Apart and a Part: Dissonance, Double Consciousness, and the Politics of Black Identity in African American Literature, 1946-1964 A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2015 David C. Jones School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................... 3 Declaration .............................................................................................................................. 4 Copyright statement ............................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 5 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 7 African American Literature in the Age of Three Worlds ............................................... 7 Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................... 29 ‘Never Quite on the Beat’: Towards a Transnational America in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man ..................................................................................................................... 29 Introduction: Dissensus Culture ..................................................................................... 29 Part 1: Ellison among the New Liberals ......................................................................... 39 Part 2: Ellison’s Textual Politics ..................................................................................... 46 Part 3: ‘Whence All This Passion Toward Conformity?’ ................................................. 55 Conclusion: Ellison’s Transnational America ................................................................. 63 Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................................... 71 Richard Wright: Yearning For Identification in Paris and the Third World ................. 71 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 71 Part 1: ‘For Paris is the Crossroads of the Earth’ ........................................................... 74 Part 2: Wright and The Parisian Cold War ..................................................................... 92 Part 3: Translating Two-ness ......................................................................................... 99 Conclusion: Towards a Diasporic Identity in Black Power ........................................... 104 Chapter 3 ............................................................................................................................. 116 ‘Something Unspeakable’: James Baldwin and the Closets of American Power .... 116 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 116 Part 1: ‘Something in Your Closet’ ............................................................................... 124 Part 2: Blackness as Queerness/Queerness as Blackness ......................................... 142 Part 3: ‘Transatlantic Commuter’ .................................................................................. 149 Conclusion: Saying Yes to Baldwin .............................................................................. 174 Chapter 4 ............................................................................................................................. 181 ‘It Makes Me Think of Africa’: Subverting Suburbanisation in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun ............................................................................................................ 181 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 181 Part 1: ‘Acute Ghetto-itis’ .............................................................................................. 184 Part 2: ‘In Preparation for a Journey’ ............................................................................ 191 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 197 Afterword ............................................................................................................................. 199 Dissonance in a Post-Racial America .......................................................................... 199 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 203     84,199 Words 2 Abstract This thesis examines the politics of black identity in African American literature during what has come to be known as the ‘age of three worlds’. Across four chapters, I analyse texts by Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry, exploring the way in which their writing plays out within and against the geopolitical exigencies of the Cold War and contemporaneous discourses of Civil Rights and black (inter)nationalism. In doing so, I explore the contrasting ways in which each of them displaces the binary logic that is typically seen as defining the 1950s, as a means of reconstituting both American and African American identity. Rejecting either/or identities, they all decentre prevailing notions of national and cultural identity by juxtaposing them with alternative spaces and temporalities, the result of which is a dual perspective that is simultaneously local and transnational. By extricating themselves, whether physically or intellectually, from a monolithic discursive framework, Ellison, Wright, Baldwin, and Hansberry recast the idea of double consciousness famously articulated by W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Instead of being a self-negating non- identity that serves as the psychological corollary to African Americans’ marginalised status, ‘two-ness’ is transmuted into a privileged vantage point that allows them to both intervene on the world historical stage as empowered modern subjects and renegotiate their relationship with the United States. What this two-ness amounts to, I argue, is a kind of dissonance. ‘Dissonance’, Duke Ellington claimed in 1941, names black people’s ‘way of life in America. We are something apart, yet an integral part’. The principle of introducing a ‘wrong’ note into a piece of music in order to generate new modalities of expression found in jazz is transposed into a social and literary context by the writers examined in this thesis. Each of them embodies and mobilises the socially grounded sense of being apart and a part alluded to by Ellington as a means of defamilarising normative notions of race, gender, and sexuality as they pertain to American-ness. In their place, they posit alternative forms of knowledge and politicised identity that reconstitute what it means to be both black and American in the middle of the twentieth century. 3 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or institute of learning. Copyright statement i. The author or this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in this thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=487) in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations) and in The University’s policy on Presentation on Theses. 