidden subtlety, a permanent rub.” p. 26

121. “And let no one accuse me of affective allergies; what I am trying to say is that there is no reason why André

Breton should say of Césaire,

‘Here is a black man who handles the French language as no white man today can.’” p. 26 203

122. “But we should be honored, the blacks will reproach me, that a white man like Breton writes such things.” p. 27

123. “In this chapter devoted to the relations between the woman of color and the

European, it is our problem to ascertain to what extent authentic love will remain unattainable before one has purged oneself of that feeling of inferiority or that Adlerian exaltation, that overcompensation, which seem to be the indices of the black Weltanschauung.” pp.

28-29

124. “For after all we have a right to be perturbed when we read, in Je suis

Martiniquaise: ‘I should have 204 liked to be married, but to a white man. But a woman of color is never altogether respectable in a white man’s eyes. Even when he loves her. I knew that.’” p. 29

125. “We who come from the

Antilles know one thing only too well: Blue eyes, the people say, frighten the

Negro.” p. 29

126. “I also accepted the fact that I was barred from this society because I was a woman of color; but I could not help being jealous.” pp.

29-30

127. “ It is in fact customary in Martinique to dream of a form of salvation that consists of magically turning white.” p. 30 205

128. “A house in Didier, acceptance into that high society (Didier is on a hill that dominates the city), and there you have Hegel’s subjective certainty made flesh.” p. 30

129. “And there one lies body to body with one’s blackness or one’s whiteness, in full narcissistic cry, each sealed into his own peculiarity—with, it is true, now and then a flash or so, but these are threatened at their source.” p. 31

130. “So, since she could no longer try to blacken, to negrify the world, she was going to try, in her own body and in her own mind, to bleach it.” p. 31 206

131. “I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white.” p. 45

132. “Some thirty years ago, a coal-black Negro, in a Paris bed with a ‘maddening’ blonde, shouted at the moment of orgasm, ‘Hurrah for Schoelcher!’” p. 45

133. “When one recalls that it was Victor Schoelcher who persuaded the Third Republic to adopt the decree abolishing slavery, one understands why it is necessary to elaborate somewhat on the possible aspects of relations between black men and white women.” p. 45

135. “Its persistence attests to the black world’s endorsement.” p. 45 207

136. “In analyzing Jesuis

Martiniquaise and Nini, we have seen how the Negress behaves with the white man.” p. 46

137. “Through a novel by

René Maran—which seems to be autobiographical—let us try to understand what happens when the man is black and the woman white.” p. 46

138. “The problem is admirably laid out, for the character of Jean Veneuse will make it possible for us to go much more deeply into the attitude of the black man.” p. 46

139. “Jean Veneuse is a

Negro. Born in the Antilles, he has lived in Bordeaux for years; so he is a European. 208

But he is black; so he is a

Negro.” p. 46

140. “And, he observes, ‘The

Europeans in general and the

French in particular, not satisfied with simply ignoring the Negro of the colonies, repudiate the one whom they have shaped into their own image.’” p. 46

141. “His friends and acquaintances scatter all over

France on the slightest pretext, whereas the little

Negro is forced into the habit of solitude, so that his best friends are his books.” p. 46

142. “He’s the kind of Negro that a lot of white guys ought to be like.” p. 47

143. “Uneasy and anxious indeed. An anxious man who 209 cannot escape his body.” p.

47

144. “But there remains the fact that Veneuse is black.” p. 47

145. “A Negro? Shameful— it’s beneath contempt.

Associating with anybody of that race is just utterly disgracing yourself.” p. 47

146. “I have no wish to try to know anything; or, rather, I know nothing any more except one thing: that the

Negro is a man like the rest, the equal of the others, and that his heart, which only the ignorant consider simple, can be as complicated as the heart of the most complicated of Europeans.” p. 48

147. “For the simplicity of the Negro is a myth created 210 by superficial observers.” p.

48

148. “But now you see that this Negro, ‘who has raised himself through his own intelligence and his assiduous labors to the level of the thought and the culture of

Europe,’ is incapable of escaping his race.” p. 48

149. “Arriving at maturity and going off to serve his adopted country in the land of his ancestors was enough to make him wonder whether he was not being betrayed by everything about him, for the white race would not accept him as one of its own and the black virtually repudiated him.” p. 48

150. “You think of yourself—others think of 211 you—as a Negro? Utterly mistaken! You merely look like one.” p. 49

151. “On the one hand we have one Jean Veneuse, who resembles you like a brother; on the other hand we have

Mlle. Andrée Marielle.

Andrée Marielle, whose skin is white, loves Jean Veneuse, who is extremely brown and who adores Andrée

Marielle.” p. 49

152. “When the question is put directly, then, the white man agrees to give his sister to the black—but on one condition: You have nothing in common with real

Negroes. You are not black, you are ‘extremely brown.’” p. 50 212

153. “This procedure is quite familiar to colored students in France. Society refuses to consider them genuine

Negroes. The Negro is a savage, whereas the student is civilized.” p. 50

154. He knows that, ‘enraged by this degrading ostracism, mulattoes and Negroes have only one thought from the moment they land in Europe: to gratify their appetite for white women.’” p. 50

155. “And so I wonder whether in my case there is any difference from theirs; whether, by marrying you, who are a European, I may not appear to be making a show of contempt for the women of my own race and, above all, to be drawn on by 213 desire for that white flesh that has been forbidden to us

Negroes as long as white men have ruled the world, so that without my knowledge I am attempting to revenge myself on a European woman for everything that her ancestors have inflicted on mine throughout the centuries.” p. 50