the new politics of difference : cornel west

8/12/2019 The New Politics of Difference : Cornel West

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The New Cultural Politics of DifferenceAuthor(s): Cornel WestSource: October, Vol. 53, The Humanities as Social Technology (Summer, 1990), pp. 93-109Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778917 .Accessed: 30/08/2013 22:59

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The New Cultural Politicsof Difference*

CORNEL WEST

In the ast few years of the twentieth entury, here s emerging significantshift n the sensibilities nd outlooks of critics nd artists. n fact, would go sofar s to claim that new kind of cultural worker s in the making, ssociated witha new politics of difference. hese new forms of intellectual onsciousness d-vance new conceptions of the vocation of critic nd artist, ttempting o under-mine the prevailing isciplinary ivisions f labor in the academy, museum, massmedia, and gallery networks while preserving modes of critique within he ubiq-uitous commodification f culture n the global village. Distinctive eatures f thenew cultural

politicsof difference re to trash the monolithic nd

homogeneousin the name of diversity, multiplicity, nd heterogeneity; o reject the abstract,general, and universal n light of the concrete, specific, nd particular; nd tohistoricize, ontextualize, and pluralize by highlighting he contingent, provi-sional, variable, tentative, hifting, nd changing. Needless to say, these gesturesare not new in the history f criticism r art, yet what makes them novel-alongwith he cultural politics hey produce -is how and what constitutes ifference,the weight and gravity t is given in representation, nd the way in whichhighlighting ssues ike exterminism, mpire, class, race, gender, sexual orienta-tion, age, nation, nature, and region at this historical moment acknowledgessome

discontinuitynd

disruptionfrom

previousforms f cultural

critique.To

put t bluntly, he new cultural politics f difference onsists f creative responsesto the precise circumstances f our present moment-especially those of mar-ginalized First World agents who shun degraded self-representations, rticulat-ing nstead their ense of the flow f history n light f the contemporary errors,anxieties, nd fears of highly ommercialized North Atlantic capitalist ultures(with their escalating xenophobias against people of color, Jews, women, gays,

*This is a version of an essay that appears in Russel Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T.Minh-ha, nd Cornel West, eds., Out There: Marginalization nd Contemporary ultures, New York,

The New Museum of Contemporary Art; and Cambridge, MIT Press, 1990.

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94 OCTOBER

lesbians, and the elderly). The thawing, yet still rigid Second World ex-com-munist cultures with ncreasing nationalist evolts against the legacy of hege-monic party henchmen), nd the diverse cultures of the majority f inhabitantson the globe smothered by international ommunication artels and repressivepostcolonial elites (sometimes n the name of communism, s in Ethiopia), orstarved by austere World Bank and IMF policies that subordinate them to theNorth as in free-market apitalism n Chile), also locate vital areas of analysis nthis new cultural terrain.

The new cultural politics of difference re neither simply ppositional ncontesting he mainstream or malestream) or nclusion, nor transgressive n theavant-gardist ense of shocking conventional bourgeois audiences. Rather, theyare distinct rticulations of talented (and usually privileged) contributors oculture who desire to align themselves with demoralized, demobilized, depoliti-cized, and disorganized people in order to empower nd enable socialaction and,if possible, to enlist collective insurgency or the expansion of freedom, democ-racy, nd individuality. his perspective mpels hesecultural ritics nd artists oreveal, as an integral component of their production, the very operations ofpower within their immediate work contexts i.e., academy, museum, gallery,mass media). This strategy, owever, also puts them in an inescapable doublebind while linking heir activities o the fundamental, tructural verhaul ofthese nstitutions, hey ften emain financially ependent on them. So much for"independent" creation.) For these critics f culture, theirs s a gesture that ssimultaneously rogressive nd coopted. Yet, without ocialmovement r politi-cal pressure from utside these nstitutions (extra-parliamentary nd extra-curri-cular actions like the social movements f the recent past), transformation e-generates into mere accommodation or sheer stagnation, nd the role of the"coopted progressive" no matter how fervent ne's subversive rhetoric-isrendered more difficult. n this sense there can be no artistic breakthrough rsocialprogress without ome form f crisis n civilization-a crisisusuallygener-ated by organizations r collectivities hat convince ordinary people to put theirbodies and lives on the line. There is, of course, no guarantee that uch pressurewill yield the result one wants, but there s a guarantee that the status quo willremain or regress f no pressure s applied at all.

The new cultural politics of difference faces three basic challenges-intellectual, xistential, nd political. The intellectual challenge-usually cast asa methodological debate in these days in which academicist forms f expressionhave a monopoly on intellectual ife-is how to think bout representationalpractices n terms of history, ulture, and society. How does one understand,analyze, nd enact such practices oday?An adequate answer to this question canbe attempted nly after one comes to terms with the insights nd blindnesses fearlier attempts o grapple with the question in light of the evolving crisis ndifferent istories, ultures, nd societies. I shall sketch a brief genealogy a



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TheNew Cultural Politics f Difference 95

history hat highlights he contingent rigins and often ignoble outcomes-ofexemplary ritical responses to the question.

