Black Male Fiction and the Legacy of Caliban
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University of Kentucky UKnowledge Comparative Literature Arts and Humanities 2001 Black Male Fiction and the Legacy of Caliban James W. Coleman University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Coleman, James W., "Black Male Fiction and the Legacy of Caliban" (2001). Comparative Literature. 8. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_comparative_literature/8 Black Male Fiction and the Legacy of Caliban Black Male Fiction and the Legacy of Caliban James W. Coleman THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright © 2001 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 05 04 03 02 01 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coleman, James W. (James Wilmouth), 1946- Black male fiction and the legacy of Caliban / James W. Coleman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8131-2204-X (cloth : alk. paper) 1. American fiction—African American authors—History and criticism. 2. American fiction—Male authors—History and criticism. 3. American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 4. Shakespeare, William, 1564- 1616—Influence. 5. Postmodernism (Literature)—United States. 6. African American men in literature. 7. Caliban (Fictitious character). 8. Blacks in literature. 9. Men in literature. I. Title. PS374.N4 C64 2001 813'.5099286'0899073—dc21 00-012686 For my sons Jay and Lee whose love has supported me. And for Aunt Ade. Contents Introduction Defining Calibanic Discourse in the Black Male Novel and Black Male Culture 1 1 The Conscious and Unconscious Dimensions of Calibanic Discourse Thematized in Philadelphia Fire 18 2 The Thematized Black Voice in John Edgar Wideman's The Cattle Killing and Reuben 37 3 Clarence Major's Quest to Define and Liberate the Self and the Black Male Writer 59 4 Charles Johnson's Response to "Caliban's Dilemma" 81 5 Calibanic Discourse in Postmodern and Non-Postmodern Black Male Texts 100 6 Ralph Ellison and the Literary Background of Contemporary Black Male Postmodern Writers 129 Conclusion The "Special Edge" Tension Between the Conscious and Unconscious in the Contemporary Black Male Postmodern Novel 148 Notes 156 Works Cited 180 Index 184 Introduction Defining Calibanic Discourse in the Black Male Novel and Black Male Culture Why do contemporary African American male writers write the kind of novels they write, and why do these works lack the appeal of novels by African American women? There is, of course, no one simple answer to this question. But some critics and readers say that over approximately the last three decades, black male fiction has become increasingly more bizarre, nega- tive, and difficult. Male writers set up plot situations in which their fictional characters have the opportunity to confront oppression, but then they "don't do anything with" these situations. Texts written by black males seem to become laden by oppression instead of successfully confronting it like those written by black women. The highly postmodern works by black male writ- ers are probably the most controversial in terms of negative perception, but what I have said applies to many more male texts. I want to change the way that we think about black male texts. The attempt to tell a story of liberation as a response to what I call "Calibanic discourse"—and the restriction of this response—is the central feature uniting a broad range of contemporary black male texts that in other ways are very different. My overall conclusion is that Calibanic discourse influences a tradition of modernist and postmodernist African American male novels. With that in mind, I focus on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952), a novel with both modernist and postmodernist characteristics, as the chief literary influence. Calibanic discourse restricts voice in Invisible Man, and the novel is a literary influence that conflates with Calibanic discourse to restrict voice in contemporary black male novels. I do not claim that this is the central feature in all contemporary black male texts. However, if some different well-known writers (Ishmael Reed and Ernest Gaines, for example) were also focuses of the study, the specifics 2 / Black Male Fiction and the Legacy of Caliban of the analysis would change to fit the writers, but the overall critical stance would not have to change. Karla Holloway has said in Moorings and Meta- phors that "[e]vil is an omnipresent, earth-bound presence in black male texts" (9). In part at least, Holloway is talking about what for her is the universal failure of voice in black male texts as compared to its realization in black women's texts. My assessment of black male texts is positive, and Holloway's is negative. However, within the context of my analysis specify- ing Calibanic discourse's challenge and compromise of voice, I agree with her that gender makes a difference across a broad range of black male texts that are considered "serious" texts. Shakespeare's The Tempest is a symbolic and iconic text in this study. In the play, Prospero takes Caliban's island and makes Caliban a slave for him and his daughter Miranda. Miranda in turn tries to teach Caliban language, the language of Prospero. According to Miranda, Caliban was a "savage" who did not "Know [his] own meaning, but wouldst gabble like / A thing most brutish, I endowed [his] purposes / With words that made them known ..." (I.ii.427-30). The language that Miranda gives Caliban forces his defi- nition in her terms and in Prospero's: Caliban / cannibal—the savage brute whose "purpose" is enslavement. Caliban tries to use the language for his own benefit, but he cannot: "You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you / For learning me your lan- guage!" (I.ii.437-39). Caliban cannot use the patriarch Prospero's language for his own "profit," because using it this way would counter Prospero's goals, and Prospero has too much control over him and over the language for this to happen. John Edgar Wideman talks about the effects on black people of the prac- tice of a "foreign" language: Tension and resistance characterize the practices African-descended peoples have employed to keep their distance from imposed tongues, imposed disciplines. Generation after generation has been compelled to negotiate—for better or worse, and with self-determination and self-realization at stake—the quicksand of a foreign language that continues by its structure, vocabulary, its deployment in social interaction, its retention of racist assumptions, expressions and attitudes, its contamination by theories of racial hierarchy to recreate the scenario of master and slave. Uneasiness and a kind of disbelief of this incriminating language we've been forced to adopt never go away. (Wideman, "In Praise of Silence" 548 )1 Thus, the patriarchy controls the symbols of signification. In the context of the Caliban trope, Caliban can "curse" and (re)inscribe his inferiority by Introduction / 3 sounding vulgar and brutish, unable to use language in a civilized fashion and unable to learn, or he can remain in "passive compliance in the restric- tive terms meted out" in Prospero's language (Baker 141). Caliban's attempted revolutionary act of having sex with Miranda—"Would't had been done! / ... I had peopled else / This isle with Calibans" (I.ii.419-21)—also (re)inscribes his savagery and bestiality, because any act against Prospero by Caliban (particularly sex with his daughter) is savage and bestial in the lan- guage of Prospero.2 Miranda concludes that Caliban is an "Abhorred slave, / ... Who ... deserved more than a prison" (I.ii.422-36). He is antithetical to Prospero's civilization and threatens to corrupt it with his bestiality and to destroy it with his sexual contamination. He deserves prison and, implicitly, even death. Although he tries, Caliban cannot escape his predicament; schol- ars have made him synonymous with the oppression and generally negative perception of black men and other nonwhite males.3 Calibanic discourse is the perceived history and story of the black male in Western culture that has its genesis and tradition in language and non- linguistic signs. It denotes slavery, proscribed freedom, proscribed sexuality, inferior character, and inferior voice. In summary, the black male is the slave or servant who is the antithesis of the reason, civilized development, entitle- ment, freedom, and power of white men, and he never learns the civilized use of language.4 His voice is unreliable; his words fail to signify his human- ity. He also preys on civilization and represents bestial, contaminating sexu- ality. Clearly, Western culture must confine the black male to roles and places befitting his inferiority, and/or it must punish him, and even brutalize and kill him, for his criminality and reprobate character.5 In the context of the Caliban trope, Calibanic discourse began with the words Prospero imposed on Caliban that gave his "purposes" "meaning." Its "meaning" is an integral part of the English language and of Western signs and symbols.