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Race, Gender, and the Politics of ReadingAuthor(s): Michael AwkwardSource: Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 22, No. 1, Black Women Writers Issue (Spring,1988), pp. 5-27Published by: St. Louis UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2904147.

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Race, Gender, and the Politics of ReadingMichael Awkward

We're gonna move on up, one by oneWe ain't gonna stop 'till the work gets doneAm I black enough for you?-Lyrics fromBillyPaul's song Am I Black Enough For You?To choose an attitude toward interpretation-and therefore towardlanguage-these days is to choose morethanjustan attitude:t is to choosea politics of reading, it is to choose an ethics of reading ....-Alice Jardine(97)

In his Introduction to The Politics of Interpretation,W. J.T.Mitchell accurately suggests the importance of explorations of theintersections between ideology and reading in contemporaryliterary criticism. The editor's stated attempt to explore the issuefully by select[ing] contributors representative of a wide varietyof political persuasions (2), however, falls short in considerationsof racial difference. Despite an insufficient attention to race that ledone contributor, the feminist critic GayatriSpivak, to remark thatthe Third World seem[s] exorbitant to our concerns (366), I seeMitchell'svolume as valuable in partbecause it serves as an impetusfor questions that have not been foregrounded in Afro-Americancritical discourse since the heyday of the Black Aesthetic. What isthe nature of the relationship between oppressed minority racialstatus and reading? In other words, how does blackness direct,influence, or dictate the process of interpretation?Is there a politicsof interpretation that is determined or controlled by race in waysthat can be compared to the ideologically informed readings of,MichaelAwkward,a Universityof PennsylvaniaPh.D., s AssistantProfessorof English at the Universityof Michigan.

Black American Literature Forum, Volume 22, Number 1 (Spring 1988)? 1988 Indiana State University

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6 MichaelAwkwardfor example, feminist critics? The present essay can be seen, then,as an attemptto examine (to signify on the title of HenryLouisGates,Jr.'s Introduction to Race, Writing, and Difference) thedifference race can make in the reading or interpretive process.As Spivak persuasively argues, any discussion of a politics ofinterpretationmustbegin with an attemptto formulatewhat she callsa working notion of ideology. According to Spivak, such a notionis essential in order to undo the oppositions between determinismand free will and between conscious choice and unconsciousreflex. Ideology in action is what a group takes to be naturalandself-evident, that of which the group, as a group, must deny anyhistorical sedimentation.... In turn, the subject(s) of ideology arethe conditions and effects of the self-identity of the group as agroup (347).

In accord with Spivak's formulations,Iwant to offer, as briefly andclearly as possible, my notion of the ideology of black interpretation(or what I will hereafter refer to as Afrocentric reading ). Putsimply, Afrocentric reading exposes the unrelentingly caucacentricnature of the manifestations of what Addison Gayle has referred toas the ... ethos of the white aesthetic (The BlackAesthetic 44)and offers studied, corrective interpretations of the products of theblack imagination. In other words, Afrocentric reading attempts tocounter the negative effects on the black psyche of what CarolynGerard has called white racial projection of its own best imageupon the universe, both by demonstrating the falsityof the whiteman['s] ... myth of superiority (352) and by, as Gayle puts it,unearth[ing] the treasure of beauty lying deep in the untouredregions of the Black experience (45).

A common Afro-American victimization at the hands of whitehegemony represents the conditions (to use Spivak's words) thathave created a black world view or ideology. I do not need to traceat length here such manifestations of black nationalist ideology asa shared comprehension of the white ethnocentric nature of whatLarryNeal calls the western cultural aesthetic (257)-the myriadexamples which permeate native use of the English language thatfigure whiteness as purity,innocence, and goodness, and blacknessas impurity and evil-and the innumerable efforts to demonstratethe beauty and strength of Afro-American culture. Afro-Americansinterpret the world as members of a class, in Robert Scholes' useof the word, because of both necessity and interest (206):Theyneed, in order to maintain a positive self- and group image, tostruggle against centuries of white hegemony's devaluativefigurations of blackness.



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Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading 7As the formulations of Black Aestheticians make clear, both theanti-hegemonic and the pro-black components of Afrocentricreading have their origins in ideology-in the politics of Afrocentric

reading. Too often, however, limited attention to the aestheticproperties of black texts has prevented Afro-American critics fromfully exploring the discursive brilliance to be found in what HoustonA. Baker, Jr., calls that writing [ofJ he culturally specific of blackancestral faces (Blues 200). Until recently, Afro-Americancriticism, because of its lack of a full commitment to energeticanalysis of the art of black expressive texts, has denied Afrocentricreading its full complexity by ignoring its mandate to unearththetreasures of beauty lying deep in the untoured regions of blackliterature.

IIIf Afro-American literary history in the twentieth century can besaid to be dominated by a single issue, that issue surely is the partthat Afro-American literatureand its criticism should (and/or could)play in the full liberation of black people in America. Following theexample of ancestral figures such as Frederick Douglass, whosuggested that literacy is the pathway from slavery to freedom(49),a number of Afro-Americanwriters and critics have seen black,mastery of the tropes of literary expression as a means of gainingthe race's liberation from the debilitating tenets of white hegemony.While the specific forms such a view has taken vary from a HarlemRenaissance representation of literature as a means ofdemonstrating the Afro-American's similarity to his/her whitecounterpart to a Black Aesthetic's celebration of black difference,black literature has served the utilitarian function in the minds ofa number of its critics and creators of lighting the way to promisedlands of AMERICA and/or BLACKNATIONHOOD.1Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has devoted a good deal of his criticalenergy to the examination of the historical motivationsand aestheticlimitations of such interpretations of Afro-American literature. Hehas persuasively demonstrated that the first black acts of writingin the West were performed as direct responses to the extantracialist incredulity about the black's ability to reason. As Gates

suggests, written demonstration of Afro-American ability to reasonwas considered by early black writers the pathway to Afro-American liberation. Yet despite the lofty goals of these eighteenth-and nineteenth-century black writers,acts in demonstration of blackreason and literacy failed to offer pathways to freedom. As Gates



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Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading 9knowledge of the forms of racial oppression. Taking traditionalreadings of Afro-American literature to their logical extremes, theblack experience represents the hermeneutic tie that binds Afro-American writer and critic and the hermetical seal that protectsblack texts from penetration by uninformed and potentially racistwhite readers.

