"We have too long had imposed upon us, both from inside and outside, a narrow constricting notion of blackness." (hooks, par 10)<\/p>\n
At the risk of sounding cantankerous, I feel as though I should re-clarify my argument. I stated in both the blog and in class, that The Intuitionist is not entirely an essentialist novel. I also agree fully that it is possible to have a novel populated with black characters that is entirely nominalistic, as described in the hooks quote cited in Dr. Sample’s previous blog entry. However, it is still my contention that Whitehead has done little to progress the "black novel" towards the nominalistic ideal presented in hook’s essay. <\/p>\n
Dr. Sample wrote, "To use a word that came up in class, it doesn’t necessarily equal a cliche to present a black man whose aspirations have been foreclosed because of the color of his skin. What looks like a cliche, others would call the truth, steeped in lived history." I agree that cliche may have been an unfortunate choice of words (not because it is inaccurate, but rather due to its critical connotation); perhaps "trope" would be more appropriate. However, Lila Mae’s father is a trope not because he is a "a black man whose aspirations have been foreclosed because of the color of his skin," but rather due to the fact that this is all we know of him. If we look at the second definition of cliche (the one that does not concentrate on the triteness of a subject), we get, "A person or character whose behavior is predictable or superficial." ((dictionary.com) I know that the OED would have been more impressive, but I’m just lazy). It seems to me that each of the black characters in the novel, with the exception of Lila Mae, are structured in the same manner as a host of characters that came before them. For evidence of this, I need go no further than our class discussion. A number of students spoke of Lila Mae’s father as a complex, developed character, even though Whitehead dedicated only a few paragraphs to his description. The connection was made, not through the text, but rather through the history of this trope, one that has been reinforced through countless descriptions from slave narratives through contemporary rap lyrics.<\/p>\n
I do not feel as though this is a trite novel, in fact I think it was excellent. Nevertheless, I would argue that it falls short of the hooks quote mentioned in Dr. Sample’s blog entry. For the sake of summation, I ask the following question: What has The Intuitionist done for the black novel? Will future "nominalistic-black" writers cite it as a genre changing text? I realize that I may be asking too much of Whitehead, but at this point, I am responding to the claims made in class as well as online.<\/p>\n
Anyhoo, I’m glad for this opportunity to restart the debate via blog, as I’m still working to wrap my head around this text. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
"We have too long had imposed upon us, both from inside and outside, a narrow constricting notion of blackness." (hooks, par 10) At the risk of sounding cantankerous, I feel as though I should re-clarify my argument. I stated in both the blog and in class, that The Intuitionist is not entirely an essentialist novel. … Continue reading (Insert funny and clever title)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","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\/67","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}