“RUPTURING THE PLANE”: SIGNIFYIN(G) AT THE JUNCTURES IN ISHMAEL
REED’S MUMBO JUMBO
being A Thesis
Presented to the Graduate Faculty
of the Fort Hays State University in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Master of Arts
by
Michelle Webb
B.A., B.S., Fort Hays State University
https://scholars.fhsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1131&context=theses
ABSTRACT
Most readings of Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo come from a perspective that
Reed establishes a series of binaries to be dissected. Many of these critics use Jacques
Derrida’s theory of deconstruction because they assert that Reed is simply reversing the
roles of the marginalized African and the centralized white man. These implications
cover most of the major points in Reed’s work: the West vs. the East, Christianity vs.
Hoodoo, white vs. black, etc. However, this type of reading is inadequate because it is too
limiting. Reed goes beyond the binaries and beyond the Western assumption of one or the
other. He creates a kind of hybrid notion, suggesting the text contains more of a
crossroads motif than a simple inversion of dominance and oppression. Using Henry
Louis Gates, Jr.’s The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary
Criticism as a theoretical framework, I examine the protagonist, PaPa LaBas, as well as
the text Mumbo Jumbo itself because they represent the points at which Reed’s notions of
hybridity are most prominent. Cynthia Hamilton writes that which most closely
summarizes my concept: “The ‘X’ of the crossing roadbeds signals the
multidirectionality of the juncture and is simply a single instance in a boundless network
that redoubles and circles . . . and branches over the vastness of hundreds of thousands of
American miles” (237). The sense of redoubling and circling aligns with Gates’s theory
of “Signifyin(g),” and the process enables readers to go beyond the binaries to discover
the complex nature of Reed’s work.
Thursday, May 14, 2020
Performance, History, and Myth: The Problem of Ishmael
Reed's Mumbo-Jumbo
Theodore O. Mason Jr.
MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 34, Number 1, Spring 1988, pp. 97-109
(Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI:
For additional information about this article
[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.0.0152
Reed's Mumbo-Jumbo
Theodore O. Mason Jr.
MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 34, Number 1, Spring 1988, pp. 97-109
(Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI:
For additional information about this article
[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.0.0152
ART
FEATURE: ‘MUMBO JUMBO’ BY ISHMAEL REED: AN INFECTIOUS MASTERPIECE OF BLACK LITERATURE
By Eye Candy
April 15, 2015
It’s 1920 and Harlem is in havoc, thousands around the city are “suffering” from “Jes Grew”, the mysterious “disease” that’s got people out in the streets jumping, bouncing, and feverishly thrusting their bodies in a superhuman trance. No one can contain this epidemic; it’s sweeping across the nation, infecting thousands of people and forcing them into a sudden and unpredictable dance craze. They lose control of their bodies and can’t help but groove and shake rhythmically to its beat—this is the lively backdrop of Ishmael Reed’s mystifying 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo.
By Damola Durosomo, AFROPUNK Contributor
Mumbo Jumbo is a satirical masterpiece, a critical analysis of Western culture and its blatant disregard for Africa and the meaningful contributions of its people. Reed shifts back and forth between various historical time periods and presents an array of quirky, archetypical characters, each symbolic of certain religious, social and political ideologies. PaPa LaBas is the head of the Jes Grew Kathedral, he calls himself a “Neo-HoDoo therapist”, who is dedicated to conserving traditional African religions and is a staunch supporter of Jes Grew. According to PaPa LaBas, Jes Grew is far from a deadly disease, rather it is an extremely pleasurable and freeing mental and physical state for those it inhabits, encouraging them to move about freely and search for truth and meaning. He makes it his mission to preserve and spread Jes Grews to all non-Westerners. He does so with the help of the radical Jes Grew organization Mu’tahfikah, a group of Jes Grew carriers who go about sharing Jes Grew and raiding museums in order to reclaim African and Asian cultural artifacts and return them to their places of origin. In Mumbo Jumbo, Papa LaBas and his crew are meant to exemplify black consciousness and a purely Afrocentric worldview, a firm belief in the idea that black people are purveyors of culture who have made invaluable contributions to society that Western culture has tried to either steal or suppress. PaPa LaBas and Mu’tahfikah attempt to counteract this by disseminating Jes Grew and awakening the masses.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, we have Hinckle Von Hampton, the owner of the sacred Jes Grew text, written by ancient Egyptians, which posses the power to control the epidemic. Von Hampton and his team, the Wallflower Order, go to great lengths to avert the increasing influence of Jes Grew. The most bizarre of these attempts is their disgraceful effort to create what they refer to as a “Talking Droid” modeled after a charming, well-educated black man that will trick black populations into believing that Jes Grew is harmful and dangerous to them. By endeavoring to subdue Jes Grew—a discernable and instrumental product of black culture—Hinkle Van Hampton serves as an emblem of the Western world and the efforts made by the media—as well as social and political institutions—aimed at obscuring the achievements of people of the African diaspora in order to maintain the flawed perception of Western cultural superiority. Jes Grew promotes black culture and enlightens its victims; making it a threat to white, Western rationalistic thought. Therefore, it must be “cured”.
