Rhetoric, Black Power, and Baldwin's "Another Country"

Abstract

This piece is rhetorical criticism. That statement may doom the writer at the outset to an absurd posture. Criticism suggests detachment, but the subject is one that mocks such an attitude. Further, striking the critical stance may be innately arrogant and, surely in the searing gospels of the American ghettos even more than in those of yore, does a haughty spirit go before destruction. Nonetheless, the stance is struck. In discussing Anatomy of Criticism, Lawrence Rosenfield (1968: 51-52) uses a game analogy. The critic is the ideal spectator. He gives an account of what he sees and renders a judgment of it. The analogy is undoubtedly telling. Description and evaluation both depend on understanding. But understanding is never absolute. It reveals a point of view. Even if the viewer shifts his position from time to time, like a man walking around a piece of sculpture trying to see it from every angle, at each moment he sees from inside his own skin. There is no other possibility. Each statement reveals where he's at-at the moment.