Africana Womanism and the Critical Need for Africana Theory and Thought
Clenora Hudson-Weems, The Western Journal of Black Studies, 21.2 (Summer 1997): 79-84.
As we approach the last hour leading up to the next millennium, I can not stress enough the critical need today for Africana scholars throughout the world to create our own paradigms and theoretical frameworks for assessing our works. We need our own Africana theorists, not scholars who duplicate or use theories created by others in analyzing Africana texts. Indeed, developing paradigms and critical theories, which is our true mission, makes possible for better monitoring interpretations of our works in an effort to keep them both authentic and accurate in order to maintain their originality in meaning and value. The problem, however, is that contrary to white or European theorists, who justifiably approach their literature from the perspective of the centrality of their culture, Eurocentrism, most Africana scholars use theories that are alien and have not been passed through our cultural matrix or lens.. While we may have the primary texts, such as the huge body of material by Zora Neale Hurston, we do not on the whole extract from them our own African-centered theories to analyze and explicate the many layers of interpretations that lie within. Instead, we take the Procrustean approach, via superimposing alien or outside theories and methodologies as a primary means of analyzing and interpreting our texts from a so-called legitimate, universally theoretical perspective. Be it known that this ruling perspective in reality is none other than just another perspective. Interestingly, the dominant culture sees absolutely no need to apply our theories in the analysis of their texts.
For the moment, then, let us demystify the European theorists, who situate their analysis within the construct of the centrality of Europe. Ferdinand de Saussure, a French linguist, "considered linguistics to be concerned with a social institution. He identified language as a system of signs [and] he proposed a distinct set of sciences within semiology, now generally known as semeiotics" (Makaryk 467). This system of signs/words, has a signifier (word itself) and the signified (the "meaning" of the word). He stresses that language does not convey reality, and thus, calling a thing a desk does not necessarily make it so. He contends that there are two oppositions, which are language (langue), "an abstract system maintained by a social group," and speech (parole), "the manifestations of that system," (Makaryk 467). While all of this information is good, and just a given for that matter, focusing exclusively on the external parameters of form rather than content, which is the message, the critical component for us, makes it clear that form here is, in fact, more important than the content, which inauthenticates our focus, since we are at a critical juncture in life regarding our destiny as an oppressed people. Clifford Geertz, another European theorist, a cultural anthropologist who "construes culture as a text, something to be read and interpreted," (Makaryk 331) is more involved with the milieu or cultural textual analysis. While his theory is at least ostensibly somewhat compatible with our text because of the emphasis on culture, we must be cautioned that it can only be so if it is endemic, that is from an insider's perspective, which is not generally the case. For sure, we are familiar with the established reputation of traditional anthropologists and the traditional non-endemic work that they have created, usually studying so-called "primitive" cultures from the perspective of the outsider. That was essential the problem with such studies by renowned anthropologists like Franz Boas and Margaret Mead, for example. While Hurston was considered a protégée of Boas, he provided only a taxonomy within which Hurston might place and categorize the oral literature, in which she was totally immersed, a prism through which mainstream culture might better understand oral literature. To be sure, Hurston was an anthropologist long before she met Boas. She, of course, took anthropology to a higher level, almost to a divine place as an endemic anthropologist. Needless to say, then, nothing new will come from this kind of structural analysis for us.
Jacque Lacan, a French linguist, psychoanalysis and philosopher, stresses how mind and memory come together in associational links, i.e. the stream of consciousness technique. This novel form, which explores the mental activity of the characters, was first introduced by 19th French writer, Du Jardin, in his novel, We're to the Woods No More, and later used by Virginia Woolf in her novels, To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dallaway, and The Waves, and James Joyce in his enormously lengthy 900 plus page novel exploring a single day of the mental as well as the physical activities of his characters in Ulysses, and even later by William Faulkner with all of the material exploring the mental activity of the idiot, Benji, in his novel, The Sound and the Fury. Here again demonstrated is the emphasis on style and form rather than content, which, while it is important in and of itself, is not the primary thing for us as Africana people.