Reed’s style is amusing and unconventional. Mumbo Jumbo reads almost as a movie script with seemingly random black and white photographs and catchy newspaper headlines in between. Ishmael’s brilliant use of satire gives Mumbo Jumbo the rare quality of being subtle and blunt at the same time. Through this, Reed provides remarkably sharp and thought-provoking racial commentary.
Though written in 1972, the central motifs discussed in Mumbo Jumbo are still incredibly relevant. Cultural appropriation on the part of white America is ever-present and media portrayal of young black men and women is habitually misconstrued. White people continue to dominate social, economic and political affairs and Western culture remains the prevailing global standard while the immeasurable contributions of black, African people continue to be undermined and overlooked; these are the things that need to be “cured”. There are definite parallels between the events that take place in Mumbo Jumbo and current events. Just like in the colorful streets of Harlem in 1920, a Jes Grew epidemic—a widespread condition of physical, intellectual and spiritual liberation—may be just what we need.
Words by EYE CANDY
Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo
by Ted Gioiahttp://fractiousfiction.com/mumbo_jumbo.html
In my writings on music, I have sometimes compared the dissemination
of a new performance style to the spread of a disease. This isn't just a
fancy metaphor. The mathematical models used to study the diffusion
of innovations come from medical science, and were originally developed
to predict the spread of epidemics. (Check out the work of Everett Rogersfor insights into this field of forecasting and trend analysis.)
In my twenties, when I worked as a management
consulting with McKinsey and the Boston Consulting
Group, I applied these formulas to plot the success
of new product launches and forecast the impact of
technology shifts. Later I found that these same
mathematical models could help me understand
the early spread of jazz, blues and other musical
'epidemics' of the past and present. A new cultural
meme is a kind of germ, and often the very same
conditions that foster one also help spread the other.
In other words, it’s no coincidence that New Orleans,
the birthplace of jazz, was also one of the unhealthiest
cities in the US at the time that this music came of age.
I doubt that novelist Ishmael Reed ever practiced
management consulting, but apparently he learned the same lessons
about the diffusion of new musical styles. In his 1972 novel Mumbo
Jumbo, Reed writes the story of an 'epidemic' of black culture—song,
dance, slang and other elements—spreading into mainstream America.
He calls his plague 'Jes Grew' and it is spread by 'Jes Grew Carriers'
(or J.G.C.s) who are responsible for outbreaks throughout the US, and
in some locations overseas.
Reed sets most of his story in New York during the Jazz Age. An earlier
outbreak of 'Jes Grew'—associated with the rise of ragtime in the
1890s—had been effectively contained. But now a new, stronger bug
is sweeping northward from New Orleans, and threatens to subdue
most of the population. There are "18,000 cases in Arkansas, 60,000
in Tennessee, 98,000 in Mississippi and cases showing up even in
Wyoming." Workers are dancing the Turkey Trot during their lunch break,
and singing in the streets. The authorities are alarmed. People want to
catch this new disease. Those who are still healthy gather around those
already bitten by the bug, and chant "give me fever, give me fever."
But if everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon of the new black plague,
who is left to stop it. Here Reed outdoes himself, offering the grandest of
conspiracy theories. The Knights Templar, apparently disbanded in the
year 1312, are actually still hanging around, and waiting for a chance to
stop the Jes Grew epidemic. But they need to get in line. The Teutonic
Knights, founded in the twelfth century, also want to block the disease.
And some Masons, a former cop, yellow journalists, Wall Street,
politicians the folks at the Plutocrat Club, and a mysterious group
known as the Wallflower Order, dedicated to implementing the world-
view of an even bigger conspiracy group, known as the Atonists, all
have skin in the game (literally and metaphorically).
And this conspiracy has been around for a long, long time. Take the
aforementioned 'Atonists', for example. Back in ancient Egypt, they
worshipped the disk of the sun, known as Aton, but now they represent a
coalition of angry monotheists, with everyone from Christians to Freudians
offering their support.
How can you keep a conspiracy this big a secret? And continue to
keep it secret for thousands of years? Reed doesn't tell us. Fortunately
a few brave souls have figured out the dark, dirty truth, and are willing to
take on this enormous coalition of evil doers—in particular, Papa La
Bas of the Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral, an upholder of African spiritualism,
and his ally Black Herman, a real-life African-American stage magician
who performed through the United States during the 1920s and early
1930s.
Other historical figures, from Warren G. Harding to King Tut, make
their appearance in cameo roles in this book. Three years after Reed
published Mumbo Jumbo, E.L. Doctorow released his novel Ragtime
to great acclaim, with particular praise lavished on that book’s mixture of
fictional characters and real personages from early 20th century America.
But Reed set the tone for this mashup up truth and fiction in his colorful
predecessor, and even anticipated Doctorow's reliance on black music
as an emblem for the flux and flow of the era.
If anything, Reed is more ambitious. He even includes footnotes and a
lengthy bibliography at the end of his novel—with citations of everyone
from Edward Gibbon to Madame Blavatsky. Photos and artwork are
also inserted into the text, which often seems intent on breaking free of
the constraints of the novel, and turning into a radical reinterpretation of
the last several thousand years of human society.
