Art Is Political”: John Keene's Black Historical Resistance

“ALL ART IS POLITICAL”: JOHN KEENE’S BLACK HISTORICAL RESISTANCE IN COUNTERNARRATIVES “TODA ARTE É POLÍTICA”: A RESISTÊNCIA HISTÓRICA NEGRA DE JOHN KEENE EM COUNTERNARRATIVES Marcele Aires* * [email protected] Pós-Doutorado em Estudos Literários da Universidade Estadual de Londrina (UEL-2019). Doutorado em Literatura Brasileira (USP-2009). Professora do Departamento de Teorias Linguísticas e Literárias (DTL) da Universidade Estadual de Maringá (UEM). ABSTRACT: This article deals with the engaged writing of pro- RESUMO: Este artigo aborda questões relacionadas à escrita en- se writer, poet, translator, and Professor John Keene. The Black gajada do prosaísta, poeta, tradutor e Professor John Keene. O North-American author clashes of political struggles, for he seeks autor negro norte-americano trava embates políticos, pois busca to rewrite history as a literary witness, bringing assessments, reescrever a história como testemunha literária, trazendo análi- evaluations, and social issues of the bygone ages – and their ses, avaliações e problemas sociais do passado e seus subse- following outcome in the present. Keene’s historical approach quentes desfechos no presente. A abordagem histórica e a ati- and critical attitude uphold the line in his awarded short sto- tude crítica de Keene são as linhas condutoras em seu premiado ries, Counternarratives, published by New Directions in 2015. livro de contos, Counternarratives, publicado em 2015 pela edi- Concerns about canon, rewriting history, Afro-descendent voi- tora New Directions. Questões referentes ao cânone, à reescrita ce, and resistance will be approached, backed by writers and re- da história, à voz afrodescendente e à resistência serão aborda- searchers such as Fanon (1963), Spriggs (1965), Baraka (1969), das, amparadas por escritores e estudiosos como Fanon (1963), T’Shaka (2012), among others. Spriggs (1965), Baraka (1969), T’Shaka (2012), entre outros. KEYWORDS: John Keene; Counternarratives; resistance; rewri- PALAVRAS-CHAVE: John Keene; Counternarratives; resistên- ting history. cia; reescrita da história. 96 INTRODUCTION a New York Times Foundation Fellow. He was also a Cave The tittle of this article stands for a statement pronounced Canem Foundation member (founded in 1996 by poets Toi by storyteller, poet, translator, and Professor John Keene du- Derricotte and Cornelius Eady to fight against the under-re- ring an interview for , the online literary journal presentation of African American poets in M.F.A. Programs Front Porch 1. About John Keene’s biography, 1 produced by the Masters of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) Students from across the country) . Notwithstanding, for years he was a cf. the following webpages: Texas State University: member of the Dark Room Collective, founded in 1988 to New Directions (2020); Poetry Foundation (2020); Cave Canem celebrate Afro-American writers (GORDINIER, 2014, p. 1). Foundation (2020). To utter a banal truism, all art is political. Even artworks that About his career as a Professor, the author has taught English appear to have no politics are political and ideological. To put and African American studies at Northwestern University, it another way, as Adorno suggested, every work of art is an and formerly works in the M. A. F. Creative Program aesthetic artifact and a social fact. It never exists in a vacuum at Rutgers University-Newark as a Professor and Chair of outside the political and social economy of its time […]. African American and African Studies. The author has also contributed as an editorial board member of the African 2. Cf. the following webpages: Poetry 2 I’d say that overtly political art must walk a fine line not to Poetry Book Fund . Foundation (2020); Rutgers (2020). tumble into cant (All of us bear the responsibility of becoming politically engaged in a direct way, however) (KEENE qt. in The author is also a translator. He has published from HANSEN & CLINE, 2018, p. 4). Spanish, French, and Portuguese, including names as the French Congolese writer and Professor Alain Mabanckou, Keene, born and raised in St. Louis, in 1965, stands as and the Dominican writer and editor Mateo Morrison. He an engaged contemporary Black North-American wri- also translated the Brazilian Black writer and Professor ter. His academic trajectory builds up the political con- Edimilson de Almeida Pereira; and the Brazilian female tent that embodies his discourse: when a Bachelor of Arts poets Claudia Roquette-Pinto, and Hilda Hilst – adding up at Harvard University, he was a member of the Harvard the latter notorious novel, Letters from a Seducer, released by Black Community and of the Student Theater (C.A.S.T.), as Nightboat Books in 2014 (KEENE, 2016c, p. 2). well as he cooperated with the Art Board of the Harvard Advocate, the oldest published college art and literary ma- Concerning Keene’s literary production, it starts up gazine in the U.S. Further, when the author was a student with his first novel, Annotations, published in 1995 by New in the M. F. A. Program at New York University, he became Directions editors (WITHING, 2005, p. 3). Eleven years