Black Literature and Literary Theory, and: Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa (review)

reviews 157 Black Literature and Literary Theory edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Methuen, 1984. 328 pp. $10.95 (paper); $29.95 (cloth). Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics ofLiterature in Colonial Africa by Abdul R. JanMohamed . Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983. 312 pp. $25 (cloth). FeIa Anikulapo-Kuti, a popular Nigerian musician, was in the second year of his fiveyear jail term when his "Army Arrangement" was released in the United States. His alleged crime was the attempted smuggling of $2,000 out of Nigeria. His subsequent release, in the wake of a palace coup, only reinforces the recognition of the arbitrary nature of politics in the neo-colonial arena. "Army Arrangement" speaks to a problematic that Manichean Aesthetics actively seeks to discover: Whether you like or you no like After you get Institute-talk If you like it—good If you no like it—hang If you hang you go die You go die for'nothing We go carry your body police station You go die yee wrongfully .... In contrast, Black Literature and Literary Theory (BLLT), despite Gates' pronouncements to the contrary, tends to displace/neutralize us—intellectuals/critics—in the midst of our activities, unwittingly reminding us that whether we like it or not we have been thoroughly immersed in "Institute-talk"—Western education. If we as critics are dissatisfied with the "Institute-talk," the (academic) "Army Arrangement[s]," and refuse to play the game, then we will surely "hang." FeIa goes on to warn that unless we do something about our situation we "no go know which condition [we] dey suffer," and will inevitably suffer the consequences—we "go die yee wrongfully"—both literally and figuratively. If your condition make you shake Make you open your n'arse well-well Hear der truth wey I dey talk: Division no multiplication One answer you go get—Army Arrangement Yo, yo put am together One day you go die ... . "Criticism in the Jungle," Gates' introduction to the essays in BLLT, seeks to cut through the undergrowth of misrepresentations of "black" literature which have arisen because of the non-recognition of the fact that "black" literature is " 'two-toned' or 'double-voiced.' " Gates raises a number of questions, the answers to which, one assumes, are to be answered, or at least addressed in the subsequent text. We are informed that the essays will explore the relationship between Black and Western literature. In addition, the questions of specificity and universality of Western literary theories will be considered in the determination of the uniqueness of Black Literature and the validity of evolving a distinct Black literary theory or theories. This resuscitation of the old "Black Aesthetics" debate might seem redundant, but Gates assures us that "the answers to these questions will help us to understand more broadly and convincingly the nature of the constituencies which comprise the republic of literature." A noble and a necessary task. Gates goes on to tell us that the essays do not "merely 'repeat' or 'apply' a mode of reading that is 'formalist,' 'Marxist,' 'structuralist' or 'post-structuralist,' borrowed whole from the Western tradition." And so we breathe a sigh of relief knowing that we shall be spared sophomoric essays. Our apprehension thus 158 the minnesota review abated, Gates goes on to drop his bombshell: "these critics—while unarguably sharing with Western critics certain presuppositions about the study and status of literature—adapt and thereby question received theories of literature. Ours is repetition, but repetition with a difference , a signifying black difference." One has the uneasy feeling that someone just changed the joke and slipped the yoke (à Ia Ellison). Old wine—the 1960s and the Black Aesthetic movement—in the new bottles of semiotics, structuralism, deconstruction, etc. But Gates has not forgotten how he lashed out at the Black Aesthetic movement in Afro-American Literature: The Reconstruction of Instruction (1979); and, as a respected practitioner of "Institute-Talk," Gates is able to neutralize the potentially explosive ideological assumptions of the Black Aesthetic movement even while he appears to incorporate it into his revamped formalist critique of Black literature. The Black literary tradition now demands, for sustenance and for growth, the sorts of reading which it...