In the following discussion, I want to explore the question of whatconstitutes acceptable readings of class texts such as Afro-American literature.Does the black face of the Afro-American criticactually lead to qualitatively superior or perceptively differentreadings of the black text than ones offered by a paler face? Inwhat ways is Afro-American insistence on the authority ofexperience comparable to the similar appeals of Americanfeminist critics who originated the phrase and made it theirinterpretative catchword? Comparing some of the consequencesof Afro-American and feminist appeals to the authority ofexperience, in fact, allows one clearly to observe the delimitingnature of an experientially based politics of interpretation.

IIIIn the essay that initiated the often-heated discussion betweenherself, Baker, and Gates about the uses and misuses ofpoststructuralisttheories in the analysis of Afro-American literature,the black critic Joyce Joyce proudly proclaims her position asinheritor of a legacy of socially committed Afro-American critics.In the conclusion of that essay (which echoes-perhapsintentionally-Gayle's aforementioned statements), Joyce argues:Since the Blackcreative writerhas always used language as a means ofcommunication o bind people together, the job of the Black iterarycriticshould be to find a point of merger between the communal, utilitarian,phenomenalnatureof Black iterature nd the aestheticorlinguistic-if youwill-analyses that lluminate he universality f a literary ext.... It shouldbe the job of the Blackliterarycritic to force ideas to the surface, to givethem force in orderto affect,to guide, to animate,andto arouse the mindsand emotions of Black people. (343)

For Joyce, at odds with Gates and Baker because of theiremployment of poststructuralism's difficult, jargonated,pseudoscientific language and theories of readings, the role ofthe Afro-American literary critic is to facilitate the uninitiated blackreader's journey to literacy. In other words, the function of blackcritics is not, as Gates has argued, to bring to bear upon theirreadings any 'tool' which helps us to elucidate, which enables us



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10 Michael Awkwardto see more clearly, the complexities of figuration peculiar to ourliterary traditions ( Criticism in the Jungle 4). Rather, it is to aidthe black masses in understanding the themes, metaphors, andmessages of black texts whose subtleties, if fully understood, canlead to psychological freedom fromthe potentially enslaving whitehegemonic forces that attempt to subdue them (339).

Afrocentric critical reading, forJoyce, uses the text as a discursivekey capable of unlocking the chains of an almost timeless Afro-American psychological bondage. Baker's and Gates's desire tomove decisively beyond the inadequacies of a past historical [andlimitedly ideological] criticism and engage Afro-Americanexpressive texts in their fullsymbolic potency (Blues 117)suggestsforJoyce thatthese critics have succumbed to what her forebearGayle called a sweet delirium that influences them to shirk theirlarger ideological responsibilities.Furtherevidence of her view of Baker'sand Gates's interpretativeinadequacies where the black text is concerned can be located inJoyce's reply to their understandably venomous reactions to anessay which, among other things, accuses them of lacking deeply

felt social commitment to blacks. In her reply, Joyce suggests thatGates and Baker are victims of interpretative disabilities: A closereading of their responses reveals that neither of these men canread.... Perhaps, in the past few years, they have used theobfuscating language and ideas of Derrida, Barthes, Paul de Man,Foucault, Kristeva, Althusser, Bakhtin, and others to cloak theirdifficulties (373).Reading between the lines, as it were, of these quite combativeremarks, we can infer Joyce's concern with an apparent difficultywhich Gates has himself discussed: how to offer competent,culturally nformed readings of Afro-American iterarytexts by usinginterpretative strategies which were developed outside of the Afro-American hermeneutic circle (see Criticism 2-10).Like the whitefeminist critic Elaine Showalter, who cautions her critical sistersagainst looking to the androcentric models of what she refers toas male critical theory for our most basic principles( Wilderness 247),Joyce suggests that poststructuralism does notoffer adequate pathways for sufficiently Afrocentric analyses.Despite studies thatexplore such dominant and sophisticated blacktropes of expression as signifying and the blues, thepoststructuralist-informedreadings of Gates and Bakerare, in theirapparent break with the tradition of sociopolitical Afro-Americanliterarycriticism, clearly not (ideologically) black enough for Joyce.



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Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading 11Joyce says of these critics' break with tradition: While BlackAmerican literature and its criticism are rooted in an allegiance toBlack people, Bakerand Gates have 'relinquished' thatallegiance(382).

Joyce suggests that there is but one acceptable black practiceof critical reading. Such reading is extratextual in focus (it asks, ineffect, not what the text does, but what it can do for the Afro-American reader) and is infinitely more concerned with contentthan with formal strategies. Critics more interested in exploringwhat Gates calls the language of the black text than in studyingits content are accused of disloyalty to the cause of black liberation.A common Afro-American experience of racism-or, in the words(if not the precise wording) of George Kent, the adventure ofblackness in Western culture-ought to lead, according totraditional Afro-American critics, to a common, overtly politicalinterpretation that is essentially unconcerned with the aestheticqualities of black texts.

Joyce correctly posits that the experience or adventure ofblackness ought to constitute sufficient parameters fordeterminingwhat Stanley Fish has called an interpretative community. Membersof such communities, according to Fish,are guided in their readingsof texts by a common consciousness, which producesinterpretative strategies [that]exist prior to the act of reading andtherefore determine the shape of what is read (14). Membershipin the Afro-American interpretative community is predicated, as Ihave used Black Aesthetic statements to demonstrate, not simplyon the critic's willingness to expose white hegemony and therebylead uninitiated black readers to freedom, but also on his or herdedication to explore the historically unappreciated beauty andcomplexity of black culture.Joyce's views to the contrary notwithstanding, the a prioriassumptions of Baker and Gates, as reflected in their illuminatingwork on Afro-American literary texts, clearly are in spiritual (if notdiscursive) harmonywith the postulates of BlackAestheticians whodemand that black critics dig beneath the phrase and unearth thetreasures of beauty lying deep in the untoured regions of the Blackexperience. This injunction, it seems to me, can be said to

prefigure both Gates's interest in decoding the signifying structuresof black literary history and Baker's commitment to a Foucaultianarchaeological project to unearth the culturally specific in Afro-American texts.In the following section, I want to examine the motivations forJoyce's attack on Baker and Gates. Such an examination will lead



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12 Michael Awkwardnecessarily to the issue I want to explore in terms of both Afro-American and feminist criticism: how and why an intellectuallycompelling and demonstrably fluid ideology such as Afrocentricreading can be reduced, in the hands of critics as clearly dedicatedto the celebration of their culture's beauty as Joyce and Gayle, toa blunt discursive instrument unable effectively to perform therange of tasks for which it was intended.

