For a guy whose whole argument relies on the cultural conflict he describes being centuries old and spanning the entirety of civilization, Reed's evidence is drawn from a pretty narrow perspective. This is my main problem with Reed's argument in Mumbo Jumbo. From what I understand, he is saying that Western culture and monotheism, which are stiff and unforgiving, have been oppressing other cultures and polytheism, which are fun and accepting, for millennia. I think his societal commentary can be very accurate when applied to 1920s or 1970s American race relations, specifically between whites and African Americans. I am less convinced when Reed claims this same dynamic uniformly exists at a larger scale. I told myself, "That's okay. He's just using hyperbole to make his main point, which is about 1970s America, not the whole world." But flipping through the book, I am less convinced of this excuse. The idea that the dynamic is universal is all pervading. It's clearly one of the main themes of the book. Reed never misses a chance to reiterate that this war has been going on for centuries, all over the world. The Ancient Egypt section seems to exist to illustrate this point.
Basically, my issue is that while Reed claims this is a universal conflict, the "western civilization" side is clearly based only on American Puritan culture, and the "all non-Western civilization" side is only African cultures (which Reed lumps together as being uniform despite the size and diversity of Africa). My reasons for this are several.
First, Reed seems to be at a loss as to how to characterize Islam. There are many things which make it sympathetic to him. It has, at least in the United States, become a symbol of Black power. It is constantly at odds with that Atonist institution Christianity. It came from and is primarily practiced by people from the Middle East. On the other hand, it is monotheistic. It shares roots with Christians and Jews. As such, Abdul is one of the only "grey" characters in a novel that divides most characters into two teams pretty neatly. Adbul's burning the Book of Thoth is definitively Atonist, but if we see this as a denunciation of Islam, it only happens at the end of the novel. Either way Reed landed on the Islam issue, it would weaken his argument. He would either have to call a non-western culture Atonist, or a monotheistic culture Jes Grew(ist?).
Islam is at least mentioned. Reed does not acknowledge non-Western cultures which have been stereotypically portrayed as restrictive. Ancient Japan, China and India all had strict social systems and norms which in many cases did not allow expressive emotion. But Hinduism is about as polytheistic as a religion can get. Not exactly strong evidence for Reed's proposed meta-narrative.
Finally, Reed's characterization of Atonism reminds me more of Puritan Americans or stereotypical WASPs than anything else. Perhaps it also conjures of an image of repressed middle age peasants, but it does not all of Western culture for the past 10,000 years. I'm not even thinking of fringe groups. Ancient Rome is often considered the cradle of Western Civilization, and they were a bunch of polytheistic, sexually adventurous libertines.
Maybe America is oppressed. Maybe Christianity is oppressing. Maybe African American culture is liberating. But Reed generalizes these statements so far, that, in my opinion, he ultimately undermines his own argument.
I like your criticism, and you bring up a lot of valid points. But I think Reed is using the monotheistic/polytheistic religion clash in more of a Marxist sense. Sure, he ignores the far east, but as westerners ourselves, Europe is the dominant culture, and those cradle of civilization cultures are what our culture comes from. There is class oppression happening all over the world, and that is the point Reed is making. The monotheistic religion thing was specifically a way for the European oppressors to subdue Jes Grew, but he isn't saying that all polytheistic religions are good and all mono ones evil. That was how I interpreted it, anyway.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that Reed is very narrow-minded in his views of Western culture. He also doesn't acknowledge the fact that many African Americans, if not most, were Christian at this time. On the other hand perhaps that is part of the point that he's trying to make, on a simple level he obviously prefers Voodooism over Christianity because Voodooism has "Jes Grew." At the same time he's trying to get the point across that African Americans are repressed by Whites, which is also valid and in many cases true. I think it's really how he attempts to connect these that drives me crazy. Kavi says that it's a simple literary strategy, to use monotheism as a specific "way for the European oppressors to subdue Jes Grew," but I really think Reed should have used something besides religion.
ReplyDeleteI’ve had similar qualms with Reed’s specific critiquing. But if I may add, in the first few pages that the fictionalized Abdul Hamid is introduced, a few things are made very clear: he’s racist, sexist, and intolerant of other religions. Some of this is based on the actual Abdul Hamid, who called himself “Black Hitler”, but I think in a sense it’s meant to reflect Reed’s opinion of Islam as a whole, and that is as another misguided monotheistic religion. And from what I’ve read about Reed, his relationship with Islam is mostly one of intrigue, which contrasts with the admiration he had for African Voodoo culture. Why he doesn’t deem Eastern polytheism equally worthy of mention is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteThere is indeed some oversimplification going on in Reed's alternative metanarrative. How could there not be? It's the nature of metanarratives to oversimplify in the interest of coherence and explanatory power (and the explanatory power of this novel, for framing conflicts throughout history but especially in 20th century America, is vast). I suppose the rebuttal would be that Western Civ. has oversimplified non-Western cultures for centuries, and continues to do so (note how we all keep referring to "Africa" and "African culture" as if that's a single "thing" and not a diverse and multifarious collection of related and unrelated cultural and linguistic variations). Like his one-dimensional white characters, which I read as a direct and pointed provocation to white readers to dare take offense, there's a kind of mischievous role-reversal here, where it's Western culture that's being oversimplified and generalized about.
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