Criticism in the Vineyard: Twenty Years after “Race,” Writing, and Difference

Extract

Riffing on Geoffrey Hartman's criticism in the wilderness, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., titled his introduction to the 1984 collection Black Literature and Literary Theory “Criticism in the Jungle.” Yale deconstruction, meet tropes of blackness. When a Gates-edited issue of Critical Inquiry (plus several additional essays) appeared two years later in book form as “Race,” Writing, and Difference, the encounter he helped broker between poststructuralist theory and race studies had its battle cry. Race was not an essence but an inscription, a signifier of instituted difference. The literature produced under its auspices was to be read as a series of marks and markers calling for complex formal analysis, not merely as an index of the humanity or condition of its writers. In retrospect, it appears that all this was a gambit in the embourgeoisement of African American literary studies. Twenty years on, Gates has started a company that does racial DNA searches—what he calls “roots in a test tube”—and produces books and television specials on black celebrities' racial genealogies (Lee B1). No scare quotes about it, race now gives you access to Oprah and her people. Call it criticism in the Vineyard.