“Closed Place, Open Word”: Locating the Post-Manichean in Recent Black Thought

Abstract

Recently, in social and political theory, we have become familiar with using “posts” to describe our world. As someone in favour of these developments, I see this paper as my attempt to add another post to the mix: the post-Manichean. While there are a number of reasons why this is important, I will outline some of them. First, in response to Wahneema Lubiano’s (1998) question, “What’s PoMo got to do with it?”, I recognize the need to locate black thought within the various traditions of postmodernity, post-structuralism, and so on. More specifically, I share Lubiano’s insistence that something is to be gained when “the idea of met­anarratives is up for grabs” (206). Moreover, I share her claim that “the collage modality of postmodernism is one way to refuse the dangers and pleasures of coherence by instead demanding constant restructuring” (211). The second rea­son for the excavation of the post-Manichean is that I share Lubiano’s desire for “elbow room” for black life in contemporary social theory. The elbow room I need is a way of responding to the Eurocentrism and, dare I add, pathetic nature of the Marxism vs. post-structuralism binary, which continually buries and carnivalizes some of the most important black thinkers of the past fifty years, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, and C.L.R. James. Such a binary makes it impossible to read thinkers who have been sympa­thetic or made contributions to both traditions, as well as those who carved out their own aesthetic and political spaces. It is clear that new positions are neces­sary.