The Intellectual ChallengeAn appropriate starting oint is the ambiguous legacy of the Age of Eu-

rope. Between 1492 and 1945, European breakthroughs n oceanic transporta-tion, agricultural production, tate consolidation, bureaucratization, ndustrial-ization, urbanization, nd imperial dominion shaped the makings f the modernworld. Precious ideals like the dignity f persons individuality) r the popularaccountability f institutions democracy) were unleashed around the world.Powerful critiques of illegitimate uthorities-of the Protestant Reformationagainst the Roman Catholic Church, the Enlightenment gainst state churches,liberal movements gainst absolutist tates nd feudal guild constraints, orkersagainst managerial subordination, people of color and Jews against white andgentile supremacist ecrees, gays and lesbians against homophobic sanctions-were fanned nd fueled by these precious deals refined within he crucible of theAge of Europe. Yet, the discrepancy etween sterling hetoric nd lived reality,glowing principles nd actual practices, oomed large.

By the last European century-the last epoch in which European domina-tion of most of the globe was uncontested and unchallenged in a substantiveway a new world seemed to be stirring. t the height f England's reign as themajor imperial European power, ts examplary ultural critic, Matthew Arnold,painfully bserved n his "Stanzas from he Grand Chartreuse" that he felt omesense of "wandering between two worlds, one dead/the other powerless to beborn." Following his Burkean sensibilities f cautious reform nd fear of an-archy, Arnold acknowledged that the old glue -religion-that had tenuouslyand often unsuccessfully eld together he ailing European regimes ould not doso in the mid-nineteenth century. ike Alexisde Tocqueville in France, Arnoldsawthat he democratic emper wasthe wave of the future. o he proposed a newconception of culture a secular, humanistic ne- that could play an integra-tive role in cementing nd stabilizing n emerging bourgeois civil society andimperial state. His famous castigation of the immobilizing materialism f thedeclining ristocracy, he vulgar philistinism f the emerging middle classes, ndthe latent explosiveness f the working-classmajority was motivated by a desireto create new forms of cultural legitimacy, uthority, nd order in a rapidlychanging moment n nineteenth-century urope.

For Arnold in Culture nd Anarchy, 869), this new conception of culture

. seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been

thoughtnd known n

the world current verywhere; o make all menlive in an atmosphere of sweetness nd light . .



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This is the social dea and the men of culture are the true apostles of

equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passionfor diffusing, ormaking prevail, for carrying rom ne end of societyto the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time, whohave laboured to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth,difficult, bstract, rofessional, et still remaining he best knowledgeand thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, f sweetnessand light.As an organic ntellectual f an emergent middle class-as the nspector f

schools n an expanding educational bureaucracy, Professor f Poetry t Oxford

(the first oncleric nd the first o lecture n English rather than Latin), and anactive participant n a thriving magazine network- Arnold defined and de-fended a new secular culture of critical discourse. For him, this discursive trat-egy would be lodged in the educational and periodical apparatuses of modernsocieties s they contained and incorporated he frightening hreats f an arro-gant aristocracy nd especially of an "anarchic" working-class majority. Hisideals of disinterested, ispassionate, nd objective inquiry would regulate thissecular cultural production, nd his ustifications or the use of state power toquell any threats o the survival nd security f this ulture were widely ccepted.He aptly noted, "Through culture seems to lie our way, not only to perfection,

but even to safety."For Arnold, the best of the Age of Europe-modeled on a mythologi-cal melange of Periclean Athens, late republican/early mperial Rome, andElizabethan England-could be promoted only if there was an interlockingaffiliation mong the emerging middle classes, a homogenizing of cultural dis-course in the educational and university etworks, nd a state advanced enoughin its policing techniques to safeguard t. The candidates for participation ndlegitimation n this grand endeavor of cultural renewal and revision would bedetached intellectuals willing o shed their parochialism, rovincialism, nd class-bound identities or Arnold's middle-class-skewed roject: "Aliens, if we may so

call them-persons who are mainly ed, not by their lassspirit, ut by a generalhumane pirit, y the love of human perfection." Needless to say, this Arnoldianperspective till nforms much of academic practices and secular cultural atti-tudes today dominant views about the canon, admission procedures, nd col-lective elf-definitions f intellectuals. et, Arnold's project wasdisrupted by thecollapseof nineteenth-century urope World War I. This unprecedented war-in George Steiner's words, the first f the bloody civil wars within Europe-brought to the surface the crucial role and violent potential not of the massesArnold feared, but of the state he heralded. Upon the ashes of this wasteland ofhuman

carnage--someof the civilian European population--T.