IVAfrocentric reading, like other overtly political acts ofinterpretative communities, such as American feminist criticism,holds that reading is a decidedly subjective and interested actof ideological commitment. Like many other political organizationscognizant of the potential consequences of disloyalty, theAfrocentric and feminist interpretative communities spend a gooddeal of time assessing the levels of actual ideological commitmentof those who aspire to or proclaim membership. Such assessmentsare invariably measured in terms of the scrutinized's manifestabilities to remain pure of the ideological taint of the political Other(which is, in the case of both classes, white androcentricism). Whenwe read, for example, Joyce's doubts about Baker's and Gates'sallegiance to black people or, forthat matter, Elaine Showalter'sview that Annette Kolodny's suggestion that feminist readingconstitutes a 'learned activity' is politically suspect ( CriticalCross-Dressing 119),we are acutely aware that the scrutinized'sstatus as racial or gendered insiders fails to offer protection fromallegations of treachery. They are unprotected precisely becauseblack and woman are here being employed as figures whichdefine not the biological but the ideological self. In other words,as we well know, black and female adventures in Western culturemay not lead to sufficiently Afrocentric and/or feminist acts ofreading. While I will deal with what are, for me, the flaws in Joyce'sand Showalter's perspectives on Afrocentric and feminist readingtoward the end of this essay, I want to emphasize at this point thattheir criteria for interpretative community status-race andgender-are, to some extent, merely tropes forpolitical orientation.If Baker and Gates are judged, in the words of the Billy Paul songthat serve as an epigraph to this essay, not black enough forJoyce,and if Kolodnyis not woman enough forShowalter,such lack resultsnot from biology but from perceptions of insufficient ideologicalcommitment.Inboth cases, ideological lack is seen as a function of suggestionsthatthe ideological Other and/or his/her theories of interpretation



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Race, Gender,and the Politics of Reading 13can adequately-that is, in a non-androcentric or non-caucacentricfashion-penetrate feminist and Afrocentric texts whose primaryfunction, according to traditional class critics, is to depict, in oftensubtly encoded ways, the experiences of white male hegemony'svictims. Fish's discussion of the nature of textual evidencedetermined by the interpretative community serves, I think, toilluminate the motivations for Afrocentric and feminist suspicionsconcerning white male readings of their texts. According to Fish,there is something very important about evidence: it is always afunction of what it is to be evidence for,and is never independentlyavailable. That is, the interpretation determines what will count asevidence for it, and the evidence is able to be picked out onlybecause the interpretationhas alreadybeen assumed (272).IfFishis correct, then perhaps the aesthetic standards that constitute thealways already assumed of even the best intentioned white malecritic render him unable to offer anything but what Afrocentric andfeminist critics would view as inadequate readings, tainted by whitemale ideology, of black and/or feminist texts.

Importantearly essays by black feminist critics such as BarbaraSmith and Deborah McDowell offer convincing readings of thehistorical refusal of critics who are not both black and female totreat the texts of Afro-Americanwomen writers with an appropriatedegree of critical seriousness and sensitivity to black femaledifference.2 While the current popularity of the works of Afro-American women's literaturesuggests thatblack feminist criticismhas been quite successful in its efforts to gain for the creative worksof black women an importantplace in the Afro-American, feminist,and American literarycanons, one would suspect thatfigures suchas Smith and McDowell would not approve of the ideologicaldistortions which have accompanied some of the more recent actsof canonization by gendered and/or racial Others.

There is, in my estimation, perhaps no more troubling such actthan HaroldBloom's Introduction to a collection of critical essayson Zora Neale Hurston. After an introductory paragraph admittingan initial skepticism about Hurston-a skepticism which resultedfrom an awareness that contemporary work by women and byminority writers becomes esteemed on grounds other thanaesthetic (1)-, Bloom proceeds to offer a brief, ratheruninformedreading of the inestimable black woman writer. And while it ispossible to excuse Bloom's lack of serious scholarly attention toHurston's corpus if we consider his seemingly overwhelmingassignment to provide introductions for over a hundred volumes



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14 Michael Awkwardof Chelsea House's ModernCriticalViews series, I cannotbeas sympathetic o hisreprehensiblywhitemale versionof Hurston.Bloomsays of the writer: Hurston erselfwas refreshingly ree ofall the ideologies thatcurrentlyobscure the reception of her bestbook [Their Eyes Were Watching God]. Her sense of power hasnothing in common with politics of any persuasion, withcontemporarymodes of feminism,or even withthose questerswhosearch fora black aesthetic (4).

Thewhitemale critic, nsulatedby hismythof a white male canondeterminedsolely by aesthetic considerations,failsto understandinterpretativepolitics' essential role in both Hurston's recentre(dis)covery ndher earlierobscurity.Thealwaysalreadyassumedof white male reading-that great art is apolitical-occasions awonderfullycurious canonizationof Hurstonwherein the greatwhite male criticfigurativelyubmits he blackfemalewriter o botha Schuyleriande-blackingmachine and a sex change operation.The onlyHurstonBloomcan accept is a pallid,unwomanish ersionwhich is ideologically both black no more and female no more.As Bloom's reading of Hurston hroughclouded critical lensesdemonstrates,Afrocentricand feministreadersindeed havemuchjustification or theirskepticismwhere white male criticaltheoryand its practitionersare concerned. It is clear thatBloom(to usethe words Joyce employs to describe her view of Baker's andGates's interpretativedeficiencies) can't read Hurstonbecausewhite male ideology prevents his appreciationof her black andfeministaesthetics.Bloom's ntended praiseofHurstons exemplaryof the limitationsof white male reading of the gendered and/orracialOther n that tappearsable to accept as genuinelylaudableonly those who can be viewed as reflecting the beliefs of thehegemony.Such readingprojectsthe valuesof a hegemonic whiteAmericaas normativeandproper,andprojectsitsrepresentativesas custodians againstthe society's corruptionby what we couldcall-taking our cue from ElaineShowalter'sapt phrase-the wildzone of racial/ethnic difference.

