W. E. B. Du Bois vs. "the Sons of the Fathers": A Reading of The Souls of Black Folk in the Context of American Nationalism

Abstract

In his discussion of W. E. B. Du Bois's essay On Alexander twelfth chapter of Souls of Black Folk, Eric Sundquist implicates Du Bois in a patrilineal descent of African American political thought: One of Crummell's early addresses in Monrovia, devoted creation of a generation of leaders of a republican Liberia, had been entitled The Responsibility of First Fathers of a Country for Its Future Life and Character (1863). For Du Bois, Crummell functioned symbolically as such a although one can deduce that his purpose was in fact one of psychological transference in which Crummell became mechanism for Du Bois's own ascendancy position of founding of modern African American thought, thus eliding alternative challengers Douglass and Washington. (Sundquist 517) Du Bois's chapter on Crummell is indeed replete with paternal and filial references, and so is whole collection of essays. Not all of these references, however, fit into Sundquist's pointedly Afrocentric reading of Souls of Black Folk. In ranks of good folk credited with helping out Crummell, for instance, Du Bois includes gently urging John Jay, that father's son (358). daring father in this case is politician John Jay (1745-1829), who, among his other services young American Republic, negotiated, alongside Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, peace treaty between newly independent American Colonies and Britain in 1783 and collaborated with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison on Federalist Papers. Du Bois's reference Jay is thus nothing less than an invocation of one of Fathers--the eighteenth-century politicians who still hold their place of repute in mythological pantheon of American nationalism. In defining Du Bois' s project as an attempt ascend the position of founding father, Sundquist places Du Bois within a framework reminiscent of and parallel American nationalist mythos, especially in light of fact that documents created by actual Founding Fathers of American Republic were some of earliest harbingers of discourse of nation-state. This is a curious gesture on Sundquist's part, since his own agenda in tracing musical epigraphs each of chapters in Souls of Black Folk back their African origins is find roots of African American culture outside American context and emphasize Du Bois's Pan-Africanism; that is, break away from circuit of American nationalism. [2] A reading of Souls of Black Folk in terms of its place as a link in chain of American national narrative does not necessarily imply a refutation of Sundquist's Afrocentric reading. In its richness and ambiguity, Du Bois's work obviously spans continents, as did Du Bois himself in his lifetime. Born in Massachusetts, educated at Fisk, Harvard, and University of Berlin in Germany, Du Bois at end of his life became a citizen of Ghana, where he died in 1963. Yet Du Bois did not sympathize with Marcus Garvey's Back-to-Africa Movement, and at least at time of writing Souls of Black Folk, he advocated acceptance of African Americans by largely inimical American political, legal, and social institutions. His solution problem of double-consciousness was to make it possible for a man be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed or spit upon by his fellows, without having doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face (215). As a citizen of United States working within parameters of American democracy, Du Bois repeatedly took task sons of Founding Fathers for disregarding originary documents of Republic. In doing so, he was involved, as were others before and after him, in paradox of upholding Enlightened universalism of Declaration of Independence and humanist abstraction of United States Constitution--the two documents whose aura of universality was made possible precisely by elision of race, yet which in their claim a democratic universality seem fulfill role of empty signifiers without necessary body, any necessary content that make democracy possible, according Laclau (90). …