“The Signification of Silence” Revisited: African American Art and Hermeneutics

Abstract

In this chapter I argue that African American art is one of the most productive sites for excavating the “archaic” in African American consciousness. It is only in this sense that African American art can function as “text.” Perhaps we should substitute the term “site” instead. “Archaism,” according to Long, “is predicated on the priority of something already there, something given. This ‘something’ may be the bodily perceptions, as it is for Alfred North Whitehead and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, or a primal vision of aesthetic form, as it is for the artist” (my emphasis).1KeywordsBlack CommunityBlack ChurchBlack CultureBlack ExperienceBlack FolkThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.