Bloom's example of ideological reading clearly suggests thedifference race and gender have traditionallymade in theassessments of black and/or female texts by white male critics.Despite myuse of Gates's title, however,I differwith himwhen heinsists thatrace is simply (ornot so simply) a dangeroustrope,because of the factthat race,as a meaningfulcriterionwithinthebiological sciences, has long been recognized to be a fiction( WritingRace' 5, 4).Inpursuing hislineofreasoning,Gatesfailsto acknowledge thatgender as a category is itself as culturally



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Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading 15determined as race. For the purposes of this essay at least, theconsequence of viewing race as a trope, while simultaneouslyarguingthat the biologicalcriteriaused to determine'difference'in sex simply do not hold when applied to 'race' (5), is thesuggestionthatgender differencesare,in considerations f culture,essentially more significantthan racial differences. This is a viewto which psychoanalytic feminist critics, who have beenenergeticallydeconstructingwhat heyview as our overdeterrninednotions of sexual difference, would, I believe, strenuouslyobject.

Further, y offering uch an essentialistview offemaledifference,Gatesmightbe said to be lending credence to the suggestions ofthe downhome, downright Yankee historical ( Piecing andWriting 22)American eminist riticElaineShowalter,whose viewof a nontranslatabilityf male critical theory across class linesaccords with views expressed by Joyce. Such arguments haveproved so persuasivethat some males openly questiontheirrightto call themselves feminist critics. In Readingas a Man, forexample, Robert Scholes argues that a male critic ... may workwithin the feministparadigmbut never be a full-fledgedmemberof the class of feminists (207).

Scholes's doubts about the possibilitiesof a full-fledged malefeminist, however, are not grounded, as one might expect, in asympathywith Frenchfeministattempts o write the woman'sbodyor to employ a heretofore suppressed female language (both ofwhich men may be biologically incapable of) but, rather, inexperience-based theories of downhome... Yankee feminism.At the conclusionof what s a quite provocativereadingofJonathanCuller'smuch-discussed Writingas a Woman, Scholes says ofhis difficultieswith Culler'sattempts o read feminism hrough helens of deconstruction: Aboveall, I think no man should seek inanywayto diminish he authoritywhich the experience of womengives them in speaking about thatexperience, and I believe thatwomenshouldbe very waryof critical ystemsthatdenyor diminishthat authority 217-18).Scholesis referringhere not tobiologicaldifference n ascientificsense, not to women'sphysiologicalOtherness,whichmightmakethem write and read in a unique manner, but to the cultural

consequences ofassignment o the class of woman.ForScholes,men can'tbe totallyacceptablefeministreaders because they can'texperience women'soppressionfirsthand.Butappealsto women'sexperience of male- authored ppression,tobe sure,take us outof the realmof biology and intothe world of female culture-into,in other words, a realm similarto Gates's race, whose coded



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16 Michael Awkwardsignifyingblack difference Gatesclearlyacknowledges whitescan learn to read.3To suggest thatmales are culturallynadequatereaders offemaletexts is essentially no differentthan to argue, as the black criticStephen Henderson did in 1973,that whites are experientiallyunsuitedto offer competentreadings of Afro-Americaniterature.Henderson's views of white reading inadequacy, like those ofAnglo-Americanfeminists concerning male readers, are firmlygrounded nperceptionsof impenetrable lass culture-in whathasbeen called the Black Experience -and are most clearlymanifested in his theory of textual saturation.By saturation,

Hendersonmeans chiefly (a)the communicationof Blacknessina given situation,and (b) a sense of fidelityto the observed andintuited truthof the Black Experience (62).Such communicationis a function of total cultural immersion, which permits anunderstanding fthe discourseused to describe thatexperience.As Henderson insists, Where style and subject matter areobviouslyBlack,one may feel, for example, thata word,a phrase,a rhythm, s so right, so Black,that ts employmentilluminates heentire composition (65).By virtueof their culturalexperiences,blacks can, accordingto Henderson,recognize the rightness,theblackness, of such utterances,while experientiallyOther whitescannot.

Henderson'sformulationshave been questioned by both Gatesand Baker.Gatesrefersto saturation s theultimate autology hatleadsnecessarily o unfortunateomparisonsbetween blackwritersconcerning their various levels of an achieved ideologicalblackness(see Figures n Black32-36).And Bakercalls Henderson'sassumptions culturalxenophobia, because they suggest thatonly the black imagination ... can experience blackness. Forboth critics, the theory of saturation s problematicbecause, asBaker puts it, the creative and criticalframework uggested byHendersonresembles, at times, a closed circle fromwhich non-blacks are forever excluded (Blues 82, 81). But if Henderson'stheories are xenophobic, they are certainlyno moreso thanthoseof a factionof feminist riticssuchas Showalterwho seem to dismisssummarilythe possibility of adequately feminist male-authoredreadingsof female textson the same groundsthatHendersonuses:cultural-experiential-difference.Ifthe major ssue in such debates is, as I believe, whether racialand gendered experience can be adequately interpretedacrossclass lines, we find ourselves discussing matterstraditionallyassociated not with literaryinterpretation,but with the field of



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Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading 17anthropology.Becauseof the natureof the enterprise,this fieldhashistorically (sometimes more responsibly than others) had toconcern itself with the question of whether it is possible for a(typically white) investigator to achieve sufficiently accurateanalyses of alien (usuallythird-world) ultures. In his influentialessay Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory ofCulture, the cultural anthropologistCliffordGeertz argues thatsuch analysesare possible and that heirachievement s manifestedas thick description of symbolic social action derived fromanunderstanding of the webs of significance unique to theinvestigated culture. For Geertz,culturally nformed readings byan Otherrequire not a shared culturalexperience but, rather,alearned ability o construe their modes of expression, whatI calltheir symbol systems ( 'From he Native'sPoint of View' 70).