S. Eliot

emerged as the grand cultural spokesman.Eliot's project of reconstituting nd reconceiving European highbrow



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culture-and thereby egulating ritical nd artistic ractices-after the inter-nal collapse of imperial Europe can be viewed as a response to the probingquestion posed by Paul Valkry n "The Crisis of the Spirit" after World War I:

This Europe, will t become what t s in reality, .e., a little ape of theAsiatic continent? r will this Europe remain rather what t seems, .e.,the priceless part of the whole earth, the pearl of the globe, the brainof a vast body?Eliot's image of Europe as a wasteland, a culture of fragments with no

cementing enter, predominated n postwar Europe. And though his early poeticpractices were more radical, open, and international han his Eurocentric riti-cism,Eliot posed a return o and revision f tradition s the only wayof regainingEuropean cultural order and political stability. or Eliot, contemporary istoryhad become, as James Joyce's Stephen declared in Ulysses1922), "a nightmarefrom which he was trying o awake"; "an immense panorama of futility ndanarchy" as Eliot put t n his renowned review ofJoyce's modernist masterpiece.In his influential ssay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919), Eliotstated that:

Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted infollowing hewaysof the mmediate generation before us in a blind ortimid dherence to its successes, "tradition" should

positivelye dis-

couraged. We have seen many such simple currents oon lost in thesand; and novelty s better than repetition. Tradition is a matter ofmuch wider ignificance. t cannot be inherited, nd if you want t youmust attain t by great labour.

Eliot found this tradition n the Church of England, to which he convertedin 1927. Here was a tradition that left room for his Catholic cast of mind,Calvinistheritage, puritanical emperament, nd ebullient patriotism or the oldAmerican South (the place of his upbringing). Like Arnold, Eliot was obsessedwith the idea of civilization nd the horror of barbarism echoes of JosephConrad's Kurtz in Heart of Darkness), or, more pointedly, he notion of thedecline and decay of European civilization. With the advent of World War II,Eliot's obsession became a reality. Again, unprecedented human carnage (fiftymillion died)-including an indescribable genocidal attack on Jewish eople-throughout Europe as well as around the globe put the last nail in the coffin fthe Age of Europe. After 1945, Europe consisted of a devastated and dividedcontinent, rippled by a humiliating ependency on and deference othe UnitedStates and Russia.

The second historical oordinate of my genealogy s the emergence of theUnited States s theworld power in the words of Andre Malraux, the first ationto do so without rying o do so). The United States was unprepared for worldpower status. However, with the recovery f Stalin's Russia (after osing twenty



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million ives),the United States felt ompelled to make its presence felt round

the globe. Then, with the Marshall Plan to strengthen urope, it seemed clearthat there was no escape from world power obligations.The post World War II era in the United States, or the first ecades of

what Henry Luce envisioned s "The American Century," was not only periodof ncredible conomic expansion, but of active cultural ferment. he creation ofa massmiddle class a prosperous working lasswith bourgeois dentity wascountered by the first major emergence of subcultures f American non-WASPintellectuals; he so-called New York intellectuals n criticism, he Abstract Ex-pressionists n painting, nd the bebop artists n jazz music. This emergencesignaled a vital challenge to an American male WASP elite loyal to an older anderoding European culture.The first ignificant low was dealt when assimilated Jewish Americansentered the higher echelons of the cultural apparatuses (academy, museums,galleries, mass media). Lionel Trilling is an emblematic figure. This Jewishentree into the anti-Semitic nd patriarchal ritical discourse of the exclusivisticinstitutions f American culture nitiated he slow but sure undoing of the maleWASP cultural hegemony nd homogeneity. Trilling's project was to appropri-ate Matthew Arnold's for his own political and cultural purposes therebyunraveling he old male WASP consensus while erecting new post- World WarII liberal academic consensus round cold war, anticommunist enditions f thevalues of complexity, ifficulty, ariousness, nd modulation. In addition, thepostwar boom laid the basis for ntense professionalization nd specialization nexpanding institutions f higher education especially in the natural sciencesthat were compelled to somehowrespond to Russia'ssuccessful entures n space.Humanistic scholars found themselves earching for new methodologies thatcould buttress elf-images f rigor and scientific eriousness. For example, theclose reading techniques of New Criticism severed from their conservative,organicist, nti-industrialist deological roots), the logical precision of reasoningin analytic philosophy, nd the argon of Parsonian structural-functionalism nsociology helped create such self-images. Yet, towering cultural critics likeC. Wright Mills, W. E. B. DuBois, Richard Hofstadter, Margaret Mead, andDwight MacDonald bucked the tide. This suspicion of the academicization ofknowledge is expressed in Trilling's well-known ssay, "On the Teaching ofModern Literature":

. .can we not say that, when modern iterature s brought nto theclassroom, hesubject being taught sbetrayed by the pedagogy of thesubject? We have to ask ourselves whether n our day too much doesnot come within he purview of the academy. More and more, as theuniversities iberalize themselves, urn their beneficent mperialisticgaze upon what is called life itself, the feeling grows among oureducated classes that ittle an be experienced unless t is validated bysome established ntellectual discipline. .



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Trilling aments he fact hat university nstruction ften uiets and domes-ticates adicaland subversive works of art, turning hem nto objects "of merelyhabitual

regard."This

processof "the socialization of the

anti-social,r the

acculturation f the anti-cultural, r the legitimization f the subversive" eadsTrilling o "question whether n our culture he study f iterature sany ongera suitable means for developing and refining he intelligence." He asks thisquestion not n the spirit f denigrating nd devaluing heacademy, but rather nthe spirit of highlighting he possible failure of an Arnoldian conception ofculture to contain what he perceives s the philistine nd anarchic alternativesbecoming more and more available to students of the '60s-namely, massculture and radical politics.

