African American Servitude and Historical Imaginings : Retrospective Fiction and Representation

In African-American Servitude & Historical Imaginings Margaret Jordan initiates a new way of looking at the African-American presence in American literature. Twentieth-century retrospective fiction is the site for this compelling investigation about how African-American servants and slaves have enormous utility as cultural artifacts, objects to be acted upon, agents in place, or agents provocateurs. Jordan argues that those who serve, even those seemingly innocuous, infrequently visible, or silent servants are vehicles through which history, culture and social values and practices are cultivated and perpetuated, challenged and destabilized. Jordan demonstrates how African-American servants and servitude are strategically deployed and engaged in ways which encourage a rethinking of the past. She examines the ideological underpinnings of retrospective fiction by writers who are clearly social theorists and philosophers. Jordan contends that they do not read or misread history, they imagine history as meditations on social realties and reconstruct the past as a way to confront the present. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 10 Preface......Page 12 Stepping Back in Time: A Philosophy of Composition......Page 18 To Excavate the Past......Page 24 Social Issues, Then and Now......Page 28 The African American Servant: Cultural Artifact and Agent in Place......Page 35 The Shame of Servitude: Stigma and Status......Page 36 Serving the Text: Elaborating Perceptions of Difference......Page 40 Legacies of the Past......Page 46 Unraveling Point of View......Page 58 Shared Complicity: Guilt and Denial of Causality......Page 63 Black Inferiority: Fitness for Servitude......Page 69 Paternalism and the "Good" Master......Page 104 "An innocent victim of a cosmic conspiracy"......Page 115 Writing in the Historical Blanks......Page 124 A Washerwoman in the Ointment......Page 131 Explicating the Historical Moment: Social Context and Black Servitude......Page 153 Coalhouse Walker, Jr.: The Inscrutable Non-Servant......Page 158 Creating a Constituency: Liberal Humanism and Ragtime......Page 164 Countermanding "the overly discussed victimization of black people": A Philosophy of Composition......Page 168 Selective Culpability: Benign Diversity in a Slaving Society......Page 183 "Evolve or Die": Rewriting Identity and the Social Contract......Page 189 Moral Evolution through Constructive Servitude......Page 203 "My mode of writing is sublimely didactic"......Page 212 Pullman Porter, Revolutionary......Page 216 Black Social Stratification and Servitude......Page 225 Slave, Servant, Timeless Adjudicator......Page 235 Voluntary Servitude......Page 238 Black Servitude and Victimization......Page 243 Epilogue......Page 248 Notes......Page 252 Works Cited......Page 282 D......Page 296 H......Page 297 M......Page 298 S......Page 299 W......Page 300 In African American Servitude and Historical Imaginings Margaret Jordan initiates a new way of looking at the African American presence in American literature. Twentieth-century retrospective fiction is the site for this compelling investigation about how African American slaves and servants have enormous utility as cultural artifacts, objects to be acted upon, agents in place or agents provocateurs. Jordan argues that those who serve, even those seemingly innocuous, infrequently visible or silent servants, are vehicles through which history, culture and social values and practices are cultivated and perpetuated, challenged and destabilized.With close readings of Robert Penn Warren's Band of Angels, E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Charles Johnson's Middle Passage and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Jordan demonstrates how African American servants and servitude are strategically deployed and engaged in ways that encourage a rethinking of the past. She examines the ideological underpinnings of retrospective fiction by writers who are clearly social theorists and philosophers. Jordan contends that they do not read or misread history; they imagine history as meditations on social realities and reconstruct the past as a way to confront the present. In African-American Servitude and Historical Imaginings Margaret Jordan initiates a new way of looking at the African American presence in American literature. Twentieth-century retrospective fiction is the site for this compelling investigation about how African American servants and slaves have enormous utility as cultural artifacts, objects to be acted upon, agents in place, or agents provocateurs. Jordan argues that those who even those seemingly innocuous, infrequently visible, or silent servants are vehicles through which history, culture and social values and practices are cultivated and perpetuated, challenged and destabilized. Jordan demonstrates how African American servants and servitude are strategically deployed and engaged in ways which encourage a rethinking of the past. She examines the ideological underpinnings of retrospective fiction by writers who are clearly social theorists and philosophers. Jordan contends that they do not read or misread history, they imagine history as meditations on social realties and reconstruct the past as a way to confront the present.