The pervasive theme of contemporary politics in Whitehead’s The Intuitionist is all the more accentuated while reading Bell Hook’s "Postmodern Blackness" in tandem with the novel. Hooks’ article argues for the validity of postmodern discourse as a transformative device to alter and improve the lives of the "nihilistic" mass, black culture in America, in which all blacks engage in "the intellectual work," such as critical theory and cultural production of arts, literature, music, and so on, to advance a black identity of diversity, and yet, maintain connected to the source, the black community en masse. In other words, black intellectuals or "elitists" need to break from the ideological myth that their work, which include theories, criticism, literary and artistic contributions to the postmodern discourse of the academy, is too difficult for the displaced masses to understand or contribute to effectively. Hooks insists that there needs to be a continuous and dynamic interchange between the African American intellectuals and the body of people they represent in the academy and in mass culture. One should not write about the "exhile and suffering" of his\/her race if one is not connected to it, meaning living it as well as knowing it. Hooks is optimistic with the postmodern era insofar as the vocality of knowledge of shared experience and cultural production can constitute a forum for radical resistance against the legacy of colonial stereotypes that black "essentialism" propagates even today. Essentialist theory argues for a fictitious cultural divide between black "Nationalists" and "Assimilationists," an outmoded classification system of the modern era. If African Americans in the intellectual, middle class, and "underclass" are willing to participate in the postmodern discourse with one another, in the academy and in life, black America will forge an identity in the postmodern discourse as the truly "other and different" that can leave its distinguishable legacy on the postmodern fabric of America. I respect her positivism, even though such a theory is difficult to implement in the political sphere of contemporary America. The Two-Party system, or the two-headed one-party system, makes it difficult for such a distinct referendum to maintain its purity since politics consumes all causes to inevitably dillute them for the consumption of mass culture.<\/p>\n
Contemporary politics in the postmodern world is a continual theme in The Intuitionist that distinquishes the novel from The Crying of Lot 49 and Leguin’s The Lathe of Heaven. While the novels we read previously seem to sublimate the issue of politics, Whitehead confronts ‘the art of politricking’ head on. Political factions will appropriate anything and anyone to either further their own agendas or dismantle the oppostional faction, without regard, it seems, to the individuals, groups, and the consequences of such dehumanizing tactics. For instance, the two candidates for the Guild Chair, Chancre and Orville Lever, introduce the themes of political or "election year ploys," a willingness to do anything and everything to please their targetted supporters. "Chancre lost among the Old Dogs of the Guild was more than compensated for by the goodwill generated by the raise and the new mother-of-pearl jackknife screwdrivers." Chancre’s actions are not manifestations of his good will and passion for the humanity he governs, but are simply rhetorical tactics he can use to secure his own success, power, and entitlement to authority. He is not rooted in or connected to the Guild members that support him or that he claims to represent. He is detached from them, and the narrator implies through the character, Chuck, that Chancre is an encumbant politician willing to hold onto his "cushy leather chair for dear life" regardless if he’s reelected. Hooks cites this divide between the intellectual\/political elite and the masses they represent as problematic, and I believe the politicians that I am forced to nominate and elect neither represent my perspectives nor my values. I will no be lumped into the two-party categories of Democrat or Republican, since I am neither. <\/p>\n
Chancre appropriates Leila Mae for political gain as well. At first he uses her black, female, intutionist cultural identity to bolster his reputation as an even keeled, open minded politician, but he of course ultimately sets her up to fall from the grace of white, male American perception since she is these things. He uses her specific identity initially to support his claim to open mindedness, and then uses them against her when the neoconservative political wind picks up after the elevator crash at the Fanny Brigg’s building occurs. She is the perfect candidate to secure Chancre’s neoconservative base because she is made to look responsible for the Brigg’s elevator collapse. She’s a black woman, dually alienated, and according to the white supremacist notions Hook’s argue’s still dominate the American, postmodern political arena, Leila Mae is all the more incompetent because she is an Intuitionist, an advocate of a new way of thinking, of being, of understanding.<\/p>\n