AL

/MUFel....i...

i :i :ii~ [ i ]]ii ]ii-A iiit]s o

w-[[::[:]:]:i[:

Hans Haacke.Viewonto he RoseGarden(Operation Just Cause). 1990. (Photo: . Scruton.)



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This threat s partly ssociated with the third historical oordinate of mygenealogy-the decolonization of the Third World. It is crucial to recognize theimportance f this world-historical rocess f one wants to grasp the significanceof the end of the Age of Europe and the emergence of the United States as aworld power. With the first efeat of a western nation by a nonwestern nation-in Japan's victory ver Russia (1905); revolutions n Persia (1905), Turkey(1908), Mexico (1911 - 12), China (1912); and much later the independence ofIndia (1947), China (1948); and the triumph f Ghana (1957)-the actuality f adecolonized globe loomed large. Born of violent truggle, onsciousness-raising,and the reconstruction f identities, ecolonization imultaneously rings with tnew perspectives n that ong festering nderside of the Age of Europe (ofwhichcolonial domination represents he costs f "progress," "order," and "culture"),as well as requiring new readings of the economic boom in the United States(wherein he Black,Brown, Yellow, Red, White, female, gay, esbian, nd elderlyworking class live the same costs s cheap labor at home as well as in U.S.-dominated Latin American and Pacific rim markets).

The impetuous ferocity nd moral outrage that motors the decolonizationprocess is best captured by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched f the Earth 1906):

Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, sobviously program of complete disorder. . . . Decolonization s the

meetingof two forces,

opposedto each other

bytheir

verynature,

which in fact owe their originality o that sort of substantificationwhich results from nd is nourished by the situation n the colonies.Their first ncounter was marked by violence and their existencetogether that s to say the exploitation f the native by the settlerwascarried on by dint of a great array of bayonets nd cannons. ...In decolonization, here s therefore he need of a complete calling nquestion of the colonial situation. f we wish to describe it precisely,we might find t in the well-known words: "The last shall be first ndthe first ast." Decolonization is the

puttinginto

practiceof this

sentence.

The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bulletsand bloodstained kniveswhich manate from t. For if the ast shall befirst, hiswill only come to pass after murderous nd decisivestrug-gle between the two protagonists.Fanon's strong words describe the feelings nd thoughts etween the occu-

pying British Army nd the colonized Irish n Northern reland, the occupyingIsraeli Army nd the subjugated Palestinians n the West Bank and Gaza Strip,the South African Army and the oppressed Black South Africans n the town-ships, heJapanese police and the Koreans living nJapan, the RussianArmy nd



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The New Cultural Politics f Diference 101

subordinated Armenians, nd others n southern nd eastern Russia. His wordsalso partly nvoke the sense many Black Americans have toward police depart-ments in urban centers. In other words, Fanon is articulating entury-long,heartfelt, uman responses to being degraded and despised, hated and hunted,oppressed and exploited, and marginalized and dehumanized at the hands ofpowerful, xenophobic European, American, Russian, and Japanese imperialcountries.

During the late 1950s, '60s, and early '70s in the United States, thesedecolonized sensibilities anned and fueled the Civil Rights and Black Powermovements, s well as the student antiwar, feminist, ray, brown, gay, andlesbian movements. n this period we witnessed the shattering f male WASPcultural homogeneity nd the collapse of the short-lived iberal consensus. Theinclusion of African Americans, Latino/a Americans, Asian Americans, NativeAmericans, and American women in the culture of critical discourse yieldedintense intellectual polemics and inescapable ideological polarization that fo-cused principally n the exclusions, silences, and blindnesses of male WASPcultural homogeneity nd its concomitant Arnoldian notions of the canon.

In addition, these critiques promoted three crucial processes that affectedintellectual ife in the country. First is the appropriation of the theories ofpostwar Europe-especially the work of the Frankfurt School (Marcuse,Adorno, Horkheimer), French/Italian Marxisms Sartre, Althusser, Lefebvre,Gramsci), structuralisms Levi-Strauss, Todorov), and poststructuralisms(Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault). These diverse and disparate theories-all preoc-cupied with keeping alive radical projects fter he end of the Age of Europetend to fuse versions of transgressive uropean modernisms with Marxist orpost-Marxist eft politics, and unanimously hun the term "postmodernism."Second, there s the recovery nd revisioning f American history n light f thestruggles of White male workers, African Americans, Native Americans, La-tino/a Americans, gays and lesbians. Third is the impact of forms of popularculture such as television, film, music videos, and even sports on highbrow,literate ulture. The Black-basedhip-hop culture of youth around the world isone grand example.After 1973, with the crisis n the international world economy, America'sslump in productivity, he challenge of OPEC nations to the North Atlanticmonopoly of oil production, he increasing ompetition n hi-tech ectors of theeconomy from Japan and West Germany, nd the growing fragility f the inter-national debt structure, he United States entered a period of waning self-confi-dence (compounded by Watergate), and a nearly contracted economy. As thestandards of living for the middle classes declined -owing to runaway nflationand escalating unemployment, nderemployment, nd crime the quality ofliving ellfor most everyone, nd religious nd secular neoconservatism mergedwith power and potency. This fusion of fervent eonationalism, raditional ul-



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tural values, and "free market" policies served as the groundwork for theReagan-Bush era.The ambiguous egacies of the European Age, American preeminence, nddecolonization continue to haunt our postmodern moment s we come to termswith both the European, American, Japanese, Soviet, and Third World crimesagainst nd contributions ohumanity. he plight of Africans n the New Worldcan be instructive n this regard.