This book is packed to the brim with symbols and vaguely coded
references. For example, the leader of the Knights Templar’s efforts
to stamp out Jes Grew is a journalist named Hinckle Von Vampton.
Students of American literary history will easily recognize a parody of
white Harlem Renaissance advocate Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964).
Reed describes Von Vampton as having one blue eye, and wearing a
black eyepatch over the other eye—typical of the extravagant symbolism
that shows up again and again in this book, and a fitting way of depicting
Van Vechten's role as an intermediary between white and black culture.
But how many readers also pick up on the reference to Warren Hinckle,
a flamboyant San Francisco journalist who was at the peak of his fame
when Mumbo Jumbo was published, and cut a striking figure in town with
a black eyepatch?
Toward the conclusion of Mumbo Jumbo, Reed abandons his main
characters for thirty pages of revisionist history, ("Well, if you must know,
it all began 1000s of years ago in Egypt…") The campy, over-the-top
style of delivery may convince you that Reed is offering a parody of
conspiracy theories. But his intensity and earnestness also send a
message that he believes in them too. This tension is unresolved,
and I suspect that choice is deliberate. Reed wants to have it both ways:
he demands us to take his Atonist conspiracy seriously, but also wants
to maintain the flamboyant, comic tone that makes it laughable as well.
Yet readers may be confused at the end result. Does Ishmael Reed
really believe that Scott Joplin was institutionalized and given electro-
shock treatments by enemies of black music? Does he really think
that Warren G. Harding was our first African-American president
before Barack Obama? Is he actually contending that the Roman
Emperor Julian was assassinated by Christians? Does he really
believe that space ships landed in pre-Columbian Mexico?
In other words, Reed has delivered a classic work in the literature of
paranoia. He joins an illustrious company, offering us a book that can
stand alongside—at least in terms of the breadth of its conspiracy
theories—Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Umberto Eco’s
Foucault’' Pendulum, Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters, Robert
Anton Wilson's The Illuminatus Trilogy, Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirensof Titan and other powerful literary evocations of our zeal to find hidden
enemies everywhere we look. Writers nowadays may do some things
better than their predecessors, but the generation that lived through
McCarthyism, the Cold War, Alger Hiss and Kim Philby had a much
better skill at capturing the exotic flavor of the paranoid mindset in
narrative form.
So you are best served if you come to this novel with a deep knowledge
of history—and not just American history, given the ever expanding
scope of Reed's concerns and conspiracies. The knowledgeable reader
will decipher many of the half-hidden references and apply good judgment
in deciding how many of Reed's "facts" can be believed. Others can
come along for the ride, and enjoy the color and pageantry of this novel.
But they need to remember the definition of mumbo jumbo, which (like
this novel, given that appropriate name) is a style of speaking in which
it's hard to separate gospel truth from good showmanship.
Ted Gioia writes on literature, music and popular culture. His most recent book is
The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire.
Mumbo Jumbo
By Alan Friedman
Aug. 6, 1972
Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
August 6, 1972, Section BR, Page 1
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/08/06/archives/mumbo-jumbo-by-ishmael-reed-illustrated-223-pp-new-york-doubleday.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/08/06/archives/mumbo-jumbo-by-ishmael-reed-illustrated-223-pp-new-york-doubleday.html
“The Norton Anthology of Poetry” spans the centuries from Chaucer to Reed. Whether he likes it or not, Ishmael Reed has for some time now occupied a black outpost in a white landscape. To judge from his new book, he doesn't like it much. His latest work, written with black humor, is a satire on the unfinished race between the races in America and throughout history. It is a book of deliberate unruliness and sophisticated incongruity, a dazzling maze of black‐and‐white history and fantasy, in‐jokes and outrage, erudition and superstition. Not only to white readers like myself wilt the way into and out of this maze be puzzling. For though it's a novel, the author's method is not novelistic. Wholly original, his book is an
unholy cross between the craft of fiction and witchcraft.
I don't mean merely that “Mumbo Jumbo” is about such mysteries as HooDoo or VooDoo. “Black Herman walks to the bed, picks up her scarf, and casts it to the floor where it becomes a snake.” I mean that it attempts, through its deadpan phan tasmagoria of a plot, and through the black art of the Magus as storyteller, to achieve the kind of hold on the reader's mind that from ancient times and in primitive contexts has always been associated with the secret Word, the sacred Text.
The plot of “Mumbo Jumbo” is mind ‐ boggling. In the 1920's an epidemic called Jes Grew begins to infect the United States, especially its black citizens. Topsy said he “jes' grew,” but Reed traces the origins of the Jes Grew infection back to the Egyptian god Osiris. As the plague spreads in the 1920's, a worldwide conspiracy, the “Mu'tafikah(?),” be gins to seize African, Oriental, and native American art treasures from white museums “of Art De tention” in order to return them to the peoples who created them. Locked in deadly combat with this “Black Tide of Mud” are “an ancient society known as the Atonist Path” (Aton, the Sun God), “its military arm the Wallflower Order,” and the medieval Knights Templars. As someone in the book notices, “It has been an interesting 2000 years.”
