FREUD UPSIDE DOWN UPSIDE DOWN African American Literature the United States over course of Examining how psy- twentieth century. choanalysis has functioned as a cultural phenomenon within African American literary intellectual communities since the 1920s, Ahad lays out the historiography of and the intersections between literature psychoanalysis and considers the creative of African American writers approaches to psychological thought in their work and their personal lives. and Psychoanalytic Culture A volume in The New Black Studies Series, edited by Darlene Clark Hine and Dwight A. McBride Author photo by Cortez A. Carter A. Author photo by Cortez BADIA SAHAR AHAD is an assistant professor of English at Loyola University. BADIA SAHAR AHAD Freud Upside Down THE NEW BLACK STUDIES SERIES Edited by Darlene Clark Hine and Dwight A. McBride A list of books in the series appears at the end of this book. UPSIDE DOWN African American Literature and Psychoanalytic Culture BADIA SAHAR AHAD UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS Urbana, Chicago, and Spring!eld © !"#" by Badia Sahar Ahad All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America $ % & ' ! # ∞ )is book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ahad, Badia Sahar. Freud upside down : African American literature and psychoanalytic culture / Badia Sahar Ahad. p. cm. — ()e new Black studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index. *+,- ./0-"-!%!-"'%11-# (cloth : alk. paper) #. American literature—African American authors—History and criticism. !. African Americans in literature. '. Psychology in literature. &. Psychoanalysis in literature. %. Race in literature. 1. Race—Psychological aspects. /. African Americans— Psychology. 0. Psychoanalysis and literature—United States. I. Title. 2+#%'.-%3'.0 !"#" 0#"'..'%!..1"/'"#.—dc!! !"#""#1%0# To Ma (#.%'–!""/) Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction # #. )e Politics and Production of Interiority in the Messenger Magazine (#.!!–!') #' !. )e Anxiety of Birth in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand '. '. Art’s Imperfect End: Race and Gurdjie4 in Jean Toomer’s “Transatlantic” 1" &. “A genuine cooperation”: Richard Wright’s and Ralph Ellison’s Psychoanalytic Conversations 0! %. Maternal Anxieties and Political Desires in Adrienne Kennedy’s Dramatic Circle ##" 1. Racial Sincerity and the Biracial Body in Danzy Senna’s Caucasia #'! Postscript #%% Notes #1# Bibliography #// Index #0. Acknowledgments I recognize that any published text has many authors and without the love of support of a very generous and dedicated community, this book could not have been written. )is project bears the mark of many scholars whose work, whether in the form of a manuscript, a conference paper, or a casual conversation, has enabled me to think more intensely and broadly about my own. Among all of my in5uences, I am truly indebted to Glenn Hendler, who is at once my sharpest critic and most ardent supporter. He has been an invaluable mentor, advisor, and friend at every stage of my aca- demic career. I also thank Toni Irving, Ewa Ziarek, and Kate Baldwin for reading the manuscript in its earliest stages and for their honesty about what worked and, most importantly, what did not. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the Department of African-American Studies at Northwestern University for awarding me a postdoctoral fellowship, which allowed me valuable time and extensive resources to revise signi6cant portions of the manuscript. Perhaps the most important “resource” to which I was privy dur- ing my year at Northwestern was the intellectual and personal relationships I developed with rigorous scholars who helped me extend the scope of this work beyond the “literary” and take seriously this study’s interdisciplinary elements. I thank Richard Iton, Sherwin Bryant, Krista )ompson, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Sandra Richards, Barnor Hesse, Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Mary Pattillo, and Tracy Vaughn for pushing, challenging, and encouraging me to push my scholarship to its limits. I owe a special thanks to Dwight McBride and Darlene Clark Hine for their mentorship and for realizing the potential x . ACKNOWLEDGMENTS in this book. I am grateful to my editor, Joan Catapano, and the sta4 at the University of Illinois Press for bringing this project to fruition. )e actual writing of this book could not have been possible without the support of those colleagues who sat with me week a7er week in writing group sessions as I made plan a7er plan to “get it done.” I thank Michelle Boyd, Helen Jun, Amanda Lewis, Dave Stovall, Sacha Coupet, Noni Gaylord- Harden, Ruqaiijah Yearby, and L. Song Richardson for sharing many hilarious moments, making me accountable, and for serving as my personal, career and social advisory council. )is book would have been di8cult to produce with- out a consistent 5ow of lattes—thanks to the sta4 at Iguana Café, Kristo4er’s, and Efebina’s in Pilsen for keeping my cup