Certainlyone of the more satisfyingappropriations f Geertzianinterpretative ultural heoryinto the realm of literature s foundinBaker's TheJourney Back.For Baker, adequate interpretationofliterature,which he refers to as a manifestationof the humancapacityforsymbolicbehavior, requires studied... attention othe methods and findings of disciplines [such as philosophy,psychology, linguistics,andphenomenology]which enable one toaddress such concerns as the status of the artistic object, therelationshipof art to other culturalsystems, and the natureandfunctionofartisticcreationand perceptionin a given society (xvi).Aninterdisciplinary anthropologyfart xvi)provides,accordingto Baker, an informed grasp-a 'thick description'-of theinterrelatedcodes of a particular.. culture and canyield theauthentic 'force of meaning'of the work (xvii).

Showalter also sees much to recommend in Geertz. In fact,Showalter uggests thata culturalmodel of women'swritingoffersthe most completeandsatisfyingwayto talkabout the specificityand difference of women's writing Wilderness 259).Further,she believes that a Geertzian approach offers the means ofprovidinga genuinely thick'descriptionof women's writing that]would insistupon genderandupona female iteraryradition mongthe multiplestratathatmake up the force of meaning in a text( Wilderness 266).Despite their similaremploymentof Geertz to suggest adequatemeans of decoding what both critics refer to as the force ofmeaning n literary exts,Bakerand Showalter each muchdifferentconclusions about the interpretativepotentialof culturalanalysisacross class lines. Already we have seen part of Baker'scondemnatory response to the suggestion that only the cultural



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18 MichaelAwkwardinsider can adequately read Afro-American exts. While Bakergrants in Blues, Ideology, and Afro-AmericanLiterature thatStephenHenderson s correct when he arguesthatAfro-Americanexpressive culturehad long been undersiege ... [by]... whitecriticalcondescension and snobbery,and ... outrightpathologicalignorance and fear qtd. in Blues84),the last decade's productionof some informedwhite-authoredeadingsof black literature ausesBaker o reevaluatestatementshe made inTheJourneyBackaboutthe inability of whites to interpret Afro-Americantexts in acompetent manner.4Such studies have convinced Baker that,through heir own investigationsof the 'formsof thingsunknown'in recent years, some white criticshave been able to entera blackcritical circle. They entered, however, not as superordinateauthorities,but as scholars workingin harmonywith fundamentalpostulates of the Black Aesthetic (Blues 84).

WhileBakerhaswelcomed a few well-informedwhite critics ntothe black critical circle, Showalter,as her review essay CriticalCross-Dressing:MaleFeminists nd The Womanof theYear makesclear, maintains onsiderableskepticismaboutthe success ofmaleattemptsto enter the feminist nterpretative ircle. ForShowalter,male failure o produce adequatelyfeministreadingsresults frommales'inabilityo confront he inherentdifficultiesof theirpositionssuccessfully. Showalterprescriptivelysuggests that the way intofeministcriticism, orthe male theorist,must nvolvea confrontationwith what might be implied by reading as a man and with aquestioningor surrenderof paternalprivileges ( CriticalCross-Dressing 126-27).According to Showalter, successful malefeminist exts such as Culler's Readingas a Woman and TerryEagleton'sLiteraryTheory evidence thatthe male critichas readconsciously romhis owngender experience,with an ironicsenseof its own ideological bounds. That s to say that he has read notas a woman,but as a man and a feminist 126).He must be awareat all times, in other words, of his status as (gendered) Outsider.

Whileshe expresses aviewthatmen can indeed become feministreaders, however, Showalter learly impliesthat he effortsof malecritics generally fail because of their difficultywith the acts ofconfrontation and surrender necessary for this criticalcompetence. Typically, according to Showalter, male feministreadings evidence the male critic's failure to consider his ownideological dilemma -that s, asa privileged memberof patriarchyemploying feminist interpretative models which energeticallycritiquethatempowering system-and, consequently,whatresults



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Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading 19is phallic eminism that]eems like anotherraid on the resourcesof the feminine in order to modernizemale dominance (129).

To returnto the subject of Showalter'sdifficultieswith AnnetteKolodny's suggestion that men can learn to read in a feminist-approved fashion n the lightof Showalter'sdiscussionof aspiringmalefeminists,Showalter'spoliticalsuspiciousnessseems to resultfromKolodny's ailure o insiston male confrontation f patriarchalprivileges. However,even a cursorylook at the Kolodnyessay inquestion clearly demonstrates that her views about theinterpretationof women's texts are in harmonywith the culturalanthropologicalmodel embraced by Showalter.In Dancingthroughthe Minefield, Kolodnyoffers what mightbe viewed as a best-case scenario concerning the reason that,historically,women's texts have not been accepted into the male-controlledWestern iterary anon.Kolodny uggests that themostrecent feministrereadingsof women writersallows the conclusionthat,where [female-authoredexts]have droppedoutof sight, t maybe due not to any lack of merit in the work but, instead, to anincapacityof predominantlymale readersto properly nterpretandappreciate women's texts-due, in large part, to a lack of prioracquaintance 155).WhileKolodnymisses a clear opportunity ooffermore bitingcriticismof patriarchy,her argument s certainlyin agreement withShowalter's tated belief thatwomen's cultureprovides the only adequate matrixfor the analysis of women'sliterature. n Kolodny's ormulation,men could notpreviouslyreadwomen's texts because they did notpossess a sufficientanalyticalgrasp of the codes that informwomen's experiences. Accordingto Kolodny,however, provocativefeministstudies by such figuresas PatriciaMeyerSpacks,EllenMoers,SandraGilbert and SusanGubar, and Showalter herself provide the means for men tocomprehendthe previouslyelusive 'codes of custom,of society,and ofconceptionsoftheworld' (156)which informwomen'stexts.Kolodny's views, again, are obviously consistent with theGeertzian/symbolic cultural anthropological model whichShowalter embraces in FeministCriticismin the Wilderness.Further, ecent developmentsinthe universeof feministdiscourse,such as Alice Jardine's ndPaulSmith'sMeninFeminismandwhat

Showalter erself celebratesas the genuinelyexciting,seriousandprovocative (119)involvementof some male theorists,serve toclarifythe accuracyof Kolodny'sclaimthatmen can be and havebeen taught o read the codes ofwomen'screativeandcritical exts.Still,however,such developmentsdo not seem toplease Showalter,who is infinitelymore concerned withelaboratingwhat she views