JacqueDerrida, a French theorist from Algeria, who is a deconstructionist critic with poststructural textual analysis, puts together theories about binary oppositions that are infinitely interchangeable, minus the third realm, which is the real or the effect on others. His response to the significance of the colors black and white in South Africa on the issue of Apartheid was that there is no difference and that they are one and the same since they are infinitely interchanging. As others, we, too, should be a bit skeptical here. In fact, his response marked the beginning of his decline as a literary critic. To be sure, the inapplicability of this theory for us should be clear, since Black is always Black and white is certainly always white with all its limitations and privileges respectively. Another European theorist, MilhailBakhtin, a Russian formalist, who offers a corrective to the linguist, comes closest, but not close enough, to a theory that could possibly work for Africana texts, with his emphasis on language as imbedded in the social context, the social context being the key component for us. He stresses the element of dialogue, "a model of creativity which assumed that the interaction of at least two embodied voices or personalities was the sine qua non for genuine consciousness" (Makaryk 243). He proposes a dialogic process of communication, a kind of "call and response," if you will, which we know comes from African tradition, with the many voices, "polyglossia," which is the polymorphous stage of the voice, the spirit of the carnival, the "carvinalesque," and the world of topsy-turveydom, all of which are familiar within the African construct with emphasis on orality. In other words, there is no particular need to cite this theorist, since the primary components used have always been an integral part of Africana life, thought and philosophy. Hence, there is no need for Africana texts to be analyzed and explicated via the use of outside theory. To be sure, all of these theorists place Europe and whiteness at the center of their analysis, which we as Africana people should find somewhat problematic for an Africana perspective.
Clearly what we have here is what my very close, highly esteemed mentor Dr. Richard K. Barksdale calls in his collection of lectures and essays, Praisesong of Survival, and specifically in the selection entitled "Critical Theory and Problems of Canonicity in African American Literature," a fascination with "French-based theories of textual criticism" (36) on the part of American theorists, emphasizing the propensity toward "ignoring history and personal experience" while emphasizing "an ivory towerish sense of intellectual mystification" (Barksdale 36). I neither desire nor need to imbue my analyses with these or other white critics like Lentricchia who for example, "argues against the social isolation engendered by textual deconstruction and encourages the use of theories advanced by Gramsci and Foucault for promoting individual empowerment" (Barksdale 37). We obviously have our own critics who express an interest in the importance of the historical, political, and social context of our literature. For example, while Alaine Locke calls for l'art pour l'art, insisting that "the Black artist should take a purely aesthetic approach to written material," (Hill 788), W. E. B. DuBois, whom Patricia Liggins Hill, general editor if Call and Response and herself a Black Aesthetician, calls a progenitor of the Black Arts Movement and the Black Aesthetics of the searing sixties, asserts in a 1926 The Crisis article that "we do not believe in art simply for art's sake" (Hill 789). Further in "Criteria of Negro Art" in The Crisis, DuBois contends that all Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing, has been used always for propaganda, for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. . . . The ultimate judge has got to be you (Hill 790).
Later, in his "Dramatis Personae," in 1930, DuBois asserts that "All art is propaganda and without propaganda there is no true art" (Hill 790). Moreover, according to Barksdale,
Richard Wright's assessment that all literature is a protest against something and that without a protesting and politicized literature, needed changes will never be recognized, discussed, or successfully implemented (34).Barksdale, then says of himself and his co-editor of the anthology Black Writers of America: A Comprehensive Anthology, we were more on fire with political energy than inspired by literary insight. . . . Kiinnamon and I forged a black literary canon full of political content. . . . For me a literary act is a political act (34)
Be that as it may, Barksdale sees too clearly the broader picture, which he outlines in his last lecture in Baltimore, November 1989 at the Langston Hughes Society conference, which he founded. Shortly after his keynote address, he received a scathing letter from one of our well-known Black deconstructionist critics, condemning him as an "out dated race man" regarding his perspective on the matter of theory. Unfortunately, however, that letter of attack went unanswered, for in less than a month, Barksdale, who verbally expressed to his wife that he was very disappointed that a young Black scholar whom he had encouraged would disregard the true legacy of Africana literature, suffered the first of many strokes which ultimately caused his death. Moreover, even if he did disagree with Barksdale's accurate assessment regarding Africana theory and thought, the fact that he would do so in such a way as to insult a senior mentor was both unacceptable and unexpected, since from an Africana reality, respect and reverence of one's elders reign supreme. Be that as it may, according to Barksdale,
A major problem in African American literary canon formation, however, is the burgeoning influence of the very fanciful critical theories . . . spreading throughout our major graduate schools. . . .Teachers who have developed skills in these new areas of critical interpretation quickly attract advisees . . . They not only have become the major dissertation directors, but they have a very strong voice in search and hiring decisions. . . . . Indeed, one wonders whether PMLA has not become completely enamored of the dense and jargon-ridden style and format practiced by the critical theorist. . . .
