Contemporary African American Literature: The Living Canon

11. The Crisis of Authenticity in Contemporary African American Literature

eleven the Crisis of authentiCity in Contemporary afriCan ameriCan Literature Richar d Schur The conversation about the purpose and nature of african american literature began when african americans started publishing stories, poetry , and prose during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries . For much of the twentieth century, this discussion continued on in W. e. B. Du Bois’s The Crisis, the passing novels of the harlem renaissance , and in the articulations of the new negro and Black arts movements . since the 1970s, the discussion has focused increasingly on the concept of authenticity, largely because african american literature became canonized at the very moment that postmodernism and multiculturalism questioned the purpose and effect of canonization and other grand narratives. The resulting tension between scholars seeking to canonize african american literature—because it had long been neglected—and postmodernist or poststructuralist scholars emphasizing difference over homogeneitycreated,whatantoniogramsciandstuarthallhavetermed, a “crisis.” in particular, this crisis has hinged on the question of authenticity and what african american literature ought to represent about african american life. hall develops gramsci’s concept of the crisis and argues that it signifies “constant movement, polemics, contestations, etc., which represent the attempt by different sides to overcome or resolve the crisis and to do so in terms which favor their long term hegemony” (hall 422). While it is beyond the scope of this essay to chart this debate in full, it does seek to consider how two recent novels, Caucasia and Sag Harbor, envision a different kind of authenticity that might defuse this “crisis” and offer a more productive definition of authenticity for scholars. authenticity, whether as vernacular language and culture, a reference to black musical styles, or as signifying, has become one signifi235 236 · R icha r d Schur cant rhetoric in ongoing canonization efforts. e. patrick Johnson argues that authenticity “is yet another trope manipulated for cultural capital.” he further asserts that “individuals or groups appropriate this complex and nuanced racial signifier [authenticity] in order to circumscribe its boundaries or to exclude other individuals or groups. When blackness is appropriated [in this way] to the exclusion of others, identity becomes political” (3). Johnson and others have noted that the very rhetoric of authentic blackness serves to authorize certain voices and dismiss others.1 in an incredibly insightful essay, W. t. lhamon identifies a number of traits of what he terms “optic blackness”: optic blackness . . . gives instead a convenient, pliable mediation of the real—a fiction that seems sufficiently real for cultural symbolism. optic black is less about “race” than about the positional binary of its own pretense and binary. optic blackness is not contained in any form, genre, or medium, be it high or low; it weaves through them all. The contending forces of optic black and optic white center their dispute in american culture and defend their dominion everywhere atlantic slavery was. (112) Johnson and lhamon outline how blackness, when framed in the terms of authenticity, creates a fiction around racial identity and experience and elides how race, in fact, operates. as conceptions about race become increasingly commodified and many view identity as a mere performance, the greater historical and cultural context that shapes these signs and signifiers is displaced and hidden. bell hooks notes that “mass media bring white supremacy into our [african american] lives and remind us of our marginalized status,” frequently relying on and manipulating these very markers of supposed authenticity (110). as much as some might wish to argue that the 1950s and 1960s produced revolutionary change to american social institutions, its effect on dominant visual and literary representation was much more evolutionary, frequently incorporating earlier racist strategies. The result is that contemporary african american writers must still engage with racialized symbols and metaphors in their efforts to rewrite them. While the issue has been central to post–civil rights era literary production, this is not the first time that the crisis of authenticity has taken center stage in african american literature. in Authentic Blackness Authenticit y in Contempor a ry A fr ica n A mer ica n Lit · 237 (1999), J. Martin Favor considers how the concept of the “folk” shaped the harlem renaissance and the new negro movement, which in turn shaped the critical vocabulary to analyze and interpret contemporary african american literature (3–6). Favor ultimately concludes that race and racial literary representations are a “tool of aesthetic and politic change” and that “‘race’ becomes one...