By 1914, European maritime mpires had dominion over more than half ofthe land and a third of the peoples in the world-almost 72 million squarekilometers f territory nd more than 560 million people under colonial rule.Needless to say, this European control ncluded brutal enslavement, nstitutionalterrorism, nd cultural degradation of Black diaspora people. The death ofroughly 5 million Africans uring the centuries-long, ransatlantic lavetrade sbut one reminder, mong others, of the assault on Black humanity. The Blackdiaspora condition f New World servitude-in which heywere viewed as merecommodities with production value, who had no proper egal status, ocialstand-ing, or public worth-can be characterized as, following Orlando Patterson,natal alienation. This state of perpetual nd inheritable omination hat diasporaAfricans had at birth produced the modern lackdiasporaproblematic f nvisibilityand namelessness.White supremacist practices-enacted under the auspices ofthe prestigious ultural authorities f the churches, print media, and scientificacademics-promoted Black inferiority nd constituted the European back-ground against which Black diaspora struggles for identity, ignity self-confi-dence, self-respect, elf-esteem), nd material resources took place.

An inescapable aspect of this truggle was that the Black diaspora peoples'quest for validation and recognition occurred on the ideological, social, andcultural errains f other non-Blackpeoples. White upremacist ssaults on Blackintelligence, bility, beauty, and character required persistent Black efforts ohold self-doubt, elf-contempt, nd even self-hatred t bay. Selectiveappropria-tion, incorporation, nd rearticulation f European ideologies, cultures, andinstitutions longside an African heritage a heritage more or less confined olinguistic nnovation n rhetorical practices, tylizations f the body as forms foccupying n alien social space (i.e., hairstyles, aysof walking, tanding, alking,and hand expressions), means of constituting nd sustaining comraderie andcommunity i.e., antiphonal, call-and-response tyles, hythmic epetition, isk-ridden syncopation n spectacular modes in musical and rhetorical xpressions)-were some of the strategies mployed.

The modern Black diaspora problematic of invisibility nd namelessnesscan be understood as the condition of relative ack of Black power to presentthemselvesothemselvesnd others s complex umanbeings, nd thereby ocontest hebombardment f negative, egrading tereotypes ut forward by White upremacistideologies. he initial Black response to being caught in this whirlwind f Euro-peanization was to resist he misrepresentation nd caricature f the terms et by



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TheNewCultural Politics f Difference 103

uncontested non-Black norms and models, and fight or self-recognition. verymodern Blackperson, especially ultural disseminators, ncounters his problem-atic of invisibility nd namelessness. The initial Black diaspora response was amode of resistance hat was moralistic n content nd communal n character. hatis, the fight for representation nd recognition highlighted moral udgmentsregarding Black "positive" images over and against White supremacist tereo-types. These images "re-presented" monolithic nd homogeneous Blackcommu-nities n a way that could displace past misrepresentations f these communities.Stuart Hall has discussed these responses s attempts o change the "relations ofrepresentation."

These courageous yet imited Black efforts o combat racist cultural prac-tices uncritically ccepted non-Black conventions and standards in two ways.First, hey proceeded in an assimilationist anner hat set out to show that Blackpeople were really like White people-thereby eliding differences in historyand culture) between Whites and Blacks. Black specificity nd particularity asthus banished in order to gain White acceptance and approval. Second, theseBlack responses rested upon a homogenizingmpulse hat assumed that all Blackpeople were really alike-hence obliterating ifferences class, gender, region,sexual orientation) between Black peoples. I submit that there are elements oftruth n both claims, yet the conclusions re unwarranted wing to the basic factthat non-Black paradigms set the terms of the replies.

The insight n the first laim is that Blacks and Whites re in some impor-tant sense alike-i.e., in their positive capacities for human sympathy, moralsacrifice, ervice to others, ntelligence, nd beauty; or negatively, n their apac-ity or ruelty. et, the common humanity hey hare s ettisoned when the claimis cast n an assimilationist manner that ubordinates Blackparticularity oa falseuniversalism, .e., non-Black rubrics nd prototypes. imilarly, he insight n thesecond claim s that ll Blacks are in some significant ense "in the same boat"-that is, subject to White supremacist abuse. Yet, this common condition isstretched oo far when viewed in a homogenizing ay that overlooks how racisttreatment astly iffers wing to class,gender, exual orientation, ation, region,hue, and age.