But just what is this potent infection the author calls Jes Grew? “Ask Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, your poets, your painters, ask them how to catch it. Ask those people who be shaking their tambourines impervious of the ridicule they receive from Black and White Atonists, Europe the ghost rattling its chains down the deserted halls of their brains. Ask those little colored urchins who ‘make up’ those new dance steps and the Black cook who wrote the last lines of the ‘Ballad of Jesse James.’ Ask the man who, deprived of an electronic guitar, picked up a wash board and started to play it. The Rhyming Fool who sits in Re'‐mote Mississippi and talks ‘crazy’ for hours. The dazzling paradizing pun ning mischievous pre‐Joycean style play for Cakewalking, your Calinda, your Minstrelsy give‐and‐take of the ultra‐absurd. Ask the people who put wax paper over combs and blow through them. In other words, Nathan, I am saying Open‐Up‐To Right‐Here.”
The book is like that, frankly and consummately freewheeling, part historical funferal, here a highbrow satire, here a low‐key farce, even roman a clef. The villain of the piece is a controversial book publisher named Hinckle Von Vampton who wears “a black patch on his eye from an old war wound.” But Hinckle Von Vampton also turns out to be thousand‐year‐old Crusader who has learned to cheat death through a secret diet. Reed loves to mix his elements: spiritualists with cops and robbers, literary criticism with caricature, “a little bit of jive talk and a little bit of North Africa,” romance and necromancy, Egyptology, etymology, bibliography, hagiography, poli tics, Teutonic knights, and marvelously bizarre headlines—“MUSCLE WHITE BAGS COON.”
I don't mean merely that “Mumbo Jumbo” is about such mysteries as HooDoo or VooDoo. “Black Herman walks to the bed, picks up her scarf, and casts it to the floor where it becomes a snake.” I mean that it attempts, through its deadpan phan tasmagoria of a plot, and through the black art of the Magus as storyteller, to achieve the kind of hold on the reader's mind that from ancient times and in primitive contexts has always been associated with the secret Word, the sacred Text.
The plot of “Mumbo Jumbo” is mind ‐ boggling. In the 1920's an epidemic called Jes Grew begins to infect the United States, especially its black citizens. Topsy said he “jes' grew,” but Reed traces the origins of the Jes Grew infection back to the Egyptian god Osiris. As the plague spreads in the 1920's, a worldwide conspiracy, the “Mu'tafikah(?),” be gins to seize African, Oriental, and native American art treasures from white museums “of Art De tention” in order to return them to the peoples who created them. Locked in deadly combat with this “Black Tide of Mud” are “an ancient society known as the Atonist Path” (Aton, the Sun God), “its military arm the Wallflower Order,” and the medieval Knights Templars. As someone in the book notices, “It has been an interesting 2000 years.”
But just what is this potent infection the author calls Jes Grew? “Ask Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, your poets, your painters, ask them how to catch it. Ask those people who be shaking their tambourines impervious of the ridicule they receive from Black and White Atonists, Europe the ghost rattling its chains down the deserted halls of their brains. Ask those little colored urchins who ‘make up’ those new dance steps and the Black cook who wrote the last lines of the ‘Ballad of Jesse James.’ Ask the man who, deprived of an electronic guitar, picked up a wash board and started to play it. The Rhyming Fool who sits in Re'‐mote Mississippi and talks ‘crazy’ for hours. The dazzling paradizing pun ning mischievous pre‐Joycean style play for Cakewalking, your Calinda, your Minstrelsy give‐and‐take of the ultra‐absurd. Ask the people who put wax paper over combs and blow through them. In other words, Nathan, I am saying Open‐Up‐To Right‐Here.”
The book is like that, frankly and consummately freewheeling, part historical funferal, here a highbrow satire, here a low‐key farce, even roman a clef. The villain of the piece is a controversial book publisher named Hinckle Von Vampton who wears “a black patch on his eye from an old war wound.” But Hinckle Von Vampton also turns out to be thousand‐year‐old Crusader who has learned to cheat death through a secret diet. Reed loves to mix his elements: spiritualists with cops and robbers, literary criticism with caricature, “a little bit of jive talk and a little bit of North Africa,” romance and necromancy, Egyptology, etymology, bibliography, hagiography, poli tics, Teutonic knights, and marvelously bizarre headlines—“MUSCLE WHITE BAGS COON.”
Through all this, though he tells a fast‐paced story, the author plays fast and loose with the conventions of storytelling. For example, in the very midst of a kidnapping, the ten sion is interrupted to provide—as motive for the kidnapping itself — a long myth of Osiris, Moses and Jethro. Readers will find the ex perience rough, unless they are willing to put aside the usual ex pectations about what a novel is supposed to be, and the satisfaction it is rumored to provide. Ishmael Reed is unique, and he has other things to offer. If one stays with “Mumbo Jumbo,” uncannily, the book begins to establish its very own life, on its very own terms.
