Editing Instabilities

The challenge in producing scholarly editions of nineteenth-century African American texts is to achieve a precise imprecision. In most cases, we have no original manuscript to consult, almost no records of the author’s own thoughts about the book, often limited information about the author’s life, and sometimes problematic first editions, riddled with typos and, in the case of serial publications, missing whole chapters. Add to that the fact that an editor cannot afford to assume that readers will understand the historical and cultural contexts within which the text emerged and will be inexperienced at best at recognizing familiar African American literary themes, standard tropes, or significant references. Some readers might even approach biblical references from a theological tradition at odds with African American religious practices. How does one construct an authoritative edition in the face of such absent information, lingering misinformation, and textual instabilities? At best, one can account for what one doesn’t know and then account for the always provisional and incomplete nature of knowledge about African American authors and African American history itself. One cannot avoid being imprecise, but one can be as precise as possible about what one knows and what one doesn’t know, despite one’s best recovery efforts.

Jerome McGann has done an admirable job of putting together an edition that manages a precise imprecision. Not known as a scholar of African American literature, McGann reports that he originally approached this project as a “scholarly obligation” because the only existing edition, the 1970 version by Floyd J. Miller, is marred by “considerable” weaknesses, “both with respect to the basic text it presents—it is full of errors—and to the account it gives of the work’s textual and historical context” (xv). In addressing these weaknesses, McGann had no hope of complete resolution. The two textual sources upon which this edition is based are incomplete, inconsistent, and at times in disagreement where they overlap. Concerning the need to address “the work’s textual and historical context,” people in African American studies wondered how much a nonspecialist could bring to this idiosyncratic but still deeply representative and complexly referential novel. In fact, though, McGann explains persuasively the textual choices he has made in putting together this edition, and he accounts thoughtfully for the novel’s unique place in this period of African American and American literary history.

Even in dealing with the most tantalizing of the unknowns about this novel, McGann is reasonably careful to respect our inability to know. As readers of Blake, a novel published serially, know well, more chapters were promised than have survived the archival neglect that so often obstructs our access to African American history. We cannot know with certainty whether those chapters were published in the issues of the Weekly Anglo-African are still undiscovered, or whether the original promises were never kept, but we assume that this work is incomplete. For my taste, McGann goes too far toward sketching out a possible ending, but I can’t really complain, for he does so largely to demonstrate the intricate internal logic of the parts of the work that have been preserved. And to maintain the balance of the work, McGann notes near the end of his introduction, “I may imagine how those missing chapters unfolded, but the truth is that I don’t know” (xxviii).

Why is this so important? Why can’t we have a finished Blake? Why can’t we know? Because we’ve had enough of imaginative re-creations of a troubling past, whether in the service of white American comfort or Black History Month celebrations. The truth is that there is much that we don’t know, and texts that call for readings but carry the scars of historical neglect are important both for the achievements they document and for their reminders that our crimes have left us in a realm of historical uncertainties.

Ultimately, I think McGann understands this, and he has given us an edition of Blake that respects this demanding history. Even on the question of Delany’s talents as a writer, McGann is cautious. He notes that some have...