The death of the subject; modern and postmodern blackness according to duBois and hooks
Jameson in “Post Modern Consumer Society” shows how unresponsive to and unconcerned with issues of gender and ethnicity most Post Modern discourse can be. Under his rubric of “the death of the subject” we find that Post Modernity is characterized by a supposed “death” of individualism as it had been previously experienced for most of the twentieth century (and before). Jameson holds that the ‘individual’ is a construct of capitalism. Classical modernism privileges a sort of stable individual identity that conforms to expectations of class and education. I think Jameson is reaching for an idea of Post Modern identity as a kind of ‘pastiche’ – culled from multiple sources and modalities; continually shifting and re-assembling.
At first glance this seems counter intuitive: digital technologies like blogging, myspace, the continual (self) surveillance by digital cameras give us the ability to make ourselves the star of so many pseudo-movies. All these indicate that the individual is alive and well. Yet, at the same time, identities seem to be more open and negotiable than at any time in recent history. Does the openness of identity also include one’s ethnicity?
This is one strand of thought that bell hooks takes up in “Post-Modern Blackness” – that even ethnicity can be theorized as a kind of affiliation rather than an inner essence. Henry Louis Gates approached this idea when he noted that race is “text” rather than essence. hooks takes this notion a bit further when she explores the multiple nature of black identities that seem to break along lines of class and economy.
It seems unfair to use du Bois’ essay as a mere foil for hooks, but “Criteria of Negro Art” is as much an argument for an essentialist approach to black literature and culture. (Nevertheless, he does say that to be black and American is to inhabit a “double consciousness” that includes two disjunctive, dissonant identities). All “negro” art must be propagandistic in a struggle for black self-definition. hooks, however, would maintain that we have progressed (?) beyond the need for an authentic black voice – and that a sustained critique of black identity along post-modernist lines would be a “serious challenge to racism” (2482).
Are we seeing a case of different ideas in play for different times: the self-construction of a new identity via art for du Bois in the 1920s, and the deconstruction of that identity in the 1990s?
dayne wrote:
On the first point made concerning the death of the subject and individual, I’d say that it seems that the cultural forces of consumerism and the internet seem to be driving these cultural developments. Consumerism and capitalism seem to be based on marketing that carries this basic message “Be an individual by conforming to OUR brand!” Quasi-individualistic acts of consumption, such as buying a MAC computer or a Zune or buying clothes from thrift stores or food from Stater Bro’s, are celebrated as being unqiue, but these are all actions of sub cultures that are just as conformist as those they denigrate. I say this because I think it relates to the Post Modern disregard of the individual and proliferation of subcultures as opposed to the celebration of the individual. In this sense, you’re point that Jameson describes individualism as a construct of capitalism is eerily visible in our society today.
This proliferation of subcultures creates an interesting dynamic when combined with the issues of ethnicity that DeBois and Hooks write about. I can relate to the struggles of the Black community for identity because I witness the same struggles in the Korean-American community. Because of the “blackness” of the artists Du Bois describes, it is difficult for artists of ethnic groups to balance the intent of their works. Not all works are meant to be propaganda, and many works are neither meant to be fully propagandistic or fully devoid of such intents. They’re just reflections of an artist’s experiences, yet there’s almost a social pressure that places these works in restrictive categories. Racism and racial condescension is, by definition, based upon pigeonholing a group into certain characteristics and criticizing those characteristics. To instead assert that infinitely many voices exist in different groups challenges racism, and promotes the true individualism that consumerism driven postmodern culture seems to eschew.
Posted 15 Oct 2007 at 5:04 am ¶