The terms are demanding. Reed wants to convince, not persuade. When William Golding unfolds his fable in “Lord of the Flies,” when Kurt Vonnegut spins his satire in “Cat's Cradle,” we are led to be lieve in the fantasy by a persuasive context: by tone, detail, characters, timing and drama. Disbelief is in fact easy to suspend because belief is what the audience craves and the storyteller loves to create. But Ish mael Reed, in the manner of William Burroughs, avoids persuasion, he in vites disbelief. Our very refusal (in ability) to lend credence to the lurid anti‐logic of “Naked Lunch” leaves us reeling—and then, if we can still turn pages at all, mesmerized by the novel's inner vision. Still, Bur roughs deals in junk nightmares, Reed in black ritual. “I . . . I don't want to be difficult with you, Hiero thant 1 says pressing the button so that 3 weird looking dudes in 3d Man Theme trenches enter through the doors leading to the round room. One carrys the ritual dagger on
Reed's tone here and elsewhere is curiously flat, opaque, hypnotic and carefully chosen. Earlier, in “The Freelance Pallbearers,” he displayed a prose style of considerable trans parency and brilliance. That first novel was a satire, too. A tale of slapstick and martyrdom; persua sive, but not convincing. His second novel, “Yellow Back Radio Broke Down,” was a Gnostic Western, a bizarre epic of cowpunching, hexing, execution and papal interven tion. So wild that there the question of belief could hardly arise. “Drag bent over and french kissed the animal be tween his teeth, licking the slaver from around the horse's gums.” “A novel,” the hero asserted after shooting his horse, “can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o'clock news, the mumbling of wild men saddled by demons.”
“Mumbo Jumbo” is all of these, but it is also sterner stuff than anything in his earlier books. The author is after bigger game now, and he has taken a risk. His terms in “Mumbo Jumbo” go beyond those of fiction. Beneath the passions of individual charac ters, beneath the conflict of blacks and whites, beneath every plague and blessing in the book, lies an opposition be tween the gods, between Osiris and Aton (compare Dionysos and Apollo). There is a prece dent, a novel at once satiric and holy: “The Golden Ass” of Apuleius written for the an cient sect of Isis. But that was long ago. And Reed sees the problem:
“A sacred Black Work if it came along today would be left unpublished.” It would be “the essential Pan ‐ Africanism . . . artists relating across contin ents their craft, drumbeats from the aeons, sounds that are still with us.” However, since the ancient Text is still missing, “we will make our own future text.”
So I suspect that for Ishmael Reed “Mumbo Jumbo” is some thing a good deal more than a novel. Through all the wild gy rations of its black comedy, he casts a nonfiction spell, he weaves an incantation with footnotes, he endows his Text with power. And if one reads it through, one risks succumbing to the Text . . . or as Reed once put it in a poem, disappearing into it.
The hunger of this poem is legendary it has taken in many victims.
1st Edition
Postmodernism and its Others
The Fiction of Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker, and Don DeLillo
By Jeffrey Ebbeson
https://www.routledge.com/Postmodernism-and-its-Others-The-Fiction-of-Ishmael-Reed-Kathy-Acker/Ebbeson/p/book/9780415802925
Book Description
The book analyzes Ishmael Reed [Mumbo Jumbo], Kathy Acker [The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec by Henri Toulouse Lautrec], and Don Delillo [White Noise], three authors whom critics cite as quintessentially postmodern. For these critics such works possess formal narrative and/or content qualities at odds with modernism. In particular, according to influential thinkers like Fredric Jameson, postmodern works possess narrative form and/or content which eschews reality, and embody a fundamental paradigm shift from the politically committed ideology of modernity and modernism to the politically relativistic ideology of postmodernity and postmodernism.
The book contends that while the above authors do possess numerous so-called "postmodern" qualities, their critical forms and/or contents remain ethically and politically grounded. As most postmodern theory rejects such grounding, its discovery in these prototypical postmodern novels suggests problems with the "postmodern" category itself.
The book contends that while the above authors do possess numerous so-called "postmodern" qualities, their critical forms and/or contents remain ethically and politically grounded. As most postmodern theory rejects such grounding, its discovery in these prototypical postmodern novels suggests problems with the "postmodern" category itself.
ERASING THE BINARY OPPOSITIONS
THE POSITION OF WOMEN CHARACTERS
IN ISHMAEL REED’S JAPANESE BY SPRING
Jiřà Šalamoun
—Theory and Practice in English Studies, Vol. V, Issue 1, 2012—
https://is.muni.cz/repo/1105754/THEPES_Vol_V_issue_1_article_1_Salamoun.pdf
I. Introduction
The Raven myths of the Pacific Northwest are comic,
but they deal with serious subjects: the creation of the
world and the origin of Death. The major toast of the
Afro-American tradition, “The Signifying Monkey,” is
comic, but it makes a serious point: how the weak are
capable of overcoming the strong through wit.
