For African-American literature today, we read two plays and a number of poems by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka including Dutchman (1964). During the class discussion, Sohomjit didn’t find the characters believable. They seemed like two sides of a discussion taking place in Baraka’s mind and then performed dialogically on-stage. This imaginary aspect of the characters led to Professor Babacar M’Baye bringing the class’ attention to the opening lines of play’s setting:
In the flying underbelly of the city. Steaming hot, and summer on top, outside. Underground. The subway heaped in modern myth. (3)
When I first read it, I was thinking that it read poetically more than straight description, but it definitely didn’t register as SF or SF-like. However, the more that I think about it, I do agree with Professor M’Baye that these lines create a setting “like a Science Fiction story.” When he said this in class, I immediately thought of Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel, and now I’m thinking of George Lucas’ THX-1138. Whatever image Baraka’s description conjures, it does have a cognitively estranging aspect to it, which makes the ensuing drama that much more compelling.
From this discussion, I asked Professor M’Baye about something that I read the night before in The Oxford Companion to African American Literature on Dutchman. There was a fleeting reference to “Lilith” in the entry, but no explanation. During class, I pulled out my iPhone and began a cursory search on this person while the discussion played out.
From the Wikipedia article, there is one work that I would like to find that is referenced heavily for the “Lilith” article: Siegmund Hurwitz. Lilith, die erste Eva: eine Studie uber dunkle Aspekte des Wieblichen. Zurich: Daimon Verlag, 1980, 1993. English tr.Lilith, the First Eve: Historical and Psychological Aspects of the Dark Feminine, translated by Gela Jacobson. Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag, 1992.
The Wikipedia article, using Hurwitz’s book as a source, describes an early image of Lilith, or in the early Sumerian myths as Lilitu, as being like a succubus who entices men in erotic dreams. This seems very much like Clay’s encounter with Lula. The interaction and tension between Clay and Lula is centered on Lula’s performance of sexuality combined with her racial identification as a young white woman. As Swaralipi pointed out during our discussion, there is a complicated power relationship between Clay and Lula. This relationship is structured around male-female on one axis and black-white on the other axis. However, what struck me was the fact that Lula appears to be part of Clay’s psyche, a struggle within himself, a manifestation of his African-American double consciousness (to borrow from Du Bois). There is no real Lula that kills Clay at the end of the play, but instead it is Clay’s internal turmoil over assimilation or embracing his African diaspora heritage that imaginatively and psychologically does him in. It is on this point that one could argue that Baraka’s work has an affinity with the New Wave.
I just searched Google for “Amiri Baraka” and “Science Fiction,” and I found an enormous number of hits. I will have to do more reading on this, and report back in the future.
Update on Lilith and Lula: I found Alejandro Arturo González Terriza’s online essay, “Isis, Lilith, Gello: Three Ladies of Darkness” here, and it cites this article about the connection between Lilith and Lula: O’Sullivan, Maurice (1986): “Dutchman’s Demons: Lula and Lilith,” Notes on Modern American Literature Spring-Summer 1986, 10: 1, Item 4. And, for more Lilith information, check out the parent site by Alan Humm here.
Dynamic Subspace 