Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of Afro-America by A. Robert Lee (review)

Abstract

YES,31, 200 YES,31, 200 TheHouseofMirthand the statusof Lily Bart,the woman whose body is in question here, as 'the substrateof value- and the object of debasement- in the discursive economies of consumer culture, sexual selection, and the literary marketplace' (p. 55), revisitingthe novel in the context of a discussionof the generic principlesof the white slavenarrativesto substantiatethe novel's shifttowardmelodrama as Lily 'diesdebasedyet innocent.' (p. 96). Stange postulates the theory that white slavery literature was in substantial measure a response to the increasing power of big business and the corruption of the wife and mother by consumerism, white slaverynarrativesoffering a mode of intervention that would reclaim ownership of the woman, and specifically the daughter, so that the readeris abjuredto take the position of 'one who determines, owns, and enforces reciprocation of the value of his "own" women' (p. 84). Jane Addams's study of white slavery, A New Conscienceand An AncientEvil (I912), is a foundational text for this study but it is only in the final chapter that Stange posits Addams'swork as having radicalpotential which, in pushing the commodification argument one stage further, suggests that the woman can thus gain social and economic powers that are available to be consolidated in full citizenship, most specificallyin social housekeeping. MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY JANET BEER Designs ofBlackness. Mappings intheLiterature andCulture ofAfro-America. ByA. ROBERT LEE. London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press. I998. ix + 259 pp. 40 (paperbound 1i3.99). With Designsof Blackness A. Robert Lee continues his critical exploration and extrapolation of diverse literarytraditions.Previously,Lee has successfullyundertaken the Beat LiteraryMovement (TheBeatGeneration Writers) and the diaspora of BritishLiterature(Other Britain,Other British).His workconsistentlycomplicates and contextualizes literature by conflating social, political, economic, and literary movements. DesignsofBlackness presentsa refreshingdeparturefrom a strictlylinear 'ora merelysequentialview of literary-culturalhistory'(p. 3). Instead,Lee identifies seminal moments in Afro-Americanliteratureand culturewhile deconstructing(in brief) the evolution of creative and criticalreaction to, and interpretationof, those moments. These seminal moments, however, are not frozen in time or an historicalpast. Rather, Lee re-imagines (to use the language of Toni Morrison) the presence of these 'distant'moments (andhere Lee means theme, place, and event). Forinstance, Lee graphsHarlem, thatplace of enduringsignificancein Afro-Americanliterature and culture, from its classification as 'race capital' in the 1920S, to its designation as the home of Black Arts Theater in the i960s, through its continuation as endless creativefodder in the latterportion of the twentieth century,while highlightingthe ways in which theseperiods both anticipatethe futureand speakbackwardin time. As Lee accuratelyposits, 'the onlyfact about Harlem in this respect may indeed be its dense, necessaryirreducibility,an undiminishingrefusalto be accommodated by the single account. This, one supposes, helps to identify why there have been so many varietiesof "Harlemon My Mind"' (p. 7I). Lee's latest scholarly endeavour exhibits his uncanny acumen for literary and cultural critique. DesignsofBlacknessis not only highly readable, but also impeccably researched; this is perhaps best exemplified in the final chapter entitled 'Under Cover, Under Covers: African American Fictions of Passing'. In it, Lee draws an intriguing parallel between the current American struggle with multiculturalism TheHouseofMirthand the statusof Lily Bart,the woman whose body is in question here, as 'the substrateof value- and the object of debasement- in the discursive economies of consumer culture, sexual selection, and the literary marketplace' (p. 55), revisitingthe novel in the context of a discussionof the generic principlesof the white slavenarrativesto substantiatethe novel's shifttowardmelodrama as Lily 'diesdebasedyet innocent.' (p. 96). Stange postulates the theory that white slavery literature was in substantial measure a response to the increasing power of big business and the corruption of the wife and mother by consumerism, white slaverynarrativesoffering a mode of intervention that would reclaim ownership of the woman, and specifically the daughter, so that the readeris abjuredto take the position of 'one who determines, owns, and enforces reciprocation of the value of his "own" women' (p. 84). Jane Addams's study of white slavery, A New Conscienceand An AncientEvil (I912), is a foundational text for this study but it is only in the final chapter that Stange posits Addams'swork as having radicalpotential which, in pushing the commodification argument one stage further, suggests that the woman can thus gain social and economic powers that...