The calypso songs of Trinidad may be comic, but they deal
with serious subjects [...] My work is also comic, but it
makes, I feel, serious points about politics, culture, and
religion. (Ishmael Reed 1988: 140)
ALTHOUGH Ishmael Reed is the author of nine novels, six collections of poetry, and nine collections of essays, not many readers know what to expect when they happen to
hear his name. However, the title of Reed’s third book of essays, Writing Is Fighting: Thirty-seven Years of Boxing on Paper, combined with the passage quoted above, should give
one a succinct image of Reed’s style, writing technique, and approaches adopted in writing.
All of Reed’s novelistic endeavours can be encapsulated in the following plot line: a much weaker individual challenges an oppressive force which negatively influences the lives
of many other individuals, the proverbial Others. Through the continuing struggle of the individual, the prime position of this oppressive force is deconstructed, and its power wanes until it ceases to threaten those Others.
Throughout his prolific writing career, Reed has taken on many heavy-weight opponents; and, thus, Afro-centrism, white racism, the European paradigm of the Enlightenment,
and the Western literary canon have all been deconstructed in his literary boxing-ring. Since Reed is very careful not just to switch the binary opposition of the Oppressor/Oppressed
equation, but also to erase, as best he can, instances of such a
system (Hogue 2009: 145), his works have been lauded as a key example of postmodern, multicultural writing. But Reed’s later work has been doubted by many who have been
concerned with the position of men and women in his novels.
Since some critics have pointed out the unbalanced position of men and women in his oeuvre (Hume 1993: 511; Womack 2001: 237), this article will examine the position of
women and men in Reed’s latest novel, Japanese by Spring, in order to discover whether it is aligned with Reed’s attempts to erase binary oppositions or not. It will argue that, while
the position of women in Reed’s early fiction is not in alignment with his attempts to deconstruct binary oppositions, this situation changes dramatically in Japanese by Spring,
where women hold better positions than men.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN CHARACTERS
IN ISHMAEL REED’S JAPANESE BY SPRING
Jiřà Šalamoun
—Theory and Practice in English Studies, Vol. V, Issue 1, 2012—
https://is.muni.cz/repo/1105754/THEPES_Vol_V_issue_1_article_1_Salamoun.pdf
I. Introduction
The Raven myths of the Pacific Northwest are comic,
but they deal with serious subjects: the creation of the
world and the origin of Death. The major toast of the
Afro-American tradition, “The Signifying Monkey,” is
comic, but it makes a serious point: how the weak are
capable of overcoming the strong through wit.
The calypso songs of Trinidad may be comic, but they deal
with serious subjects [...] My work is also comic, but it
makes, I feel, serious points about politics, culture, and
religion. (Ishmael Reed 1988: 140)
ALTHOUGH Ishmael Reed is the author of nine novels, six collections of poetry, and nine collections of essays, not many readers know what to expect when they happen to
hear his name. However, the title of Reed’s third book of essays, Writing Is Fighting: Thirty-seven Years of Boxing on Paper, combined with the passage quoted above, should give
one a succinct image of Reed’s style, writing technique, and approaches adopted in writing.
All of Reed’s novelistic endeavours can be encapsulated in the following plot line: a much weaker individual challenges an oppressive force which negatively influences the lives
of many other individuals, the proverbial Others. Through the continuing struggle of the individual, the prime position of this oppressive force is deconstructed, and its power wanes until it ceases to threaten those Others.
Throughout his prolific writing career, Reed has taken on many heavy-weight opponents; and, thus, Afro-centrism, white racism, the European paradigm of the Enlightenment,
and the Western literary canon have all been deconstructed in his literary boxing-ring. Since Reed is very careful not just to switch the binary opposition of the Oppressor/Oppressed
equation, but also to erase, as best he can, instances of such a
system (Hogue 2009: 145), his works have been lauded as a key example of postmodern, multicultural writing. But Reed’s later work has been doubted by many who have been
concerned with the position of men and women in his novels.
Since some critics have pointed out the unbalanced position of men and women in his oeuvre (Hume 1993: 511; Womack 2001: 237), this article will examine the position of
women and men in Reed’s latest novel, Japanese by Spring, in order to discover whether it is aligned with Reed’s attempts to erase binary oppositions or not. It will argue that, while
the position of women in Reed’s early fiction is not in alignment with his attempts to deconstruct binary oppositions, this situation changes dramatically in Japanese by Spring,
where women hold better positions than men.
The political conspiracies of Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo
Historical relativism and the contemporary battle for power
by
Benjamin Clark Bishop, Jr.
A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Major: English (Literature)
AN AMERICAN EVANGELICAL PROTESTANT INTERPRETS MUMBO JUMBO
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8109&context=rtd
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
THE POLITICAL CONSPIRACY 13
THE MASONIC CONSPIRACY 36
THE LITERARY AND ART CONSPIRACY 44
CONCLUSION 53
WORKS CITED 57
Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo and the Uses of Parody
Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert
Published 1991 8 Pages
https://www.academia.edu/3670280/Ishmael_Reeds_Mumbo_Jumbo_and_the_Uses_of_Parody
PERFORMANCE, HISTORY, AND MYTH: THE PROBLEM OF ISHMAEL REED'S "MUMBO-JUMBO"
Theodore O. Mason, Jr.