The moralistic nd communal spects of the nitial Blackdiaspora responsesto social and psychic rasure were not simply ast into simplistic inary opposi-tions of positive/negative, ood/bad images that privileged he first erm n lightof a White norm so that Black efforts emained nscribed within he very ogicthat dehumanized them. They were further omplicated by the fact that theseresponses were also advanced principally y anxiety-ridden, middle-classBlackintellectuals predominantly male and heterosexual grappling with heir ense ofdouble-consciousness- namely their own crisis of identity, gency, audience-caught between a quest for White approval and acceptance and an endeavor toovercome the nternalized ssociation f Blacknesswith nferiority. nd I suggestthat these complex anxieties of modern Black diaspora intellectuals artly moti-



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vate the two major arguments that ground the assimilationist moralism and

homogeneous communalism ust outlined.Kobena Mercer has talked bout these two arguments s the reflectionistndthe socialengineering rguments. The reflectionist rgument holds that the fightfor Black representation nd recognition- against White racist stereotypes-must reflect r mirror he real Black community, ot simply he negative anddepressing representations f it. The social engineering rgument claims thatsince any form of representation s constructed-i.e., selective in light ofbroader aims-Black representation especially given the difficulty f Blacksgaining ccess to positions of power to produce any Black imagery) hould offerpositive mages, thereby ountering acist tereotypes. he hidden assumption fboth arguments s that we have unmediated access to what the "real Blackcommunity" s and what "positive mages" are. In short, these arguments pre-suppose the very phenomena to be interrogated, nd thereby oreclose he veryissues that should serve as the subject matter o be investigated.

Any notions of "the real Black community" nd "positive images" arevalue-laden, ocially oaded, and ideologically harged. To pursue this discussionis to call into question the possibility f such an uncontested onsensus regardingthem. Hall has rightly alled this encounter "the end of innocence or the end ofthe innocent notions of the essential Black subject . . . the recognition that'Black' is essentially a politically and culturally constructed ategory." Thisrecognition-more and more pervasive mong the postmodern Black diasporaintelligentsia is facilitated n part by the slow but sure dissolution f the Euro-pean Age's maritime mpires, and the unleashing of new political possibilitiesand cultural articulations mong ex-colonized peoples across the globe.

One crucial lesson of this decolonization process remains the manner inwhich most Third World authoritarian bureaucratic elites deploy essentialistrhetorics bout "homogeneous national communities" nd "positive mages" inorder to repress nd regiment heir diverse and heterogeneous populations. Yetin the diaspora, especially among First World countries, this critique hasemerged not so much from the Black male component of the left, but ratherfrom the Black women's movement. The decisive push of postmodern Blackintellectuals oward a new cultural politics of difference as been made by thepowerful ritiques nd constructive xplorations of Black diaspora women (i.e.,Toni Morrison). The coffin sed to bury the innocent notion of the essentialBlack subject was nailed shut with the termination f the Black male monopolyon the construction f the Black subject. In this regard, the Black diasporawomanist critique has had a greater impact than the critiques that highlightexclusively lass, empire, age, sexual orientation, r nature.

This decisive push toward the end of Blackinnocence-though prefiguredin various degrees in the best moments of James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, AnnaCooper, W. E. B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, ClaudiaJones, he laterMalcolm X, and others- forces Black diaspora cultural workers to encounter



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what Hall has called the "politics of representation." The main aim now is notsimply ccess to representation n order to produce positive mages of homoge-neous communities-though broader access remains a practical and politicalproblem. Nor is the primary oal here that of contesting tereotypes-thoughcontestation emains a significant hough imited venture. Following the modelof the Black diaspora traditions f music, athletics, nd rhetoric, Black culturalworkers must constitute nd sustain discursive nd institutional etworks hatdeconstruct arlier modern Black strategies for identity formation, emystifypower relations that ncorporate lass, patriarchal, nd homophobic biases, andconstruct more multivalent nd multidimensional esponses that articulate thecomplexity nd diversity f Black practices in the modern and postmodernworld.

Furthermore, lack cultural workers must nvestigate nd interrogate heother of Blackness/Whiteness. ne cannot deconstruct he binary oppositionallogic of images of Blackness without xtending t to the contrary ondition ofBlackness/Whiteness tself. However, a mere dismantling will not do-for thevery notion of a deconstructive ocial theory s oxymoronic. Yet, social theory swhat is needed to examine and explain the historically pecific ways in which"Whiteness" is a politically onstructed ategory parasitic on "Blackness," andthereby to conceive of the profoundly hybrid character of what we mean by"race," "'ethnicity," nd "nationality." Needless to say, these inquiries musttraverse hose of "male/female," "colonizer/colonized," "heterosexual/homo-sexual," et al., as well.

Demystification s the most illuminating mode of theoretical inquiry forthose who promote the new cultural politics of difference. ocial structuralanalysesof empire, exterminism, lass, race, gender, nature, ge, sexual orienta-tion, nation, and region are the springboards-though not landing grounds-for the most desirable forms f critical practice that take history and herstory)seriously. Demystification ries o keep track of the complex dynamics f institu-tional and other related power structures n order to disclose options and alter-natives for transformative raxis; it also attempts to grasp the way in whichrepresentational trategies re creative responses to novel circumstances ndconditions. n this way, the central role of human agency alwaysenacted undercircumstances ot of one's choosing)-be it in the critic, rtist, r constituency,and audience-is accented.

