Monday, November 14, 2011

that human element

Anna Julia Cooper wrestles with the concept of representation in her essay "The Negro as Presented in American Literature," focusing on the problems with people not all that familiar with African Americans and their culture writing about it. The representation is inaccurate as she says that "it is impossible to acquire [the knowledge of African American people] without a background and a substratum of sympathetic knowledge" (Cooper 382). She goes on to claim that the representations of African American people written by white men tend to be nothing more than "caricatures" that merely serve as the idea of what it is like to be different than Caucasian (382).
One of the interesting points she latches onto is the idea of seeing a black person as human. She breaks those that attempt to represent black society into groups who view black people in various ways, all similarly avoiding the human aspect altogether. She carefully points out that there are those "blinded by their prejudices and antipathies," and those who experiment on their servants and feel they somehow have that inside view (382). Yet, the point that strikes hardest is when she mentions those who attempt to portray African Americans with "kind intentions," asserting that "[they] have approached the subject as a clumsy microscopist, not quite at home with his instrument, might study a new order of beetle or bug" (382). Even the ones with good intentions seem to be guilty of not looking at African Americans as human beings, scientifically dissecting their human traits in an attempt to discover why they are different from us.
Challenging some critical ideas in regard to author function, she says "What I hope to see before I die is a black man honestly and appreciatively portraying both the Negro as he is, and the white man, occasionally, as seen from the Negro's standpoint" (383). To Cooper, it is clearly important to note the differences between a black man writing about a black man and a white man writing about a black man. It is important for an accurate representation that the author writes about what is known and not what is observed.

1 comment:

  1. Ricky-

    Your post helped me even more with representation. Two ideas Jim Corder wrote about apply. Corder wrote, "...not only can we not always be good narrators/historians, we also cannot be thorough at the work" (p. 17). He also wrote, "We cannot make all that was and is and shall be into an is of the moment's speaking" (p.18).

    What I believe Corder is saying is that we'll never fully understand; there will always be a detail missed as we try to represent any other.

    In response to Cooper, however, I contend it's our job to look for admirable qualities or examples (Omarosa on "The Apprentice" said in the limousine on the way home, "No man is your enemy, no man is your friend, but every man is your teacher") ...to look for the wisdom from one culture which we can apply to the other as an answer to Corder's question, "What happens if a narrative not our own reveals to us that our own narrative was wanting all along?" (p. 19)

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