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20 Michael Awkwardas male failuresto produce sufficiently eministreadingsthansheis in acknowledgingand applauding he beginnings-albeit, inherview, problematic ones-of serious male attention to feministconcerns.5

LikeJoyceJoycefaced withapplicationsof so-calledwhitemalepoststructuralistheory nanalysesof blackliteraryexts,Showalteraccuses Kolodnyof treacherywhen she allegedly oversimplifiesthe natureof the obstacles to maleanalyticalcompetence vis-a-visfeminist texts. For both sociopolitical critics, the threat of thecorruptive potentialof white male hegemony's introduction ntotheir respective discourses far outweighs whatever explicativebenefits that might obtain from such introduction.What bothShowalter and Joyce fear is the neutralizationof the politicalpossibilities of theiranalyticalsystems suggested in whatare, forthem, the most problematic instances of the invasion of theideological Other. Joyce fears that a poststructuralist-informedemphasis on the language of the text will seduce black criticstocease seriousanalysisof black literature'siberating hemes,whileShowalters concerned thatthe reduction of feministreadingtothe status of learned (but not necessarily also lived) activityencourages the type of phallic 'feminist'criticism she quiteconvincingly criticizes in her discussion of Eagleton's study ofRichardson.

The feministcritic MaryJacobus says of Showalter'sdesire toprotectfeministcriticism rompotentialcorruptionromwhite malepoststructuralist ritics and their apparentlymisguided (female)feminist converts: Showalter'senergetic polemic is fueled byunderstandableprofessionalanxietyabout preservingan area incriticism hat s specific to women (12).Thisconservative mpulse,motivated,npart,by ajustifiableuspicionconcerningpatriarchy'shistoricallynsatiabledesireto control he female,mustalso,Ithink,be viewed in connection with Showalter'sclear hope thatwomenwill maintainan indisputable institutionalcontrol of feminism.Showalter's ften-elaborated ifferenceswith malecritical heoryand with continental-theory-influencedeministcritics have as aprimarysource, it would appear, a desire for women to excludemaleparticipation-tomaintain,n otherwords,a uniquelyfeministdiscourse.Showalter seems to advocate the establishment of feministcriticism as a female-controlled,adversarialequivalent of thehistoricallypredominantlymale Western criticalcanon. Even anexclusively female participation, however, would proveproblematic, considering the serious disagreements which



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Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading 21currently exist among feminist critics about the value ofcontemporary critical theory. Such an exclusively femalemembership as that which Showalter desires would, ironically,serve to clarifythe accuracy of the deconstructionists' view thatthedifferences within a term such as feminism are perhaps moreanalytically compelling than the differences between binaryopposites such as masculinist and feminist.

VMany American feminist critics share Showalter's view that the

feminist obsession with ... male critical theory keeps us dependentupon it and retards our progress in solving our own theoreticalproblems ( Wilderness 246-47).It is certainly the case that oneof these theoretical problems-the place in feminist criticism of thepoststructuralist theories of male scholars-has caused seeminglyirreparable divisions within feminist criticism. The socialist feministcritic Jane Marcus argues, for example, thatrelying heavily on maletheorists encourages the betrayal of the general postulates offeminist criticism. Marcus says of Peggy Kamuf's and GayatriSpivak's readings of A Room of One's Own and To the Lighthouserespectively:

By takingfather-guidesto map the labyrinthof the female text, they denythe motherhood of the author of the text. These readings reinforcepatriarchal uthority.Byreading [Virginia]WoolfthroughFoucault,Kamufnames Foucault'scritiqueof the historyof sexualityas morepowerfulthanWoolf's. Reading Woolf through Derrida, Spivak serves patriarchybyinsistingon a heterosexualitywhichthe novel attacksby privilegingchastityin the woman artist. The critic takes a position which is daughter to thefather,not daughter to the mother. (89)By explicitly contrasting her own leftist, separatist interpretativepolitics with what one might call a New Feminist agenda thatproblematizes gender differences by foregrounding male theorists'notions (including those of the infamous misogynist Freud), Marcussuggests that critics such as Spivak and Kamuf have exposed boththemselves and feminist criticism to the corrupting and anti-femaletaint of masculinist values.Marcus's sentiments are echoed in an essay of Nina Baym'swritten in part to clarify, as its subtitle suggests, Why I Don't DoFeminist Literary Theory. Baym argues that the attachment offeminist theorists to the work of Freud and Lacan is motivated bywhat could best be described as unresolved Electra complexes,by the desire, in other words, to be 'daddy's girl' (52).According



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22 Michael Awkwardto Baym, feminist theory's misogynist foundations, in addition toencouraging its practitioners to excoriate their deviating sisters(45), serve also to minimize its members' ideological commitmentto the class of women itself: Today's feminist literary theory ...is finally more concerned to be theoretical than to be feminist. Itspeaks from the position of the castrata (46).

At this point, the similaritiesbetween the neo-Black Aesthetician'sand the downhome Yankee's attacks on poststructuralism shouldbe clear. Because traditionalfeminist and Afrocentric reading bothtake as their fundamental strategy of class empowerment forcefuland continued criticism of the products of the white maleimagination, they view adoption of the analytical assumptions of awhite-male-authored contemporary critical theory as a sign oftreason. This becomes especially true when these theories are usedin discussions of such matters as the limitations of the historicalpractice of these interpretative traditions. But just as Baker andGates appropriate poststructuralism in order to allow Afrocentricreading to pursue its full potential, a close reading of Jacobus'sdiscussion of Showalter's Critical Cross-Dressing demonstratesthat psychoanalytically informed feminist theory, instead of beingat odds with the postulates of feminism, insists that class discoursetake its critique of phallogocentricism to its most radical extreme.

