QUEST FOR RACIAL EQUALITY: A SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVE IN
THE SELECT NOVELS OF ISHMAEL REED
J. Partheban
Research Scholar (Part time Ph.D)
PG and Research Department of English
Government Arts College (Autonomous), Salem
&
Dr. T. Gangadharan
Associate Professor& Head
PG and Research Department of English
Government Arts College (Autonomous), Salem
Abstract:
Ishmael Reed is an African American writer. He questions
the colonists' imposed conventional accounts of history, culture, and identity.
Hisnovels range from the eighteenth century to the present, combining
historical events, cowboy myths, modern technology, and cultural clutter. He
offers alternative perspectives that empower the subalterns, who are the people
of color, the poor, the women, and the indigenous. Subalternity is a theme that
he explores through various characters, settings, and genres.Subaltern is
promoted through colonial palimpsestic practices overwhelming the history of
the colonised and ex-colonisednations.His fictions vividly portray the
particular social condition of black Americans and describes about VooDoo which
in turn became HooDoo, a syncretic religion, in his novels. He argues that
VooDoo lies as the base for all religions and its aesthetics as an embodiment
of age-old Culture. It undertakes to challenge preconceived absolutes and
media-based realities regarding race, religion, and indigenous cultures by
reviving the resourcefulness of African American heritage. His novels project
the traces of slavery and history of the African American people. The plight of
those people leads to subalternity which is nothing but a manifested form, a
coterminous practice, called slavery. It witnesses dominance of colonialism.
This paper attempts to bring out Quest
for Racial Equality: A Subaltern perspective in the select novels of Ishmael
Reed.
Keywords: Slavery, Race, History, Myth, Hegemony,
Subaltern
Introduction
Ishmael Reed, in
his novels Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down and Flight to Canada,
presents a map of postcolonial regions in today's world. He depicts history as
a struggle between the Subalterns, who are trying to gain recognition in a
society that places them in an inferior position and deprives them of their
dynamism. According to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in Section One of the Manifesto
of the Communist Party, history is a conflict between two opposing forces
in any society, with the privileged position oppressing the weaker one. This
struggle is never-ending and can be open or hidden, as seen in colonized and
ex-colonized countries. In this struggle, resisting subalternity is achieved by
legitimizing the existence of the Subalterns, which is realized by urging the
colonizers or their surrogates to recognize the Subalterns as individuals. By
doing so, the Subalterns' existence is not only acknowledged but also
consciously realized throughout history. Engels claimed that the history of all
existing societies is the history of class struggles. The class struggle is
classified as between Freeman and slave, patrician andplebeian, and lord and
serf. In the same way ina word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in
constantopposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted and hidden has
now become an open fight.
The protagonist of
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, the Loop Garoo Kid, is not a conventional,
melodramatic, good character. He is depicted as a brutal Westerner who
practices voodoo and uses love and cruelty in tandem, marking the women he
makes love to with a winged mouse. The Loop Garoo Kid uses his magical powers
to trouble others and make their lives miserable. However, Reed asserts that
his protagonist is not a villain: "Now, he wasn't always bad" (YBRBD
9). The Loop's character is compared to that of blacks who work in the field of
resistance. Reed’s protagonist is an attempt to keep his black history alive
against the ongoing colonial movement to suppress black voices.
In Yellow Back
Radio Broke-Down, the feudal hierarchy is a fact that gives reign to the
colonizers and their surrogates. The Church in the novel is corrupt, inhibiting
and disdaining any sort of relief that might be found in practicing real art.
Out of this suffocating ambiance, the Loop Garoo Kid flees, preferring to lead
a bohemian life rather than returning to Rome. He has lost confidence in the
Church and its promises, considering them ephemeral lies whose true face is
soon uncovered. When the Pope visits the Loop in prison, he presents an
enticing offer that meets all the demands of the Loop.
[The Pope]: Loop,
he sent me to do the interrogating…
I ask you one more time Loop, end this
foolishness and
come home. He
built a special district for you, red
lights, the works.
He sent for some of your bohemian
types to keep you
and Diane company. You can start a
commune if you
want, get light, walk around nude,
anything you want
Loop, just so you satisfy the wench.
[The Loop]: No
dice, baby (YBRBD 166).
The Loop objects
it because he knows that the Pope and his Superior haveoriginally forced him to
leave and it is the Pope who helped the Loop's enemiesto capture him. Notably,
the Pope's insistence on taking the Loop back to Romeand the Pope's subsequent
frustration are not out of pity or care, but out of thefear of being humiliated
at the hands of the Superior.