I call demystificatory riticism prophetic criticism"-the approach appro-priate for the new cultural politics of difference-because while it begins withsocial structural nalyses t also makes explicit ts moral and political aims. It ispartisan, partial, ngaged, and crisis-centered, et always keeps open a skepticaleye to avoid dogmatic raps,premature losures, formulaic ormulations, r rigidconclusions. n addition to social structural nalyses, moral and political udg-ments, nd sheer critical onsciousness, here ndeed is evaluation. Yet the aim ofthis evaluation is neither to pit art-objects gainst one another like racehorses



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nor to create eternal canons that dull, discourage, or even dwarf contemporaryachievements. We listen to Laurie Anderson, Kathleen Battle, LudwigBeethoven, Charlie Parker, Luciano Pavarotti, Sarah Vaughan, or StevieWonder; read Anton Chekhov, Ralph Ellison, Gabriel Garcia Mairquez,DorisLessing, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, William Shakespeare; or see theworks of Ingmar Bergman, Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry, Barbara Kruger, SpikeLee, Martin Puryear, Pablo Picasso, or Howardena Pindell not in order toundergird bureaucratic assents or enliven cocktail party conversations, butrather to be summoned by the styles hey deploy for their profound nsights,pleasures, and challenges. Yet, all evaluation-including a delight in Eliot'spoetry despite his reactionary olitics, r a love of Zora Neale Hurston's novelsdespite her Republican party ffiliations-is inseparable, hough not dentical rreducible to social structural nalyses, moral and political udgments, and theworkings f a curious critical onsciousness.

The deadly traps of demystification and any form of prophetic riticism-are those of reductionism, e it of the sociological,psychological, r historicalsort. By reductionism mean either one-factor nalyses i.e., crude Marxisms,feminisms, acialisms, etc.) that yield a one-dimensional functionalism r ahyper-subtle nalytical perspective hat oses touch with the specificity f an artwork's form and the context of its reception. Few cultural workers of what-ever stripe can walk the tightrope between the Scylla of reductionism nd theCharybdis of aestheticism yet, demystificatory or prophetic) critics must. Ofcourse, since so many art practices these days also purport to be criticism, hisalso holds true for artists.

The Existential ChallengeThe existential hallenge to the new cultural politics of difference an be

stated simply: how does one acquire the resources to survive and the culturalcapital to thrive s a critic r artist? y cultural apital Pierre Bourdieu's term),mean not only the high-quality killsrequired to engage in critical practices, utmore important, he self-confidence, iscipline, nd perseverance necessary forsuccess without n undue reliance on the mainstream or approval and accept-ance. This challenge holds for ll prophetic ritics, et t s especiallydifficult orthose of color. The widespread modern European denial of the intelligence,ability, beauty, and character of people of color puts a tremendous burden oncritics nd artists f color to "prove" themselves n light f norms nd models setby White elites whose own heritage devalued and dehumanized them. n short,in the court of criticism nd art or any matters regarding the life of themind- people of color are guilty i.e., not expected to meet standards of intel-lectual achievement) until "proven" innocent i.e., acceptable to "us").



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This is more a structural ilemma than a matter f personal attitudes. Theprofoundly acist nd sexistheritage of the European Age has bequeathed to us aset of deeply ingrained perceptions bout people of color including, of course,the self-perceptions hat people of color bring. It is not surprising hat mostintellectuals f color in the past exerted much of their energies and efforts ogain acceptance and approval by "White normative gazes." The new culturalpolitics of difference dvises critics nd artists f color to put aside this mode ofmental bondage, thereby freeing themselves both to interrogate the ways inwhich they are bound by certain conventions nd to learn from and build onthese very norms and models. One hallmark of wisdom in the context of anystruggle s to avoid knee-jerk ejection and uncritical cceptance.

Self-confidence, iscipline, nd perseverance are not ends in themselves.Rather, they re the necessary tuff f which enabling criticism nd self-criticismare made. Notwithstanding nescapable ealousies, insecurities, nd anxieties, netelling characteristic f critics nd artists f color linked to the new propheticcriticism hould be their capacity for and promotion of relentless riticism ndself-criticism be it the normative aradigms of their White colleaguesthat tendto leave out considerations f empire, race, gender, and sexual orientation, rthe damaging dogmas about the homogeneous character of communities ofcolor.

There are four basic options for people of color interested in re-presentation-if they re to survive nd thrive s serious practitioners f theircraft. First, here s the Booker T. Temptation, namely the individual preoccu-pation with he mainstream nd its egitimizing ower. Most critics nd artists fcolor try obite this bait. t is nearly unavoidable, yet few ucceed in a substantivemanner. It is no accident that the most creative and profound among them-especially those with staying power beyond mere flashes n the pan to satisfyfaddish tokenism are usually marginal to the mainstream. ven the pervasiveprofessionalization f cultural practitioners f color in the past few decades hasnot produced towering figures who reside within he established White patron-age system hat bestows the rewards and prestige for chosen contributions oAmerican society.It certainly helps to have some trustworthy llies within this system, yetmost of those who enter and remain tend to lose much of their creativity, iffusetheir prophetic nergy, nd dilute their ritiques. till, t s unrealistic or reativepeople of color to think they can sidestep the White patronage system. Andthough there are indeed some White allies conscious of the tremendous need torethink dentity olitics, t s naive to think hat being comfortably ested withinthis very ame system-even if one can be a patron to others- does not affectone's work, one's outlook, and, most mportant, ne's soul.