Modern Fiction Studies
Vol. 34, No. 1, SPECIAL ISSUE: MODERN BLACK FICTION (Spring 1988), pp. 97-109
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26282406
Page Count: 13
Topics: Novels, United States history, Cultural history, Modern literature, Literary criticism, Selective employment taxes, Writers, Historicity, Verisimilitude
Laughter and Identity in Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo
Sharon A. Jessee
MELUS, Volume 21, Issue 4, December 1996, Pages 127–139, https://doi.org/10.2307/467645
Published:
01 December 1996
Comparative American Studies An International Journal
Volume 5, 2007 - Issue 4
Rethinking Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo: Neo-Hoodoo ...
https://kameelahmartin.files.wordpress.com › neohoodoo-womanist-text
RETHINKING ISHMAEL REED'S MUMBO JUMBO: NEO-HOODOO WOMANIST TEXT? Northward and Cityward: Re-reading Literature of the Great Migration.
by K Wheeler - 2014 - Related articles
Riffing on The Past: Jazz and Signifying in Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo ... read either Ishmael Reed's novel Mumbo Jumbo, or a number of venomously racist articles, ... inspection”—many can be read for meaning that pertains to Reed's ...
A CASEBOOK STUDY OF ISHMAEL REED’S
YELLOW BACK RADIO BROKE-DOWN
EDITED BY PIERRE-DAMIEN MVUYEKURE
❖
Dalkey Archive Press Casebook Study Series
Robert L. McLaughlin, Managing Editor
© Center for Book Culture, 2003
All rights reserved
www.centerforbookculture.org
A Casebook Study of Ishmael Reed’s
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
Edited by Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure
http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/YellowBackCasebook.pdf
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: “Scatting Arbitrarily” and Blowing Hoodoo
[Western] like Charlie “Bird” Parker: Loop Garoo’s Be-bop/
HooDoo Improvisations in Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
PIERRE-DAMIEN MVUYEKURE................................................ 1
Westward Migration, Narrative, and Genre in African America
DAVID G. NICHOLLS ............................................................. 32
The Borg, Conjure, and Voodoo: An Analysis of Yellow Back
Radio Broke-Down
SCHARRON A. CLAYTON ....................................................... 51
Regeneration through Neo-Hoodooism: Yellow Back Radio
Broke-Down and Ishmael Reed’s Mythogenesis
AIMABLE TWAGILIMANA ...................................................... 88
Selected Bibliography ................................................................. 115
Notes on Contributors................................................................. 119
YELLOW BACK RADIO BROKE-DOWN
EDITED BY PIERRE-DAMIEN MVUYEKURE
❖
Dalkey Archive Press Casebook Study Series
Robert L. McLaughlin, Managing Editor
© Center for Book Culture, 2003
All rights reserved
www.centerforbookculture.org
A Casebook Study of Ishmael Reed’s
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
Edited by Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure
http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/YellowBackCasebook.pdf
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: “Scatting Arbitrarily” and Blowing Hoodoo
[Western] like Charlie “Bird” Parker: Loop Garoo’s Be-bop/
HooDoo Improvisations in Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
PIERRE-DAMIEN MVUYEKURE................................................ 1
Westward Migration, Narrative, and Genre in African America
DAVID G. NICHOLLS ............................................................. 32
The Borg, Conjure, and Voodoo: An Analysis of Yellow Back
Radio Broke-Down
SCHARRON A. CLAYTON ....................................................... 51
Regeneration through Neo-Hoodooism: Yellow Back Radio
Broke-Down and Ishmael Reed’s Mythogenesis
AIMABLE TWAGILIMANA ...................................................... 88
Selected Bibliography ................................................................. 115
Notes on Contributors................................................................. 119
'Many Places At Once': The Memory of Africa in John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia Fire
John Edgar Wideman's 1990 novel Philadelphia Fire, like Song of Solomon, barely
mentions the word' Africa', indicating a memory which does not readily signify in
language, and whose continuity with language may be interrupted by the trauma of an
unspeakable history. The novel reflects upon the problems of narrating in the context
of a global modernity which relies upon forgetfulness of the past, and positions an
African form of memory as a medium which is better disposed than a linear narrative
form often is, to enable a connection with the past and its forgotten casualties. This
form of memory occurs in the context of what Wideman describes as:
the Great Time of our African ancestors, a nonlinear, atemporal medium in which all
things that ever have been, are, or will be mingle freely, the space that allows us to
bump into relatives long dead or absent friends or children unborn as easily, as
significantly, as we encounter the people in our daily lives. l
The form of memory which Wideman thus positions as 'African', perceives the past
as alive in the present, and allows narrative to be defined by memory, whereas an
American tradition, the novel suggests, would always attempt to make memory
submit to narrative.