VIEarly in Reading Woman (Reading), Jacobus provides whatserves the present discussion as an explanation for her reliance onpsychoanalytic theory. While she would applaud Showalter'srejection of feminist biocriticism's attempts to write the female body

because, as Showalter puts it, there can be no expression of thebody which is unmediated by linguistic, social, and literarystructures ( Wilderness 252), Jacobus differs with Showalter'sviews regarding how one best discusses women's culturallyproduced differences. For Jacobus, it is not downhome Yankeehistoricalfeminism but psychoanalytic theory thatprovides the mostsuggestive point of entry to fruitful,non-essentialist discussions ofculturally constructed gender differences:If there is no literal referent to start with, no identity or essence, theproduction of sexual difference can be viewed as textual, like theproductionof meaning.Once we cease to see the origin of gender identityas biological or anatomical-as given-but ratheras instituted by and inlanguage, readingwoman can be posed as a process of differentiationfor which psychoanalysis provides a model. (4)



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Race, Gender,and the Politics of Reading 23Employing a psychoanalytical model, Jacobus is able to examineCriticalCross-Dressing in the context of a question thatdominatesfeminist discourse at the present time: Is 'reading as a woman'fundamentally differentiated from 'reading as a man,' and if so, bywhat (political, sociological, or ideological) differences (9). If, asShowalter and many others have argued, culture, and not nature,is the source of (interpretative) differences between women andmen, no amount of attention to biology will aid our comprehensionof such differences. Despite her avowedly anti-essentialist viewsconcerning difference, however, Showalter's essay evidences apersistent preoccupation with legitimacy and illegitimacy, . . . [a]preference for unambiguous meanings and stable origins (12)which fails to allow her to follow her stated views againstessentializing to their (for Jacobus) logical, deconstructive ends.

Showalter, despite agreeing with Jonathan Culler's view of thedifficulties in the feminist appeal to the woman reader'sexperience and an identity which is always constructed ratherthangiven, presents herself as a practicing essentialist when shesuggests that feminist critical theories are proved on our own[women's] pulses ( Critical Cross-Dressing 124, 130). As aconsequence of her essential biases, Showalter, instead ofquestioning the veracity of the sign woman itself, comesdangerously close to endorsing a position she has earlier derided(Jacobus 13)-the maintenance of what Jacobus calls a genderhierarchy (13)that assesses suitabilityformembership in the circleof feminist critics solely on the basis of biology.

What psychoanalytic theory enables, then, is a deconstruction oftraditional feminist criticism's problematic appeals to an authorityof female experience, an exposure, in legal terms, of the neitherbiologically nor culturally justified nature of feminist criticism'spractice of a wholesale reverse discrimination. To simply reversethe binary opposition man/woman, when we are painfully awareof its phallogocentric origins, is to suggest complicity with the male-authored fiction of history. No feminist should be comfortable withsuch a suggestion, despite the potential institutional gains.As the examples of Baker, Gates, and Jacobus suggest,contemporary critical theory can enhance our comprehension ofnon-hegemonic class texts, if for no other reason than it demandsthat we reevaluate our criticalsuppositions. Afrocentric and feministcritics whose work is informed by poststructuralismhave, I believe,most successfully demonstrated its usefulness in their explorationsof the ideologically unjustified nature of the suggestion that



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24 Michael Awkwardpositivistic, sociopolitical reading is the only ideologically correctmeans of approaching the literature.

Surely our understanding of the texts of the feminist and the Afro-American traditionscan profitgreatly fromthe less overtly laudatoryforms of analysis thatdeconstruction and psychoanalytic theory canprovide. At this point in the literary history of both of the classdiscourses examined in this essay, positivistic reading reducesanalysis to what Frederic Jameson calls cut-and-dried (510)formulas as unimaginative, stereotypic, and unworthy of thetraditions they serve as predictable white male perspectives on ZoraNeale Hurston. For an ideology to remain vibrant and useful overtime as a means of access to literary texts, it must allow for thereinvention of the nature of the issues it addresses and presentfruitfulopportunities for what Adrienne Rich, in perhaps the mostwidely quoted single passage in American feminist criticism, callsre-vision-the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, ofentering an old text from a new critical direction (18). Thisrevisionary process is imperative not only in the early formulationsof class methods of reading, but also when these early methodsthemselves become so firmlyestablished as to become obstaclesto illuminating, fresh interpretations.

Notes1 America and Black Nationhood are capitalized here in accord withHoustonBaker's effortsin Blues, Ideology, and Afro-AmericanLiterature todistinguishbetween an idea and what Edmundo O'Gormandescribes ... asa 'lump of cosmic matter.' As Baker suggests, the sign AMERICA and,Iwould add, the sign BLACKNATIONHOOD]s a willful act which always

substitutes for a state description (66).'Examples of racist and/or sexist reading which Smithand McDowell citeinclude SaraBlackburn'ssuggestion that ToniMorrison s fartoo talented toremainonlya marvelousrecorderof the black side of provincialAmerican ifeand that,by turningher attentionawayfrom he blackmasses, she mighteasilytranscend thatearly and unintentionally imiting classification 'black womanwriter ' (Smith171)and the conspicuous absence of Afro-AmericanwomenfromRobert Stepto's study From Behind the Veil, which purportsto be 'ahistory .. of the historical onsciousness ofanAfro-Americanrt orm-namely,the Afro-Americanwritten narrative' (McDowell 187).3For all its provocative and justifiable critique of acts of exclusion andmisrepresentationperformedby whites andblack males where black women'sliterature s concerned, earlyblack feministcriticalessays sufferfrom he typesof essentialistbiases which plague the workof traditionalAfrocentricandwhitefeministcritics. Forboth Smithand McDowell, forexample, being black andfemale alone unquestionably creates the necessary conditions to lead toideological sufficientacts of black feministcriticism.Smith,who suggests that