The second option is the Talented Tenth Seduction, namely, a movetoward arrogant group insularity. his alternative has a limited function- topreserve one's sanity nd sense of self s one copes with hemainstream. et, it s,



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at best, transitional nd transient ctivity. f t becomes a permanent ption t sself-defeating n that it usually reinforces he very inferiority omplexes pro-moted by the subtly acistmainstream. Hence it tends to revel n a parochialismand encourage a narrow racialist nd chauvinistic utlook.

The third trategy s the Go-It-Alone option. This is an extreme rejectionistperspective hat shuns the mainstream nd group insularity. lmost every criticand artist f color contemplates r enacts this option at some time n his or herpilgrimage. t is healthy n that t reflects he presence of independent, ritical,and skeptical ensibilities oward perceived constraints n one's creativity. et, itis, in the end, difficult f not impossible o sustain f one is to grow, develop, andmature ntellectually, s some semblance of dialogue with community s neces-sary for almost any creative practice.The most desirable option for people of color who promote the new cul-tural politics of difference s to be a Critical Organic Catalyst. By this mean aperson who stays ttuned to the best of what the mainstream has to offer-itsparadigms, viewpoints, nd methods-yet maintains grounding n affirmingand enabling subcultures f criticism. rophetic ritics nd artists f color shouldbe exemplars of what t means to be intellectual reedom fighters, hat s,culturalworkers who simultaneously osition themselves within or alongside) the main-stream while clearly ligned with groups who vow to keep alive potent traditionsof critique and resistance. n this regard, one can take clues from the greatmusicians r preachers of color who are open to the best of what other traditionsoffer, yet are rooted in nourishing ubcultures hat build on the grand achieve-ments f a vital heritage. Openness to others- including he mainstream- doesnot entail wholesale cooptation, and group autonomy is not group insularity.Louis Armstrong, lla Baker, W. E. B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., JoseCarlos Mariatequi, Wynton Marsalis, M. M. Thomas, and Ronald Takaki haveunderstood this well.

The new cultural politics of difference an thrive nly f there are commu-nities, groups, organizations, nstitutions, ubcultures, nd networks f people ofcolor who cultivate critical sensibilities nd personal accountability withoutinhibiting ndividual xpressions, uriosities, nd idiosyncrasies. his is especiallyneeded given the escalating racial hostility, iolence, and polarization in theUnited States. Yet, this critical oming-together must not be a narrow closing ofranks. Rather, t s a strengthening nd nurturing ndeavor that can forge moresolid alliances and coalitions. n this way, prophetic riticism-with its stress nhistorical pecificity nd artistic omplexity directly addresses the intellectualchallenge. The cultural apital of people of color with ts emphasison self-con-fidence, iscipline, erseverance, nd subcultures f criticism-also tries o meetthe existential equirement. Both are mutually einforcing. oth are motivatedby a deep commitment o individuality nd democracy the moral and politicalideals that guide the creative response to the political challenge.



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The Political Challenge

Adequate rejoinders to intellectual and existential challenges equip thepractitioners f the new cultural politics of difference o meet the political ones.This challenge principally onsists f forging olidand reliable alliances of peopleof color and White progressives uided by a moral and political visionof greaterdemocracy and individual freedom in communities, tates, and transnationalenterprises- i.e., corporations, nd information nd communications onglom-erates. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow coalition is a gallant, yet flawed effort n thisregard-gallant due to the tremendous nergy, ision, nd courage of ts eaderand followers; flawed because of its failure to take seriously ritical nd demo-cratic sensibilities within ts own operations.

The time has come for critics nd artists of the new cultural politics ofdifference o cast their nets widely, lex heir musclesbroadly, nd thereby efuseto limit heir visions, nalyses, nd praxis to their particular errains. he aim isto dare to recast, redefine, nd revise the very notions of "modernity," main-stream," "margins," "difference," otherness." We have now reached a newstage in the perennial struggle for freedom nd dignity. And while much of theFirst World intelligentsia dopts retrospective nd conservative outlooks thatdefend the crisis-ridden resent, we promote a prospective nd prophetic visionwith sense of possibility nd potential, specially for those who bear the socialcosts of the present. We look to the past for strength, ot solace; we look at thepresent and see people perishing, not profits mounting; we look toward thefuture nd vow to make it different nd better.

To put it boldly, the new kind of critic nd artist ssociated with the newcultural politics of difference onsists of an energetic breed of New Worldbricoleurs ith mprovisational nd flexible ensibilities hat idestep mere oppor-tunism nd mindless clecticism; persons from ll countries, ultures, genders,sexual orientations, ges, and regions with protean identities who avoid ethnicchauvinism nd faceless universalism; ntellectual nd political freedom fighterswith partisan passion, international perspectives, nd thank God, a sense ofhumor that combats the ever-present bsurdity hat forever hreatens ur demo-cratic nd libertarian rojects nd dampens the fire hat fuels ur will to struggle.Yet, we willstruggle nd stay, s those brothers nd sisters n the block say, "outthere"-with intellectual igor, existential ignity, moral vision, political cour-age, and soulful tyle.

the new politics of difference : cornel west

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