The novel moves around the historical event of a fire which burned, on 13 May 1985,
in the middle of a black neighbourhood in West Philadelphia, killing eleven people
and leaving 262 others homeless. The fire was the result of the City of Philadelphia
police's decision to drop a satchel of explosive onto a house in which members of an
organisation called MOVE were living, and was the horrific culmination of a yearslong wrangle between MOVE and the City, in which six adult members of the group
and five of their children died under bombardment of gunfire, water cannon and
explosives. Two people, a woman named Ramona Africa, and a nine-year old boy,
Birdie Africa, escaped the fire alive, and a large part of Wideman's novel is told from
the perspective of protagonist Cudjoe, who has just returned to Philadelphia from selfexile in the Greek islands, motivated by a quest for "the story he crossed an ocean to
find. Story of a fire and a lost boy that brought him home".2
As Cudjoe plans to "writ [ e] a book [ ... ] about the fire. What caused it. Who was responsible. What it means." (19), he interviews Margaret Jones, a character who is described by Wideman as a "former member of my group - the group inside the book who parallels or figures the actual MOVE organization".3 Jones challenges Cudjoe's faith in the
power of narrative to heal or resolve the trauma of memory as she says, bluntly:
"Don't need no book. Anybody wants to know what it means, bring them through
here. Tell them these bombed streets used to be full of people's homes. Tell them
babies' bones mixed up in this ash they smell." (19) When Cudjoe protests, "1 want
to do something about the silence." (19), he reveals himself to be insensitive to the
form of memory which Jones has just made explicit for him - the memory which
exists in everyday life, a present in which the past is felt and known at every moment.
What bothers Cudjoe most of all is the problem of narrating an unspeakable memory,
and he must, through the course of the novel, discover a way of reconciling himself to
this discomfort.
1 John Edgar Wideman, 'Preface', The Homewood Books, (Pittsburgh & London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), p xi.
2 John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire (London: Picador, 1995 [1]
John Edgar Wideman's 1990 novel Philadelphia Fire, like Song of Solomon, barely
mentions the word' Africa', indicating a memory which does not readily signify in
language, and whose continuity with language may be interrupted by the trauma of an
unspeakable history. The novel reflects upon the problems of narrating in the context
of a global modernity which relies upon forgetfulness of the past, and positions an
African form of memory as a medium which is better disposed than a linear narrative
form often is, to enable a connection with the past and its forgotten casualties. This
form of memory occurs in the context of what Wideman describes as:
the Great Time of our African ancestors, a nonlinear, atemporal medium in which all
things that ever have been, are, or will be mingle freely, the space that allows us to
bump into relatives long dead or absent friends or children unborn as easily, as
significantly, as we encounter the people in our daily lives. l
The form of memory which Wideman thus positions as 'African', perceives the past
as alive in the present, and allows narrative to be defined by memory, whereas an
American tradition, the novel suggests, would always attempt to make memory
submit to narrative.
The novel moves around the historical event of a fire which burned, on 13 May 1985,
in the middle of a black neighbourhood in West Philadelphia, killing eleven people
and leaving 262 others homeless. The fire was the result of the City of Philadelphia
police's decision to drop a satchel of explosive onto a house in which members of an
organisation called MOVE were living, and was the horrific culmination of a yearslong wrangle between MOVE and the City, in which six adult members of the group
and five of their children died under bombardment of gunfire, water cannon and
explosives. Two people, a woman named Ramona Africa, and a nine-year old boy,
Birdie Africa, escaped the fire alive, and a large part of Wideman's novel is told from
the perspective of protagonist Cudjoe, who has just returned to Philadelphia from selfexile in the Greek islands, motivated by a quest for "the story he crossed an ocean to
find. Story of a fire and a lost boy that brought him home".2
As Cudjoe plans to "writ [ e] a book [ ... ] about the fire. What caused it. Who was responsible. What it means." (19), he interviews Margaret Jones, a character who is described by Wideman as a "former member of my group - the group inside the book who parallels or figures the actual MOVE organization".3 Jones challenges Cudjoe's faith in the
power of narrative to heal or resolve the trauma of memory as she says, bluntly:
"Don't need no book. Anybody wants to know what it means, bring them through
here. Tell them these bombed streets used to be full of people's homes. Tell them
babies' bones mixed up in this ash they smell." (19) When Cudjoe protests, "1 want
to do something about the silence." (19), he reveals himself to be insensitive to the
form of memory which Jones has just made explicit for him - the memory which
exists in everyday life, a present in which the past is felt and known at every moment.
What bothers Cudjoe most of all is the problem of narrating an unspeakable memory,
and he must, through the course of the novel, discover a way of reconciling himself to
this discomfort.
1 John Edgar Wideman, 'Preface', The Homewood Books, (Pittsburgh & London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), p xi.
2 John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire (London: Picador, 1995 [1]
CONTINUE READING CHAPTER FOUR
http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4110/1/WRAP_THESIS_Kamali_2007.pdf
Spectres of the Shore: The Memory of Africa in
Contemporary African-American and Black British
Fiction
by
Leila Francesca Kamali
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for
the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
In
English and Comparative Literary Studies
University of Warwick,
Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
May 2007
http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4110/1/WRAP_THESIS_Kamali_2007.pdf
Spectres of the Shore: The Memory of Africa in
Contemporary African-American and Black British
Fiction
by
Leila Francesca Kamali
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for
the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
In
English and Comparative Literary Studies
University of Warwick,
Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
May 2007
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