Chancre’s opponent, Lever, "the liberal," "apparently thinks that only Intuitionists are capable of building coalition’sm shaking hands with fundamentally different people." Lever is no less a politician than Chancre, and therefore, no more benevolent. He appropriates Leila Mae by pitting her against her boss and accuser, Chancre. The Democratic Party in the U.S., is supposedly more "liberal" than The Elephant, and it is infamous for taking possession of the myriad of human, social, and civil rights that The Right disregards altogether. However, through this appropriation, the urgency of such causes, such as Hook’s passionate message to the black community to engage in postmodern discourse and ownership of their cultural and artistic production, becomes dilluted under the liberal flag. It becomes ‘just another cause’ that one feels he\/she can do little about because there are so many and because there is such disunity and infighting between groups such as "the black liberationists" and "the environmental fanatics." One would hardly see the connection between such divergent "liberal" groups if it weren’t for the word liberal. Any and all of these disconnected, politically charged groups are used by The Left, in many cases, to further its own course of political power without truly addressing and improving the plight of the groups it deems as its "liberal" fledglings. <\/p>\n
"As it is in politics, the only victor in the end was ugly comprimise." Hook’s argues that "the ugly comprimise" blacks face in postmodern society pertains to identity politics. The masternarrative of modern society categorized blacks as either "nationalist" or "assimilationists," a comprimise that glosses over the diversity truly prevalent in the African American community. In the same way, Leila Mae is made to comprimise her identity in the political world. She has to "play the game," put on her game face and a rigid uniform with wing tip shoes that signifies her membership to a group that she shares little common experience with. She studied elevators and so did the rest, but this is no foundation for unity and acceptance, especially since she is of "the voodoo" orientation in the field. She, however, must conform to a standard, a white, male American standard, that isn’t hers, in order to pursue her career. In the starkly Empericist world of white men, she has to comprimise her identity because she is not only alienated by her white counterparts at the Guild, but she is alienated from the black culture in postmodern New York city. She is not connected to the black community, as exemplified in her encounter with Mrs. Roger’s and in the prevailing hostility between herself and Pompey. Leila Mae feels that she is in her own group, and not akin to the black slums of the city or the impoverished, uneducated African Americans emboddied by her father. Hook’s argues that continuity and knowledge between the black classes of shared experience in an alienating white world is a necessity. Moreover, Leila Mae is not accepted by the status quo or the politicians that seek to permanently ostricize her from any real world connections. She is alone as "the other" and "the different" because she is the postmodern African American woman who can not longer be labeled as only this or only that. She is a combination of differences and otherness that can no longer be classified by the archaic modernist system, and is therefore, cannot effectively represented in a transformative way in the political world.<\/p>\n
I must digress and take issue with Bell Hook’s open armed embrace of rap. As an African American woman, a cultural constituent Hooks is a member of and believes to be cut off from postmodern cultural production, I assumed she would be disappointed, if not outraged, by the overt sexism in the majority of mainstream rap. The genre glorifies black men, representatives of the "underclass," who revel in the mistreatment and degredation of their women, a cruel practice, which doubly binds the African American woman to a marginalized status of the lowest order, since she is not only black, but a woman also. Although Hooks declares the legitimacy of rap because it signifies and expresses "the yearning" of the black youth of the "underclass," and therefore, provides empowerment through vocality to defeat the infectious nihilism that blacks face in postmodern society, I do not agree that it communicates the yearnings of equality that African American women desire in American society, Queen Latiffa and a few other choice female\/male rappers aside. On the contrary, I believe the mainstream undertone of the music as a whole, in its most derrogatory form, is counterproductive since it directly degrades the race it proportedly advocates by misongynistically denegrating its women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The pervasive theme of contemporary politics in Whitehead’s The Intuitionist is all the more accentuated while reading Bell Hook’s "Postmodern Blackness" in tandem with the novel. Hooks’ article argues for the validity of postmodern discourse as a transformative device to alter and improve the lives of the "nihilistic" mass, black culture in America, in which all blacks engage in "the … Continue reading The Heavy Hand of Political Appropriation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}