later, EM TESE BELO HORIZONTE V. 26 N. 2 MAIO-AGO. 2020 AIRES. “All art is political”: John Keene’s Black historical resistance [...] P. 95-112 Dossiê 97 in 2006, the author published Seismosis (by 1913 Press), with America, or under the power of the “white country”, as James the artwork of writer, editor, and visual artist Christopher Baldwin calls the nation in the text “On Being White... And Stackhouse. In 2016, he wrote Grind (by ITI Press), an art- Other Lies” (1984, p. 91). -poetry book created along with writer and photographer Nicholas Muellner. In the same year, he released Playland Since late-1960’s and early-1970’s, literary canon revision (by Seven Kitchens Press), a chapbook of his old and recent manifolds a distinct paradigm from the tradition. According poems (WEEBER, 2016, p. 1). to Rutledge (2017, p. 2), this epoch targets the beginning of Black Studies’ Programs, grasping “a shift in the literary ca- Nevertheless, this essay deals specifically with Keene’s non and the academy [...]. The birth of various ethnic studies most rewarded book: twenty years after his first novel, New programs in the 1960s reflected the social upheavals of the Directions published Counternarratives (2015), the writer’s time”. What happened back then was that scholars connected collection of short fiction. The book received a set of prizes, with African-American culture denied the outdated white amongst the American Book Award by Before Columbus canon, isolated as the only source of knowledge. Foundation (2016); the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction 3. Note: In the U.K., Counternarratives (2016)3; and the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small T’Shaka, in an article for The Journal of Pan African Studies, was published in 2016 by Fitzcarraldo Editions. Presses in United Kingdom (2017). retraces the scenario of the time: A BRIEF LOOK AT CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN Black youth and Black people in general were given a new AMERICAN LITERATURE CANON FORMATION sense of strength and vigor when the slogan “Black Power” In Counternarratives (2015), John Keene’s political engage- was announced in 1966. All of these struggles (Civil Rights, ment is highlighted, mainly due to the fact the author works Black Nationalism, Urban Rebellions, Black Panthers, US with African-American history, from the original rebellions organization and Black Power) helped create an atmosphe- when the enslaved arrived in the U.S. up to recent days. re that encouraged struggle – in the Black community and Taking into account the important prizes the author recei- among Black students on the college campus. 4. Besides the prizes already cited, he ved4, plus his academic and engaged presence during the last won the Whiting Award for fiction/ poetry (2005), and the Windham– decade on North-American literature, Keene outstands in Black Power, and the previous struggles of Black people, hel- Campbell Literature Prize in Fiction/ opposition to the “white canon”, for the political process of ped create an ethic of Blacks being responsible to Blacks. For Yale (2018). deciding canon was, for centuries, under the choice of white Black students, this meant that they should be concerned EM TESE BELO HORIZONTE V. 26 N. 2 MAIO-AGO. 2020 AIRES. “All art is political”: John Keene’s Black historical resistance [...] P. 95-112 Dossiê 98 about their identity, and about using their skills for the benefit p. 10). He finishes his discourse praising ancestry: “We are of the Black community. (T’SHAKA, 2012, p. 18). demanding the right to rediscover and embrace our heritage” (1965, p. 10). The Professor Emeritus of the Department of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University complies his me- During the Black Arts Movement (1960-1975), writers rea- mories understanding that Black dialogue was significant lized literature could be an important mechanism for empo- because it “combined a Black Nationalist political analysis of werment. Although at this time Keene was just a newborn, fundamental issues arising out of the Civil Rights Movement, he got the breakthroughs from the engaged posture of his with a cultural analysis concerned with the position of Black predecessors. From the 1960’s up to 1900’s, there was a deep Art, Black Poetry and Black Performing Arts” (T’SHAKA, change over the literary canon regarding African-American 2012, p. 17). writers – it was a new moment apt to “catalyze canon reform and lead to the production of new anthologies that presented Back in time, in 1965, Spriggs published the article underrepresented perspectives” (BATES, 2013, p. 4). Next de- “Négritude Americaine”, which-so-ever worked as a back- cade, by the end of the 20th Century, new anthologies started ground for the Negritude Movement, explaining “Négritude” to appear, therefore, the traditional canon was firstly “un- as “the whole complex of civilized values – cultural, econo- dermined by activists and revisionists who want to de-bunk mic, social and political – which characterized the Black peo- the canon by redrawing the landscape in a more historically ple, or, more precisely, the Negro-African world” (1965, p.

Load more