Mapping Race: The Discourse of Blackness in Rudolph Fisher’s Walls of Jericho

Abstract

An important though under-examined novel of the Harlem Renaissance, Rudolph Fisher’s The Walls of Jericho (1928) is conversant with its contemporary intellectual and social developments. These include the assault on the racist biology-culture correspondence that was commonplace in anthropology and other sciences, and the political and symbolic gestures toward Africa, like those of the Back to Africa movement. But the novel’s poignancy stems from the fact that it portends critical developments in race theory by underscoring the manifold—even fragmented—nature of black social and historical experience. Despite its rejection of biological determinism and its ambivalence about Africa as a referent and a source of identity, Fisher’s novel does not relinquish its commitment to black struggle and black political consciousness.