4 Acknowledgements In the process of writing this thesis, I have inevitably accumulated a number of debts that gratitude alone cannot repay. Nonetheless, I would like to offer my sincere thanks to everyone who has helped me with this project. Firstly, I would like to thank Michael Bibler. His enthusiasm for the project and guidance during its early stages played a pivotal role in shaping its intellectual focus. When Michael answered the call of his beloved South and returned to the United States, Douglas Field kindly agreed to step into the supervisory breach, for which I am hugely thankful. During the past two years, his friendship, intellectual generosity, and steadfast support when I needed it most has been nothing short of inspirational. I would also like to thank the other members of my supervisory team, Monica Pearl and Robert Spencer, for their encouragement and scholarly insights. Monica’s ability to distil my ideas into a single sentence has proved invaluable in the development of my thinking. Similarly, Robert’s perceptive analysis of my work has allowed me to address issues that I would not have otherwise considered. Without the financial support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, I would not have been able to pursue this project. As such, I would like to extend my thanks to them for their gratefully received assistance. Away from Academia, I would also like to extend my gratitude to Amelia Martin and Laura Williams for helping to guide me through the difficult final stages of this thesis, while ensuring my wellbeing. Throughout the time it has taken me to write this thesis, my friends and family have been a constant source of support and reassurance. Particular thanks must go to my mum and dad, whose unstinting love and insistence that I pursue my interests has provided me with the best possible grounding in life. To my sister Helen, brother-in-law, Andy, and wonderful nephews, Jack and Charlie, I would like to offer my thanks for their encouragement and for keeping me in touch with the world beyond the ivory tower. I would also like to dedicate this thesis to the memory of my late grandparents, Cliff and Glenys, who, sadly, are not here to see its completion, but who always encouraged me to ‘get an education’. 5 Finally, I am eternally indebted to my partner, Tamsin. Without her patience, friendship, and love – to say nothing of her unerring ability to know when I needed a cup of tea or coffee – I would never have been able to complete this project. This thesis is for her. 6 Introduction African American Literature in the Age of Three Worlds   There was always a border beyond which the Negro could not go, whether musically or socially. There was always a possible limitation to any dilution or excess of cultural or spiritual reference. The Negro could not ever become white and that was his strength; at some point, always, he could not participate in the dominant tenor of the white man’s culture, yet he came to understand that culture as well as the white man. It was at this juncture that he had to make use of other resources, whether African, sub-cultural, or hermetic. And it was this boundary, this no-man’s land, that provided the logic and beauty of his music. And this is the only way for the Negro artist to provide his version of America – from that no-man’s-land outside the mainstream. A no-man’s-land, a black country, completely invisible to white America, but so essentially part of it to stain its whole being an ominous gray. – LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, ‘The Myth of a Negro Literature’ (1962)1 Dissonance is the truth about harmony. – Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (1970)2 Interviewed in Los Angeles in 1941 to promote his new musical, Jump For Joy, the legendary jazz musician, Duke Ellington, was asked to expound on the preoccupation with dissonance that characterises his music. Ellington’s response was to transfigure this aesthetic trait into a metonym for African American identity. As a phonograph played a recording his music, he instructed the interviewer to listen, before declaring: ‘That’s the Negro’s life. Hear that chord! That’s us [….] Dissonance is our way of life in America. We are something apart, yet an integral part’.3 What Ellington describes here is a variation of the ‘two-ness’ identified by W. E. B. Du Bois forty years earlier as the psychological counterpart to African Americans’ marginalised status in the United States.4 However, where the latter’s theory of ‘double consciousness’ names the alienation that stems from viewing oneself through the prism of white hegemony, Ellington’s conception of dissonance, as Ajay Heble observes, reconstitutes the notion of being out of tune with the assumptions of a racially delineated status quo as ‘something profoundly empowering’ that opens up new realms of knowledge.5 Outside of ‘the                                                                                                                 1 LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka], ‘The Myth of a Negro Literature’ (1962), Home: Social Essays (New York: Akashic Books, 2009 [1966]), 133-4. 2 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, Trans. Rober Hullot-Kentor (London: Bloomsbury, 2013 [1970]), 151. 3 Duke Ellington quoted in John Pittman, ‘The Duke Will Stay on Top!’ (1941), The Duke Ellington Reader, eds. Mark Tucker and Duke Ellington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 148-151 (150). 4 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Dover Publications, 1994 [1903]), 2-3. 5 Ajay, Heble, Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance, and Critical Practice (New York and London: Routledge 2000), 20. 7 dominant tenor’ of the nation’s culture, it names the liminal space – the ‘no man’s land’ described by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka – from which African Americans recast the representational terrain of American culture. The duality described by Ellington is one of the central organising themes of this thesis. His ‘socially grounded interpretation’ of dissonance as something ‘politically and culturally salient’ corresponds to the way in which four of postwar America’s most prominent black writers negotiate the vexed relationship between their race and their nationality.6 The principle of introducing a ‘wrong’ note into a piece of music to generate new modalities of expression, I propose, is transposed into literary and social contexts in the works of Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry. Set against the political and cultural backdrop of the of the Cold War, Civil Rights, and contemporaneous discourses of black (inter)nationalism, I explore how each of them makes manifest the sense of being at once a part of and apart from the United States that Ellington alludes to. To this end, what follows is articulated within the historical context of what Leerom Medovoi