Irony in the Age of Empire: Comic Perspectives on Democracy and Freedom

Two Laughing to Keep from Crying: Cornel West, Pragmatism, and Progressive Comedy

[ ∂∞ ] t wo Laughing to Keep from Crying cornel west, pragmatism, and progressive comedy It isn’t easy synthesizing the work of the master synthesizer, Cornel West. Cornel West’s glimpse into life is as wide and deep as his roots in music and religion. His evangelical message of hope, the syncopated rhythms of unexpected joy against the unyielding absurd, have earned him the title of the blues man of philosophy, jazz king of thought. I may contort the vision of this jazz thinker, this blues preacher, beyond his comprehension, perhaps in the manner of white musicians who, as West remarks, divert the sublime rhythms of the jazz tradition into the easy lyricism of swing.1 I can only defend myself by stealing a line from that wise councilor (played by West) in Matrix Reloaded (Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski, 2003): ‘‘Comprehension is not requisite for cooperation.’’2 And in fact, as you shall see, comprehension turns out to be less important than cooperation in what I have to say. Now it may sound as though I am mocking Cornel West’s fine work, but in fact I take his work quite seriously. As author no less than scholar of wisdom literature, Cornel West struggles against the sweet truths that veil the dark ones. From a melancholic sojourn of thought emerges a voice i r o n y i n t h e a g e o f e m p i r e [ ∂≤ ] from the darkness that is as cathartic as it is reflective. West’s predecessors in American thought have not always sounded the blue note. The forward -looking optimism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Dewey, men who set in motion the pragmatism that lies at the center of American thought, failed to give ample voice to the pathos that rumbles through the dream of a democratic social life.3 West takes from these pragmatic thinkers the upbeat experimentalism, the faith in democracy, and the sanctity of the individual as motifs for his thought. Stripped of the tragic sense, however, pragmatism mocks those who know terror as well as love, friendship but also soul-wrenching despair—life’s full range. An intricate balance of optimism with the pessimism that comes from a direct acquaintance with the absurd gives rise to a new pragmatism, not neopragmatism, but a prophetic pragmatism. This is a pragmatism whose vital elements of fallibilism, voluntarism, and experimentalism are remixed and recharged in the existential matrix of evangelical Christianity and improvisational jazz.4 In fact, what Cornel West calls a prophetic pragmatism we might rename, just for fun, a pragmatism reloaded. I do not mean to mock this vital new pragmatism. My intention is instead to acknowledge yet another source of wisdom in American culture . While much of West’s work reflects on the tragic soulfulness that black music and religion bring to American philosophy, West insists that the existential matrix of black experience is as much comic as it is tragic. West explains in a recent response to his critics that his ‘‘devotion to fun— a word coined in modernity by Americans, is part of my California frontier humor. . . . [S]ome of the aims of professionalism in the academy are to tame the comic . . . and conceal the funk—even as we teach Lucian, Rabelais, Chekhov, Twain, Marx, Morrison, and I hope Richard Pryor.’’5 The bluesy vein of black culture may strike the dominant cord of Cornel West’s complex thought to date. ‘‘To be human is to su√er, shudder and struggle courageously in the face of inevitable death,’’ he intones in a major introduction to his thought (CWR, xvi). And indeed ‘‘death, dread, despair, disease, and disappointment’’ are the reoccurring motifs of his tragicomic sensibility (e.g., CWR, 101). But what might we learn if we were to alter the dominant cord of prophetic pragmatism from the heavy spirit of evangelical Christianity and bluesy jazz to the funk of the down and low comedian Richard Pryor or Chris Rock? How might the comedian ’s encounter with the post-soul hip hop street-smart absurd bottom of American life augment or even complement West’s bluesy Christian vision ? Will we have set free yet a second variation of prophetic pragmatism, one perhaps less Christian and yet no less serious? A pragmatism, if you like, remixed and reloaded? l a u g h i n g t o k e...