Ok, Loop, the
worldly Pope said rising, I should know
that when you have
your mind made up on something,
nothing can change
it. When I get back, he is really
going to put me
down.
[The Loop]: How's
that?
[The Pope]: Make
me crawl on my belly and kiss his
feet. Some days
Loop I can't stand the place. People
singing the same
old hymns and he sits there performing
the familiar
spectaculars – every day. I miss St. Peter's
Chug-a-lugging
fine brandy. With the gang jamming
some strumpets.
(YBRBD 166)
The surprise which
is antithetical to whatever has been taken for granted, namely, the hegemony of
the Pope and his position, is that the Pope is aSubaltern, too. When the Poep
is compared with the Loop, his real interest is art. Yet, he isnot as
courageous as the Loop; he cannot express freely his desires andfeelings. The
Pope has to bear the humiliation and mortify his senses and desiresto which he
nostalgically looks and yearns. The Pope's character deconstructsthe
logocentric image of a Pope as an almost supernatural and perfect creatureabout
to be a demi-god. A systematicscheme of obedience is his self-protection.
In the current
materialisticworld domineered by the capitalist Drag Gibson, religion does not
only retreatto the rears but also becomes a useless subservient in the town of
Yellow Back Radio. Preacher Rev. Boyd trieshard to modernize the concept of
religion to make it closer to the heartsof people. It is rather assiduously
connectedto dominant modern discourse by him. PreacherRev. Boyd tries hard
with the kids and
the town's heathen, how he'd smoke
hookahs with them
brats and get stoned with Chief
Showcase the only
surviving injun and that volume of
hip pastoral
poetry he's putting together, Stomp Me O
Lord. He thought
that Protestantism would survive at
least another
month and he is tearing up the Red-Eye
and writing more
of them poem trying to keep up with
the times. (YBRBD
21)
Rev. Boyd tries to
mingle with all the classes of society by imitating theirlanguage and
approaching their tendencies.He hasn't yet made efforts to revive religion as a
source of relief, butfor attaining a position of power in a civilization that
neglects the religiousdiscourse which has, for long periods, subjugated the
Western cultureand directed its motives and concepts. Remarkably, Preacher Rev.
Boyd could not succeed because his piety is a sham guise as corrupt personality
in order to gain mastery even if this might be conducive to the destruction of the
essence anddictations of religion. Finding that there is not any possibility of
winning back thislost mastery, Rev. Boyd, like everybody else, recognizes Drag
Gibson as aMaster under whose hegemony he might be granted some power. He does
not discourage Drag Gibson from committing atrocities, but rather promotes
Drag's ideologies and participates in the unjust fight against the Loop Garoo
Kid.
Flight to Canada is a novel that explores the
story of three fugitive slaves. The author, Ishmael Reed, uses Raven
Quickskill, 40s, and Stray Leechfield to represent different aspects of the
slave experience. Raven Quickskill embodies the radical slave lecturer and
author epitomized by Frederick Douglass. 40s represents the stereotype of the
militant revolutionary most often associated with Nat Turner. Stray Leechfield
represents the more ambivalent figure of the minstrel performer.
In addition to the
fugitive slaves, Reed narrates the stories of the master class and the ‘‘house
slaves’’ who remain on the plantation. Uncle Robin and Mammy Barracuda are two
characters who recall two central icons of forbearance and domesticity—Uncle
Tom and the Mammy. Arthur Swille is the plantation owner who is presented as a
polarizing figure. He is draconian and sadomasochistic and is set against
Abraham Lincoln, whose benevolent and heroic role as the Great Emancipator is
exaggerated and parodied. Reed uses most of these characters to unleash the
power of zombie-like stereotypes. However, he also employs some of them—Raven
and Robin, in particular—to evoke the spirits of slave ancestors. For Reed
Emancipation “won’t do us any good. He freed slaves in the regions of the
country he doesn’t control over, and in those he does have control over, the
slaves are still slaves.” (FTC 59)
Raven Quickskill
is an upstart who believes he is entitled to freedom. He writes a poem to his
master and heads to Virginia. While in the free North, he meets 40s and Stray,
two other runaways from Master Swille’s plantation, and warns them of the
pursuing slave catchers. During Raven’s stay up North, peculiar events take
place back on the plantation. President Lincoln visits Master Swille and asks
to borrow money to fund the war; Mammy Barracuda beats the mistress within an
inch of her life; Master Swille is pushed into the fireplace supposedly by his
dead sister’s ghost; and the literate Uncle Robin and his wife Aunt Judy
“inherit” the Swille plantation.
