Themes and Meanings
As a novel of ideas and satirical criticism, Mumbo Jumbo works on a number of levels. Primarily, it is a postmodernist detective novel in the tradition of black detective fiction. It uses altered detective personas, black vernacular, double consciousness, and magic while parodying the detective form. Mumbo Jumbo’s metaphysical central mystery and its revisionist approach to history are additional indications of postmodern detective viewpoints.
On another level, it is a witty indictment of extreme behavior of all types. Characters representing many aspects of the ideological spectrum are shown to be buffoonish and narrow-minded. Abdul Hamid, sounding his clarion call of black power, is ridiculed in the end as a black puritan who burns the sacred text because it is, in his estimation, too lewd and scandalous.
On another level, the book suggests the ancient conflict between Eros and Thanatos. Put in its simplest terms, Mumbo Jumbo reflects humankind’s constant war with itself. On one side lie love and life, affirming revitalization; on the other side lie hate and self-destruction. Reed seems to suggest that the intensity of the conflict heightened as the world moved into the twentieth century.
The social and political structure of Western civilization, based on a death-seeking ethos, is portrayed as contemptible. An example of this occurs when the chief Atonist is overjoyed to see that the watercress darter has become extinct, further proof that the Atonist cause is winning the fight for control of the planet.
The continuous conflict between different ideologies and groups in the novel suggests a society as well as a world in conflict. Berbelang is a black revolutionary fighting the racist practices of institutions such as museums. There is even division among ranks, as the Knights Templar quarrel with the death-dealing Wallflower Order. Amid this chaos, there seem to be few manifestations of sanity and continuity.
A broad condemnation of Western civilization is constructed through the eyes of an educated, sensitive African American. The novel posits a positive approach to African American consciousness based on Afrocentric, not Eurocentric, worldviews. Reed accomplishes this by reinterpreting the entire history of Western civilization, redefining its myths and reconstructing its gods.
“Mumbo jumbo” in common vernacular suggests something unintelligible or mysterious. Reed concentrates instead on the positive aspects of the African mother tongue. Within the text itself, “mumbo jumbo” is defined as coming from the Mandingo language and means a “magician who makes the troubled spirits of ancestors go away.” Reed indicates by this example his intent to reconnect the African American community to African ancestors and to restore the African American identity by redefining the historical past.
Reed does this by creating, in this and other works, his own particular worldview, or Neo-HooDoo aesthetic, based on African American perception. Neo-HooDoo stresses the positive attributes of African American community and value systems. For example, PaPa LaBas is linked to the Haitian voodoo mysteries, since LaBas is a powerful Haitian spirit connected in turn to the ancient mysteries of African religion.
Reed’s revisionist interpretation establishes the Osiris/Set conflict at the very origins of human consciousness. Africa’s Egypt is seen in this sense as the progenitor of humankind, containing the seeds of both destruction and renewal. Jes Grew is Reed’s Neo-HooDoo terminology for the positive revitalization of the African American spirit that possesses the power to save all of humankind from total destruction. The term derives from James Weldon Johnson’s description of ragtime music and of the character of Topsy in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852): Both “jes’ grew.”
Positive attributes of African American culture are stressed through the repeated insertion of real figures from black history, black music, and..
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