and Michael Denning have each defined as ‘the age of three worlds’. A triangular relationship between the United States, the Soviet Union, and the rapidly decolonising nations of Africa and Asia provided ‘the globe’s dominant topological imaginary’ during the 1950s, Medovoi argues, with the former two power blocs engaged in an ideological battle to secure the allegiance of the latter, in order to tilt the balance of power in the Cold War in their favour.7 In a similar vein, Denning claims that ‘[t]he rhetoric of the three worlds – the capitalist First, the Communist Second, and the decolonizing Third – emerged in the early 1950s, and, though it was challenged on all sides, it dominated the period.’8 As this thesis will demonstrate, the context described by Medovoi played a pivotal role in shaping the terms in which African Americans articulated their demands for freedom and equality during the 1950s and early 1960s. The four writers I examine are each, in their own way, illustrative of this point. While differences in age, ideological perspective, artistic sensibilities, gender, and sexuality mean that there are inevitable divergences in how they respond to it, Ellison, Wright, Baldwin, and Hansberry are all attuned to the shifting power dynamics of the postwar world.                                                                                                                 6 Ibid, 21, 20. 7 Leerom Medovoi, Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 11. See also: Medovoi, ‘Cold War American Culture as the Age of Three Worlds’, Minnesota Review, No. 55 (Fall 2000), 167-186. 8 Michael Denning, Culture in the Age of Three Worlds (London: Verso, 2004), 26. 8 Their respective attempts to advance the historical claims of African Americans are all, whether implicitly or explicitly, oriented by contemporaneous geopolitics. However, with the partial exception of Wright, their aims are not straightforwardly political. Despite the fact that all of them were, early in their careers affiliated with the Marxist left, by the time they published the texts I examine in this thesis, their analysis of race no longer adhered to existing ideological patterns. Instead, repudiating either/or identities that distribute knowledge within discrete, self-contained frameworks, each of the writers – albeit in contrasting ways – foregrounds the cultural and political salience of dialogic perspectives that defamiliarise existing cultural formations. In particular, each of them adopts an intercultural subject position that simultaneously straddles national and transnational imaginaries, blurring the ontological distinction between them. As a result, the binary logic underpinning the American Cold War and the ideology of ‘containment’ that supplemented it is destabilised. Key to this process is the way in which they all juxtapose knowledge attendant to ‘the dominant tenor’ of American culture with that found in alternative spaces and temporalities. Mirroring Baraka’s argument with regards to the way that black artists have been compelled ‘to make use of other resources’ to affirm their identity, all of the writers examined in this thesis extricate themselves, either physically or intellectually, from a monolithic representational framework predicated on their marginalisation. The co-presence of conflicting epistemologies and overlapping genealogies in the work of Ellison, Wright, Baldwin, and Hansberry I argue, creates spatial and temporal disjunctures that fracture the mythic wholeness that characterised postwar America’s prevailing hegemony. The resulting discursive fissures provide a rhetorical space from which they are able to interrogate normative of notions of race, gender, and sexuality as they pertain to American-ness. In doing so, they follow Ellington’s lead by recasting the two-ness of the African American experience as a potent instrumentality for interpreting the interaction of race and national identity in the American cultural imaginary. From this unique vantage point, they articulate alternative forms of knowledge and politicised identity that reconstitute what it means to be both black and American in the middle of the twentieth century. * 9 The impetus for this thesis is twofold. Firstly, I wish to foreground the way that the dissonant interventions of African American writers respond to and reconstitute the representational politics of Cold War America. In part, this interest stems from the fact that the relationship between African American literature and the entwined contexts of the Cold War and decolonisation remains something of an underexplored area in scholarly discourse. To this end, using the three worlds topography and mediating between its intersecting axes provides fertile terrain on which to explore the nexus of culture and politics at a pivotal juncture in both black and American history. My second preoccupation evolves out of this historical specificity. By locating the work of Ellison, Wright, Baldwin, and Hansberry within the context of contemporaneous historical discourses, I want to stress the imperative of not treating African American literature and the conceptual apparatuses we approach it through as something monolithic or fixed. Instead, without losing site of the deeper currents of the African American experience as rendered in literature, I emphasise how these broader themes play out in specific locales during specific periods. In short, what is at stake in this thesis is how to negotiate the historical specificity of African American literary and cultural interventions within and against the wider contexts from which they emerge. This process is both spatial in its navigating of the local and transnational, and temporal in its traversing of the contemporary and the historical. With regards to the specific historical backdrop to what follows, I look to extend the parameters of Cold War scholarship by reiterating the pivotal role played by African American writers in rearticulating the terms of American-ness during this period. Notable exceptions notwithstanding – some of which I return to below – literary studies of what might be termed the long 1950s (here understood as 1946-1964) have tended to treat black literature as either peripheral or an addendum to the Cold War imaginary, rather than a central component of it. For instance, while such staples of Cold War literary studies as Thomas Schaub’s American Fiction in the Cold War (1991), Alan Nadel’s Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age (1995), and Leerom Medovoi’s Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity (2005) devote chapters to African American literature and culture, they tend to gloss over the specific implications of black Americans’ relation to Cold War concerns, by synchronising them with broader – which is to say whiter – historical patterns. 10