The poem, written
by Quickskillfunctions as a prologueto the brief narrative and boasts ofhis
escape from Swille’s plantation, andshows how he returned several times.
Hesneaked to Swille’s bed, drank from hiswine cellar, slept with his prime
Quadron, and poisoned his old crow. Quickskilluseshis literacy to forge his
freedom papers. He also alters Swille’s books so that he hasno invoices for
newly purchased slaves. Inshort, like Reed, he rewrites history because Swille
is arrogant and says “If they’d asked to buy themselves, perhaps we could have
arranged terms. But they didn’t; they furtively pilfered themselves…They have
committed a crime, and no amount of money they send me will rectify the matter”
(FC 19).Swille’s statement to Robin
highlights the power dynamics, ownership, and subaltern experience in the
novel.
Reed uses a unique
technique of merging history, fantasy, political reality, and high comedy in
this revision of the classic slave narrative. He fuses fictional characters and
historical figures, leaving the reader questioning whether certain people or
events in the story are real, fabricated, or parodies of past figures. The
relationship between Arthur Swille and Abraham Lincoln is a prime example of
this. While Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, Arthur Swille
might represent the consensus of the South or, more precisely, of Southern
planters during the time of Lincoln’s presidency.
Reed's technique
seems to trivialize such grand narratives of history as that of Honest Abe the
Great Emancipator, making such lessons in history seem less like grand,
sanctioned narratives and more like fairy tales. Reed characterizes Lincoln as
a man with a ‘‘general unkempt, hirsute and bungling appearance – bumping into
things and carrying on’’ with his ‘‘yokel-dokel’’ manner of speech. Reed
creates an arguably more accurate, although quite humorous, representation of
the former president who tries to ‘‘play’’ both political sides and thereby
save his position.
Flight to Canada offers a revisionist take on
the American slave experience, turning the old telling on its head. The
author's use of fictional and historical characters and events creates a
thought-provoking and challenging work of literature that encourages readers to
examine the past in new and different ways.Though the novel isprimarily a slave
narrative from the pointof view of Raven Quickskill who is“thefirst one of
Swille’s slaves to read, the firstto write and the first to run away‟ (FTC23),
he has to contest with two whiteenemies who are Arthur Swille, theplantation
owner of the absurd Camelotwho ‘couldn’t conceive of a world withoutslaves.
That was his grand scheme” (FTC177) and the pirate, Yankee Jack, who owns
Emancipation city or “Jack’s Plaza” (FTC 93). Though achieved in the end,
Quickskill’s quest for freedom and racial identity continues throughout the
novel.
Conclusion
In Yellow
Back Radio Broke-Down and Flight to Canada, history is
representedalmost according to the same method of the freedom fighters; exactly,
makinguse of the direct experience of oral tradition and reviving the social
rituals thatinteract with each other. The result is avoiding the introduction
of homogeneous flat documentation of history and, accordingly, paving the wayto
an extensive aura of resistance based upon recognition. The title ofboth novels
is a gateway to the use of history as a discourse of power-gearingresistance of
subalternity.The binaries of
Master/Subaltern and Self/Other appearing in YellowBack Radio Broke-Down
and Flight to Canada are rooted in the Hegelian notion ofUnhappy
Consciousness that took its historical material from the religious lifeof the
Middle Ages and the mental attitude assumed under the dominion of theRoman
Catholic Church and the Feudal Hierarchy.
Hence, Ishmael Reed criticizes the
government, academia, media hypocrisy, manipulation, and radical movements in
his novels. Ultimately his novels questioned the Western hegemonic rule over
literary production and his characters are in a quest for racial identity lead
to subalternity.
Works
Cited
Cowart, Davis. History and the
Contemporary Novel. Carbondale: SouthernIllinoisUniversity Press, 1989.
Gates Jr, Henry Louis. Black Literature and Literary
Theory. New York: Maethuen, 1984.
MartÃn, Reginald. Ishmael Reed and the New
Blach Aesthetic Criticism, Houndmills: The MacMillan P, 1988.
Marx. K. Theses on Feuerbach,
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm>,
accessed May 2011.
Reed, Ishmael.Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down. Dalkey
Archive Press, 2000.
---. Flight to Canada. Simon &Schuster Inc,
New York.1998.
Settle, Elizabeth A. and Thomas A.
Settle. Ishmael Reed: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography.Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1982.