So critical theorists have built power bases of influence in many departments of literature, not only in the literary bastions of the East and the West coasts, but throughout the departments of the Big Eight and Big Ten universities. Where the universities have publishing presses, critical theorists also usually exercise some influence on publishing decisions, either as press readers or members of press boards. (35-36)
What we are talking about here is the awesome politics of employment and publications, as well as one's credibility, visibility, and viability in academe. We have Dr. Barksdale's wife, Dr. Mildred Barksdale, to thank for preserving both her husband's last speech and the condescending letter of response, the former being published during his declining three years plus in that invaluable collection Praisesong of Survival.
Barksdale's astute insights into the true nature and impact of this new critical wave led him to an authentic position, and thus, what follows is his outlined recommendations for expanding and broadening our African American literary canon. He proposes that
we ignore deconstruction, poststructual textual exegesis, and continental hermeneutics. African American literature cannot effectively survive critical approaches that stress authorial depersonalization and the essential unimportance of racial history, racial community, and racial traditions. . . . I believe not in avoiding history but in elucidating history. Admittedly, I am that old-fashioned kind of historical critic who still stresses the three M's--the man, the moment, the milieu--in approaching a literary work; and when we get to the text, I stress more M's--matter, manner, mode, meaning. . . . So, I recommend that as we build our literary canon for the tomorrows that lie ahead in the next century, we remain ever mindful of the need to utilize the politics of survival. This is something to be found in the text of our history that ahistorical theorists like a Derrida, a Gramsci, or a Lacan would not begin to understand (Barksdale 37-8).
What Barksdale is advocating, then, is that we return to the original mission of the African American literary tradition, which was signaled in the form of the slave narrative, beginning with Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. The slave narrative was, indeed, political as it set out to inform the public of the sad psychological and physical conditions of enslaved Africana people with hopes of galvanizing empathetic supporters for abolishing this evil system of total brute subjugation. And is not the political exactly the essence and the objective of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin? This tradition was to continue throughout for centuries, addressing the conditions of the oppressed on whatever the level of racial oppression for that particular time. Indeed, this is to continue until racial oppression is no more. Clearly, we have not reached that point as of yet, and thus, the need for continued emphasis lives on, with a clear focus on content rather than form.
Like Barksdale and others before him, as a Black Aesthetics critic and theorist, I take for my analysis of Africana texts an African-centered theory, grounded in Africana thought and action, and hence, wht I am proposing, like Afrocentric scholar Molefe Asante and
other great Afrocentric scholars before him (Cheikh Anta Diop, John Henrik Clarke, Juself Ben-Jochannan, and Chancellor Williams to name a few), is an Afrocentric perspective on Africana issues--putting Africa in the center of the lives and concepts of Africanans. In this same way, Africana Womanism commands an African-centered perspective of Africana women's lives--their historical, current, and future interaction with their community, which includes their male counterparts. (Hudson-Weems 47)
Like the dominant culture in preserving the integrity of their culture and art, we need these kinds of theories, African-centered, for our own survival and the survival of our culture and history. At every instance, we should ask the question as to if the theories we embrace, which are maps for analyzing all texts, work for our unique experiences in this racially hostile world. In other words, the cultural context, which is all embracing, such as language, history, dress, behavior, values and principles, is of upmost importance. We do not have the luxury of spending too much time on external nuances, like form, at the risk of sacrificing internal nuances, like content and meaning. Thus, our own critical theories for analyzing our own critical experiences are needed so that we can begin to create institutions of ideas, Black thought, for housing and disseminating our life experiences, historically, currently and futuralistically.
Institutions like the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where Winston van Horne, the conceptualizer of the discipline of Africology, which is the study of Africa and its people everywhere, teaches, as well as TempleUniversity, with Molefe Asante, director of the first department to offer a Ph.. D. in African American Studies, could offer such an opportunity for creating true institutions of Africana ideas. Therefore, a Ph.D. in African American/Africana Studies utilizing white theory is counter productive to say the least. If mainstream theories and methodologies should take center stage at such African centered institutions or programs, then why establish an African-centered Ph. D. Program at all? With this in mind, the following are only some of the valid theories and approaches that a Department of Afrocology/Africana/Black/Pan-African/African American Studies could find strengthening for its unique programs:
Black Aesthetics Contiuum--Patricia Liggins Hill-University of San Franciso, Department of English