There’s debate among postcolonial theorists and writers about whether to use the colonizer’s language so as to widen the potential audience for their material (this debate is mainly among African writers, as most of them speak a native language as well as the language of the colonizing country). If one analyzes The Intuitionist from a postcolonial perspective, Whitehead seems to be using the language (or, perhaps more accurately, the dialect) of the colonizer: bourgeois American English. He uses an elaborate vocabulary (I found myself consulting a dictionary more for this novel than for the two previous two) as well as a 1950s noir-ish detective style – not a genre especially popular among African Americans. Furthermore, The Intuitionist presents an alternate universe revolving around the elevator industry; however lofty the metaphor might be, I’m willing to bet it doesn’t exactly resonate with the black youth underclass hooks talks about. I’m inclined to agree with Jarrod. The Intuitionist doesn’t exactly complement hooks’ call for a critical voice for underclass black youth. hooks says, “If radical postmodernist thinking is to have a transformative impact then a critical break with the notion of ‘authority’ as ‘mastery over’ must not simply be a rhetorical device, it must be reflected in habits of being, including styles of writing as well as chosen subject matter.” However, from what I’ve said before, it doesn’t appear that Whitehead has adopted this “habit of being” hooks calls for.