Revisiting Racialized Voice: African American Ethos in Language and Literature

Introduction

Introduction BY THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY, LITERACY WAS becoming codified in terms of two highly charged concepts: “voice” and “race.” This evolution can be traced in part by discussing the dilemma that Frederick Douglass faces as he strives to mediate between the Romantic, or transcendental , voice Emerson posits and the public voice Caleb Bingham explicates in The Columbian Orator. Like other writers during the American Renaissance, Douglass oscillates between personal expression and public communication as the ultimate purpose for writing. During the 1850s, Douglass desires to be numbered with the “‘I-narrators ’ of the American Renaissance” (Andrews, “My” 133). Yet Douglass ’s racial identity hinders his efforts. Douglass provides a minor case study of how Romantic voice involves an enigma for people of color. Hence I will not be critiquing Romantic voice directly but rather as it is applied—through Douglass—to the practices and politics of literacy for African Americans. Nor am I contending that “voice” suggests exclusively thoughts of Romanticism. On the contrary, it is a highly evocative term. A glance at The Oxford English Dictionary reveals a wide range of meanings. Voice covers an etymological terrain from the literal “phonology” to the metaphorical “conscience”; from a specific definition, such as “singing,” to a more overarching one, such as “sounds naturally made by a single per1 2 Introduction son or animal in speech or other forms of vocal utterance.” This entry goes on for six pages and approximately three columns for each page. Scholarly interpretations of metaphorical voice cover an even wider spectrum, from Walter Ong’s affirmation that voice is presence to Jacques Derrida’s denial of it as a part of his larger critique of Western logocentrism . For Derrida, literally or metaphorically, voice, scripting, and thinking are all types of writing. When I use the word voice, I will be focusing on the interplay among the following definitions: (1) the Romantic sense of authorial presence, (2) a disenfranchised individual’s or group’s sociopolitical right to speak, and (3) literal voice, including standardized speech and aspects of the African American oral tradition. The first definition of voice Emerson adopts from Plato. Frederick Douglass adopts the last two configurations of voice from The Columbian Orator as well as the discursive practices of the black church and slave culture. How these three definitions have been and can be used interchangeably, so that they mask assumptions regarding collective African American identity and ontology, constitute the basis for my reading of black voice in literature and composition. Emerson’s Romantic voice suggests a strategic place to introduce this study, therefore, not because he intended for his work to have implications for current debates about voice but because it does. This is the case whether one sees Emerson mainly as an idealistic sage or as a social critic. On the other hand, recognizing this duality may be precisely the point, for such a move constitutes one step in understanding Emerson’s thought. F. O. Matthiessen opens his American Renaissance with a similar observation: The problem that confronts us in dealing with Emerson is the hardest we shall have to meet, because of his inveterate habit of stating things in opposites. The representative man whom he most revered was Plato. For Plato had been able to bridge the gap between the two poles of thought, to reconcile fact and abstraction, the many and the One, society and solitude. (3) Matthiessen adds that Emerson could not easily achieve in his own thought the reconciliation that he revered in Plato’s. Actually, Emerson characterizes his struggle to adapt Plato’s philosophy to his own as “double consciousness .” Emerson’s neologism, which W. E. B. Du Bois would later Introduction 3 appropriate to describe the existential trial informing the African American ’s experience in white America, marks the incessant tension between rational and metaphysical perception (Matthiessen 3–4). The Platonic Influence on Emerson Emerson’s interest in Plato broaches the issue concerning which of Emerson ’s roles, philosopher or social critic, might be privileged over the other. This move becomes pertinent to this study, since the answers will be tailored to address voice in writing. Scholars as diverse as James Berlin, Ann E. Berthoff, Sharon Crowley, and Jasper Neel agree that Platonism is massively influential in composition theory. Since Emerson—one primary source of American values, philosophies, and attitudes—is a Platonist, tracing the Emersonian influence on composition becomes not only worthwhile but also necessary. Moreover, the tension in nineteenthcentury African American literature between literal...