"The Power of Combinations": Sutton Griggs' Imperium in Imperio and the Science of Collective Efficiency

Abstract

The indeterminate ending of Imperium in Imperio can frustrate readers. Rather than tie up neatly by either endorsing or condemning the strategies of political action presented by the main characters, a statement titled “Personal (Berl Trout),” issued from a character appearing only at the opening and closing margins, is placed at the conclusion. This same character, Berl Trout, issues a “Dying Declaration” at the beginning that declares him either a patriot or a traitor, asking readers to decide based on the narrative testimony that will follow. In fact, his betrayal of the Imperium and Bernard Belgrave’s plans for race war are offered as the very reason Sutton Griggs comes into possession of the documents he claims to have collected together and circulated rather than conceive of and write. Presenting the text as a collection of documents and the testimonies of another allows Griggs to represent a debate over black leadership and political strategies without seeming to appear as a participant. What the reader is offered is an extended figuration of the arguments over the form and function of black politics at the cusp of the twentieth century. In pursuit of such a strategy, a plot and narrative presentation is designed that casts doubt on limited and limiting options in order to both challenge and enable readers to resolve the plot themselves. This determined indeterminacy anticipates the later articulation in Griggs’ career of the science of collective efficiency, a theory of social action that some earlier efforts at fiction writing are an effort to figure and develop. Thus we might understand Imperium in Imperio, especially the conclusion, as a pre-figuration of the political strategy outlined in the Guide to Racial Greatness (1923). Using collective efficiency as an interpretive lens helps us understand the rhetorical intent of the novel’s ambiguous ending, which