full and allowing me to occupy a big table, even during the lunch hour. Kerry Ann Rockquemore deserves so much more than a single line for her generous time and spirit, speci6cally spending hours upon hours guiding me through the tenuous and, sometimes mysterious, paths of this profession, and for being a really good friend above all. I greatly appreciate the support this project has received from Loyola University Chicago, especially my colleagues in the English department. I am indebted to Paul Jay, David Chinitz, Jack Kerkering, Joyce Wexler, and Pamela Caughie for their helpful suggestions and careful reading of parts of the manuscript. )anks to Deborah Oliver, Emily O’Keefe, and Gillian Nel- son for meticulously editing and proofreading the entire manuscript when I could no longer “see” it. I thank the very helpful sta4 at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York), the Library of Congress, and the Ran- som Center at the University of Texas at Austin for expertly navigating me through their archival collections. I have greatly bene6ted from conversations with Stephanie Batiste, Stephane Dunn, Margo Crawford, and April Langley. I owe a very special thanks to Reanna Ursin, Lauri Dietz, and especially Liz Fenton for their willingness to give hours of their time to read and reread dra7s, and take as much as time with me as necessary to help talk through any obstacles along the way. Because of them, this project is stronger and more compelling than I could have ever accomplished alone. A warm thanks to my circle of friends: Dina Best-Williams, Sandi )omp- son, Michael Leslie Amilcar, and Muneerah Abdul-Ahad, who completely understood when I needed to go underground, yet were always there to remind me what really mattered. Without the unconditional love and sup- port of my family, I simply would not be. I am grateful for my aunt, Romi Lowe, who has over the years encouraged me to work hard, do my best, and ACKNOWLEDGMENTS · xi watch the rest fall into place. I greatly appreciate my dad, Michael Toney, for teaching me to approach life and work with dignity, integrity, and a smile. My grandparents, Eddie and Annie Lowe, brought with them from Livingston, Alabama, to Chicago, a sense of purpose and possibility that they could cre- ate a new and better life for their children. I thank them for teaching me to fearlessly travel open roads and to create new ones when there is no visible path to follow. And lastly, I thank my mom, Anna Lowe, who inspired my love of literature by example and who has been there every step of the way. Freud Upside Down Introduction In a letter to his mentor, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung surmised that ev- ery subject maintains an intersubjective dependence on his perceived Other: “Just as the coloured man lives in your cities and even within your houses, so also he lives under your skin, subconsciously. Naturally it works both ways. Just as every Jew has a Christ complex, so every Negro has a white complex and every American [white] a Negro complex. As a rule the coloured man would give anything to change his skin, and the white man hates to admit that he has been touched by the black” (Collected Works #":%"0, par. .1'). )e “complex” dialectic Jung imagines relies upon the notion that African Americans desire whiteness and that whites systematically negate blackness. As such, Jung’s Negro becomes inextricably linked to, and even informs, the psychic life of white Americans and vice versa. Jung’s #.'" analysis of black-white relations both reveals his daring to place the thorny matter of race within a psychoanalytic frame and places his conjectures about the psy- chic underpinnings of race and racism in dialogue with then-contemporary modes of African American sociopolitical discourses of race pride prevalent in the early twentieth century. At the same time that Jung conceived of the white complex su4ered by African Americans, black intellectuals were pro- ducing a psychoanalytic counterdiscourse to Jung’s paradigm. One such example is Hubert Harrison, popular journalist and founder of Negro Voice. Harrison is an obscure 6gure compared to his contemporaries Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, and W. E. B Du Bois, but his broad range of knowledge and expertise in the areas of politics, psychology, cultural criti- cism, science, and drama made him privy to key occupations within main- ! . FREUD UPSIDE DOWN stream and black media outlets, including the New York Times, the Boston Chronicle, the Call, the Messenger, and the Masses. I invoke Harrison here as a counterpoint to Jung because Harrison appropriated psychoanalysis as a way to expound tenets of black nationalism and trouble the logic of white supremacy. In March #.!&, the Boston Chronicle ran Harrison’s “Race Con- sciousness.” In this article, Harrison conjectured that the race consciousness of subjugated people emanated from their experience of white domination: )e general facts of the outside world re5ect themselves not only in ideas but in our feelings.