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Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading 25whites and black men are ofcourse ill-equipped to deal [simultaneously]withthe subtleties of [sexual and]racialpolitics (170),argues thata black feministcritic would think and write out of her own identity and not tryto graft theideas ormethodologyofwhite/male literaryhoughtupon the precious materialsof Blackwomen's art 175).Similarly,McDowell, in attempting o define blackfeministcriticism, asserts that the term can ... apply to any criticism writtenby a Black woman regardless of her subject or perspective, regardless, inotherwords, ofwhether the work is clearly informedby a feministorpoliticalperspective (191). This collision of black female and black feminist, ofbiological and ideological positions, is problematic, I believe, in quitefundamentalways. I intend to examine the rapidly evolving world of blackfeminist criticism more fully in a later essay.4InTheJourneyBack,Baker ays of thepossibilityof competent white readingsof black texts: If black creativity is the result of a context-of webs ofmeaning-different in kind and degree from hose conceived within he narrowattitudinal ategories of white America, t seems possible that he semanticforceof black creativity might escape the white critic altogether (154).'Showalter'sdiscussion of TerryEagleton in CriticalCross-Dressing offersa case in point. While she spends pages dissecting the phallicfeminism ofhis study The Rape of Clarissa, she devotes only a brief paragraphto anacknowledgmentof hisalmostmiraculous ransformationntoa competentmalefeministcritic. ForShowalter,Eagleton's illuminatingLiteraryTheory, wherehe is no longer scolding feministcriticism, suggests that eminist deas havepenetrated Eagleton's reading everywhere, and that, along with Marxistaesthetics, they informhis entire account of the development of contemporarycritical discourse (130). This apparently significant accomplishment isbackgrounded, however,because ofShowalter'sdedication to describingwhatshe views as male interpretative nadequacy.

Works CitedBaker, Houston A., Jr.Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature. Chicago:U of Chicago P, 1984.. InDubious Battle. New LiteraryHistory 18 (1987):363-69.. The Journey Back. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.Baym, Nina. The Madwoman and Her Languages. Benstock 45-61.Benstock, Shari, ed. Feminist Issues in Literary Scholarship. Bloomington:Indiana UP, 1987.Bloom, Harold. Introduction. ZoraNeale Hurston. Ed. Bloom. New York:Chelsea House, 1986.1-4.Culler, Jonathan. Reading as a Woman. On Deconstruction: Theory andCriticism after Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982. 43-64.Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. 1845. NewYork:Signet, 1968.Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory:An Introduction. Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1983.Fish, Stanley.Is There a Text in This Class? Cambridge: HarvardUP, 1980.Gates, Henry Louis,Jr. Criticism n the Jungle. Black Literatureand LiteraryTheory. Ed. Gates. New York:Methuen, 1984. 1-24.



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26 Michael Awkward.Figures in Black:Words,Signsand the Racial elf. New York:OxfordUP, 1987.. 'What's Love GotTo Do WithIt?':CriticalTheory, Integrity,and theBlack Idiom. New LiteraryHistory 18 (1987):345-62.. Writing Race' and the Difference it Makes. Race, Writing,andDifference. Ed. Gates. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986. 1-20.Gayle, Addison, Jr., ed. The Black Aesthetic. New York:Anchor, 1971.. Cultural trangulation: lackLiterature nd White Aesthetics. GayleThe Black Aesthetic 38-45.. Preface. Black Expression. Ed. Gayle. New York:Weybright andTalley, 1969.vii-xv.Geertz, Clifford. 'From the Native's Point of View': On the Nature ofAnthropologicalUnderstanding. Local Knowledge. New York:Basic, 1983.

55-70. ThickDescription:Towards an InterpretiveTheoryof Culture. TheInterpretationof Cultures: Selected Essays. New York:Basic, 1973. 3-30.Gerard,Carolyn. TheBlackWriterand His Role. Gayle TheBlackAesthetic349-56.Henderson,Stephen.Understanding he New BlackPoetry.New York:Morrow,1973.Jacobus, Mary. Reading Woman (Reading). Reading Woman:Essays inFeminist Criticism.New York: ColumbiaUP, 1986. 3-24.Jameson,Frederic. TheSymbolicInference;or,KennethBurkeandIdeologicalAnalysis. CriticalInquiry4 (1978):507-23.Jardine, Alice. Opaque Texts and TransparentContexts. The Poetics ofGender. Ed. Nancy K. Miller. New York: ColumbiaUP, 1986.96-116.Jardine,Alice, andPaulSmith, ds. Men in Feminism.New York:Methuen,1987.Joyce, Joyce A. The Black Canon:ReconstructingBlack AmericanLiteraryCriticism. New LiteraryHistory 18(1986):335-44.. 'Who the Cap Fit':Unconsciousness and Unconscionableness in theCriticismof Houston A. Baker,Jr.,and HenryLouisGates, Jr. New LiteraryHistory 18(1986):371-84.Kolodny,Annette. Dancing hroughthe Minefield:Some Observationson theTheory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist LiteraryCriticism. Showalter144-67.Marcus, Jane. StillPractice, A/Wrested Alphabet. Benstock 79-97.McDowell, Deborah. New Directionsfor BlackFeministCriticism. ShowalterThe New Feminist Criticism 186-99.Mitchell,W. J.T. Introduction. ThePolitics of Interpretation.Ed. Mitchell.Chicago: U of Chicago P. 1983. 1-6.Neal, Larry. The BlackArtsMovement.' Gayle The Black Aesthetic 357-74.Rich, Adrienne. When We Dead Awaken: Writingas Re-vision. CollegeEnglish 34 (1972):18-30.Scholes, Robert. Readingas a Man. Jardineand Smith 204-18.Showalter,Elaine. CriticalCross-Dressing:Male Feminists and The Womanof the Year. Jardineand Smith 116-32.. FeministCriticism n the Wilderness. Showalter The New FeministCriticism 243-70.ed. The New Feminist Criticism.New York:Pantheon, 1985.PiecingandWriting. ThePoetics of Gender.Ed.NancyK.Miller.NewYork: ColumbiaUP, 1986.222-47.



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Race, Gender, and the Politics of Reading 27Smith,Barbara. Towards a Black Feminist Criticism. Showalter The NewFeminist Criticism 168-85.Spivak,Gayatri. The Politics of Interpretations. Mitchell 347-66.

Black Studies Position AnnouncementUniversity of Northern Colorado

Position available:Assistantor Associate Professor of BlackStudies. Full-time,tenure-track.Doctorate in Social Scienceor Humanities discipline required. Salary and rankcommensurate with qualifications and experience. Dutiesinclude teaching a variety of BlackStudies courses, studentadvising, service, and scholarly activity. Positioncontingent upon funding. Application deadline: May 16,1988. Contact: Search Committee, Dept. of Anthropology,Black Studies, and Women's Studies, University ofNorthern Colorado, Greeley, CO 80639, or call: (303)351-2021.

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