Ralph Ellison as a Reader of Hegel: Ellison’s Invisible Man as Literary Phenomenology

Abstract

Ralph Ellison as a Reader of Hegel:Ellison’s Invisible Man as Literary Phenomenology Jack Taylor (bio) Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when,and by the fact that, it so exists for another;that is, it exists only in being acknowledged [recognized]. ~Georg W. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish and you strike out with your fists, and you curse and swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful. ~The Invisible Man, Invisible Man There has been little scholarship connecting Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit despite biographical information that Hegel influenced Ellison. Lawrence Jackson acknowledges, for example, that Ellison wrote to Richard Wright in 1940 searching for Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind (229). John Wright argues that Ellison agrees with the Hegelian notions that “consciousness is all,” “human life is a move toward the rational,” and freedom is a byproduct of consciousness, not political projects in the name of abstract ideas (69). Arnold Rampersad discusses how Ellison viewed Bigger Thomas’s consciousness as an “indignant consciousness,” which is a clear appropriation of Hegelian thought (132).1 Rampersad further shows how Ellison in “A Congress Jim Crow Didn’t Attend,” a piece of propaganda written for New Masses, drew on Hegel when he wrote the delegates at the third convention of National Negro Congress possessed “a temper of militant indignation” (134). These insights into Ellison’s use of Hegel are without a doubt valuable. Such biographical facts highlight the need for a discussion of how Ellison utilized and critiqued aspects of Hegelian phenomenology in Invisible Man.2 Invisible Man is laden with philosophical references to Emerson, Kierkegaard, and Hegel at the very least.3 Thus, I argue Ellison’s Invisible Man can be read as a sustained and profound meditation on African American consciousness that draws on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This article will explore how Invisible Man seeks to investigate black existence and consciousness as it is shaped by anti-black racism from a Hegelian perspective. I argue that the philosophical dimensions of Invisible Man can be read side-by-side Hegel, so [End Page 135] as to position Ellison as an author deeply engaged with understanding black consciousness from the philosophical perspective. To accomplish this task, I discuss Ellison’s Invisible Man as literary phenomenology that can be read through and at times against Hegel’s concept of recognition and his lordship and bondage scene by charting ruptures and movements in the Invisible Man’s consciousness throughout the course of the novel. Jesse Wolfe rightly argues in “‘Ambivalent Man’: Ellison’s Rejection of Communism” that Ellison appropriates the Hegelian and Marxist categories of “recognition” and “contradiction,” to construct his prologue (621). As Wolfe’s title indicates, however, his main concern is Ellison’s dismissal of communist ideology, not Hegelian thought itself, although he does draw out vital connections between Hegel, Marx, and Ellison which I am indebted to and build upon. In regards to Hegel’s concept of recognition, I argue Ellison’s Invisible Man characterizes black existence as a struggle for recognition. I will draw on Hegel’s concept of recognition and his staging of the master-slave scene to provide the backdrop necessary to (re)read Invisible Man as an investigation of African American consciousness. To advance these claims, I analyze the Invisible Man’s struggle for recognition with Mr. Norton, which I argue can be read as a restaging of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic with a difference and his unsuccessful attempt to gain recognition through violence at the outset of the narrative. The point is to emphasize that Invisible Man can be understood as nothing short of a genuine phenomenology of spirit moving according to four environments, which traces the Invisible Man’s trajectory from slavery, or a subservient consciousness, to freedom through his negation of his fear of death and acceptance of invisibility: the school, which is an allegory of the plantation south; New...