Further Considerations of Race Identity Contextualized Within the Literary Canon

I am posting this question separately from my response for the week as this post may address less specifically this week’s theoretical readings. I wish to pose a broader cultural question, though it does ultimately come back to our texts.

We as students of a master’s program in English study Literature in English. We of course do in our curriculum address texts written in foreign languages but primarily read these texts as translations in English. The philosophical approaches—the theory—is primarily a western philosophical tradition. There are of course exceptions to this, but primarily the Master’s in literature in English is the study of Western texts through Western philosophical approaches. For the curriculum we follow—and just look at the Master’s Exam Reading List--our texts are heavily focused on British Literature even to the exclusion in many cases of the U.S. American literary tradition. For another example, consider that in the Spring just one course in “American” literature is being offered.

But as we begin to discuss racial identity in literature in English, I believe it is worth noting at least for a short moment the differences historical context between Britain and the United States and race relations.

Both the United States and Britain have served as colonial powers; for Britain, that first meant the Americas and then later Africa, India and the Pacific. U.S Colonialism began with the Monroe Doctrine, a presidential edict declaring the Caribbean and American continents the purview of the United States and warning off European powers (though largely ignored) and later expansion into the Pacific. Both nations are guilty of the atrocities associated with colonial exploitation.

However, racial minority identity in the United States and Britain has a different relationship to the white dominant culture. Britain is overwhelmingly white—92% white compared to about 70% in the United States; and while roughly 12% of the United States identifies as black, only about 2% of Britain does. Moreover both nations have a complex but uniquely different history with slavery which has fundamentally influenced race and race relations.

The study of literature in English through the lens of racial identity (and later post-colonial theoretical approaches), raises a normative concern of where and how do these theories fit contextually within the western philosophical approaches that are so inherently dependent on white males. Barbara Christian goes as far as to say that “there has been a takeover in the literary world by Western philosophers from the old literary elite” (2128). Is minority literature in English marginalized because of an overt racial prejudice or because of a broader prejudice against non-British literature? Is the preference of British literature in the study of literature in English determining a preference for white literature? Or put another way, is deemphasizing American literature also having the effect of marginalizing non-white contributors to the body of literature?

When Henry Louis Gates states that “We must learn to read a black text within a black formal cultural matrix” (Gates 2435), is he addressing all black literature or a specifically American black literature? Gilroy attempts to address the issue by suggesting “it is hard to wonder how much of the recent international enthusiasm for cultural studies is generated by its profound associations with England and the ideas of Englishness” (2560).

British literature must obviously be part of literature in English. However, while the intimate familiarity the English speaking world has with Shakespeare or to a lesser degree Milton or the Bronte sisters or Dickens, can the same be said for American authors within the literary traditions of literature in English. Can it be any surprise that a nation so wholly white as Britain produce so little in the way of minority literary texts?

The more fundamental question then is, can, given the diversity of historical context for race and racism in the United States and Britain (and other English speaking, English writing nations), can there truly be a universal theoretical approach for race identity and if so what are those limitations? Is there a universal blackness, or are race identity theorists attempting to create “absolute, universal standards for human achievement, norms and aspirations” recast from a minority perspective (Gilroy 2562)?

Limits of New Theoretical Approaches

Henry Louis Gates claims “We must learn to read a black text within a black formal cultural matrix as well as its ‘white’ matrix” and that it is “necessary because the existence of a black canon is a historically contingent phenomenon” (Gates 2435). Is Gates calling for the creation “together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and awareness of its own function” (Gramsci 1002)? Is he calling to cast off the anxiety of influence of a white male canon, or does he accept that black literary theory and black traditions can and should coexist with the Western tradition?

Henry Louis Gates also serves as a faculty member at Harvard University, a renowned educational institution, but one that has also served as a launching platform for the privileged white male. As a faculty member at an institution of the State, can he truly be considered part of an emergent culture bringing about “new meanings and values, new practices, new significances and experiences” (Williams 1431)? Has Gates simply become a component of the dominant culture?

Barbara Christian suggests that “because those who have effected the takeover have the power…first of all to be published, and thereby to determine the ideas which are deemed valuable, some of our most daring and potentially radical critics…have been influenced, even coopted, into speaking a language and defining their discussion in terms alien to and opposed to our needs and orientation” (Christian 2129). Christian is referring to the limitations of theoretical approaches of studying literature. That is, once more approaching Bloom’s anxiety of influence and posing the question of how to create a new approach within the limitations of the existing theoretical approaches. She explains that new “literary critical theory is as hegemonic as the world which it attacks” (2129). Existing theoretical approaches then are ensuring “the subjection to the ruling ideology” (Althusser 1339). How then can theorists resist the dominant culture of existing academia? Is it possible to, as Gates suggests, develop a specifically black literary theoretical approach within the limits of the existing academic structures or are all theorists all limited by existing academic structures?