Mumbo Jumbo, I believe, marks a departure from previous perspectives of race and racial dynamics in America—besides the obvious denunciations of portrayals of the "African American Experience" and their associated issues, Reed creates this worldview, this quasi-religious perspective and that incorporates various cultural, sociological, and historical phenomena into one. As an obligatory mention, this postmodernist motif of blurring the lines between "objectivity" and "subjectivity" appears here—the seemingly incongruent handling of how we treat history (often seen as objective) and sociological phenomena (perhaps thought of as being subjective, the result of social constructions) equally seems to demonstrate this point well.
Now in regards to Reed's 'Mumbo Jumbo Worldview', I take concern with its passive dichromatism despite it's clear and superficial "anti-European" sentiments...
Within this quasi-religious framework, we see the start of Jes Grew and an animating "Afro-American" spirit stemming from ancient Egypt; in the chapters describing the mythological origins of Jes Grew and Atonism, this theme of brothers-turned-enemies sets the stage for a bipolar dynamic. If we then follow the spread of Atonism, we extend into Europe, a predominantly white and Christian continent; for example, "the Atonists in the late 4th century B.C. convinced the Emperor Constantine to co-sign for the Cross" (Reed 168). This thread of the brotherly conflict, in its spread and its embodiment through Hinckle and Safecracker, shows a uniquely white facet of this dichotomy.
However, if we consider the spread of Jes Grew or its present existence, we see a uniquely African American movement—besides other more obvious examples, if we just consider that the Haitian authorities, those from the only country in the world which gained independence through an African slave revolt, we can see how this aspect of the brotherly conflict is characteristically black.
Despite the seeming Afrocentric origin of this brotherly conflict, I still wonder why Ancient Egypt was the primary setting... despite its geographic location within Africa, Egypt and the rest of northern Africa were much more connected to southern Europe—Egypt was once part of the Roman Empire! Further, there seems to be a geographic disconnection even with regards to ethnicity: many of the slaves that were exploited and forcefully brought to America were mostly from western Africa; with some inconsistencies and seemingly carefully curated anthropologic examples, I am concerned about this narrative in the first place. I assert this: under a superficial cover of Afrocentrism, we still see a disconnection and that the story is still ultimately Eurocentric. Given the previously mentioned sentiments that this text seems to espouse (anti-colonialist, anti-Eurocentric), I would think that the underlying narrative would be more complex, unlike the condensed and monolithic representations that are concomitant with books about the 'African American Experience' that fall under the Atonist tradition and perhaps even broadly simplistic and dichromatic 'Black vs White' dynamics...
This is a compelling critical perspective--and perhaps any re-telling of essentially *world history* will inevitably have to oversimplify in one way or another. And we do see a nod toward a more global treatment of Atonism-versus-everyone in the Mu'tafikah, which is a worldwide organization attempting to "repatriate" art works from Asia, Latin America, and Africa that have been appropriated and "detained" in Western museums. We get a brief back-and-forth between Yellow Jack and Jose Fuentes about the ways that Asia and South America have grappled with Atonists, but not much more than that.
ReplyDeleteSo it might be true that the novel remains somewhat "Eurocentric" in its focus--as the larger metanarrative LaBas tells DOES take place largely in Europe. He is concerned with the fate of cultural interactions in Europe, where "Atonist" supremacy has marginalized and made illegal or taboo all kinds of African traditions and forms of expression. Because of the transatlantic slave trade, which brought these African cultural and religious elements to North America "undercover" and underground, Reed is forced to focus on the fate of multiculturalism in a white-supremacist cultural and political context. The story is inevitably larger, and Reed's version might reflect its own distortions and simplifications. But keep in mind the staggering ambition of this novel, which seriously attempts to trace a historical throughline from the 1920s back to ancient Egypt. That's a LOT.
I wasn't really concerned with how Reed placed the origins of Jes Grew in Egypt I was mostly surprised by the obvious influence he took from biblical stories to create the background to Jes Grew. Im not exactly sure what I was expecting, but I wasnt expecting that. Also, I kind of liked how 'simple' the dynamics of Atonism and Jes Grew were throughout the book, I think once you sift through all the fog that Reed puts in the story Reed offers a simple and broad interpretation of how white society accepts culture from other minorities. But I'm not really sure Mumbo Jumbo was a doozy for me so I could be interpreting this wrong. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI understand what you're getting at about Jes Grew/atonism's history being placed in Egypt, and how that still seems to have some Eurocentric influence. I see that trend in many novels, where references to Africa tend to focus on countries which have been popularized in western culture, Egypt being an obvious case of this. I think it might make sense in Mumbo Jumbo, simply because of how well historians understand Egyptian polytheistic religions, and how much information Ishmael Reed was probably able to find to include in Mumbo Jumbo. I enjoyed reading your blog post.
ReplyDeleteI think that you make a good point about Mumbo Jumbo, and I think maybe Reed meant to include a mostly Eurocentric POV as point of reference so we as the readers could see the threads of Atonism more easily. Obviously it could have also been an accidental thing, but I also agree with the other commenters that the Eurocentric narrative simplifies the thousands of years of conflict/history that the reader has to follow to understand the Atonist/Jes Grew conflict. Overall excellent blog post!
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