Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination Book

/// this is what ya'll should be reading instead ///

Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination is a 1992 work of literary criticism by Toni Morrison.

In 1990, Morrison delivered a series of three lectures at Harvard University; she then adapted the texts to a 91-page book consisting of three essays of metacritical explorations into the operations of whiteness and blackness in the literature of white writers in the United States. Toni Morrison takes the position that the existing literary criticism in the United States has provided incomplete readings of its canonical literature by refusing to acknowledge and analyse the Africanist persona present in it.

Linda Krumholz described Morrison's project as "reread[ing] the American literary canon through an analysis of whiteness to propose the ways that black people were used to establish American identity."

Michael Eric Dyson observes that in addition to this exploration of the "white literary imagination...Playing in the Dark is also about a black intellectual seizing the interpretive space within a racially ordered hierarchy of cultural criticism. Blacks are usually represented through the lens of white perception rather than the other way around...With [Playing in the Dark], a substantial change is portended."

In 2016, Time magazine noted that Playing in the Dark was among Morrison's most-assigned texts on U.S. college campuses, together with several of her novels and her 1993 Nobel Prize lecture, making her one of the most-assigned of all female writers (which makes me very happy btw).

I have to admit that I did not fully understand the essay due to its academic nature and my lack of knowledge of Morrison's references. Since the target audience were students familiar with the topic and other professors, this is not surprising. However, I don't think that Morrison did a good job of providing useful and practical analytic tools for dissecting canonical literature. Her approach and her created categories were too abstract for that, nonetheless the food for thought she provided with this essay is invaluable.

I have a hard time reviewing this book (since I did have comprehension issues), so I think I will just give you a little insight into what I took from it:

1 The construction of white identity
Toni Morrison claims that white American fiction has fabricated a black persona that is "reflexive," a means for whites to contemplate their own terror and desire without having to acknowledge these feelings as their own.

Oftentimes, black characters function as surrogates to the white man's identity, thus ensuring that the white author and his characters know that they themselves are not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desireable; not helpess, but powerful.

It plays very well into the thoughts of James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, that the white man's identity is constructed through his contrast to the black man; and thus the liberation of the black man evokes a bottomless and nameless terror, because it means a reconstruction of white identity and it forces the white man to face himself and what's left of him after he is stripped from his artificial superiority.

Black characters in classic American novels have been just as marginalized as their real-life counterparts. The black "shadow" has, paradoxically, allowed white culture to face its fear of freedom. Though colonist, immigrant and refugee embraced America for its promise of freedom, they were nevertheless terrified at the prospect of becoming failures and outcasts, engulfed by a boundless, untamable nature. Africanism, the culture's construction of black slavery, stood, therefore, not only for the "not-free" but also for the "not-me."

2 The Literary Imagination
Toni Morrison makes it very clear that literature is a byproduct of the author's mind. In order to write, you have to have the capability of imagining first. Another important factor that shouldn't be ignored is the author's cultural upbringing and social standing. Readers and writers both struggle to interpret and perform within a common language sharing imaginative worlds. Through the author's presence, his intentions and (color)blindness are inherently part of the imaginative activity. Toni Morrison asks herself the question what happens then if most readers and writers (as it has been in American history) are white.

There seems to be a more or less tacit agreement among literary scholars that because American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views, genius, and power are without relationship to and removed from the overwhelming presence of black people in the United States. This is a false assumption. The 400-year-old Africanist presence in America has not only influenced the white's sense of 'Americaness' but also the literary canon.

For both, black and white American writers, in a wholly racialized society, there is no escape from racially inflected language. The ways in which artists - and the society that bred them - transferred internal conflicts to a black darkness, to conveniently bound and violently silenced black bodies, is a major theme of American literature. Nothing highlighted freedom - if it did not in fact create it - like slavery.The world does not become raceless or will not become unracialized by assertion: the act of enforcing racelessness in literary discourse is itself a racial act. Pouring rhetorical acid on the fingers of a black hand may indeed destroy the prints, but not the hand. Besides, what happens in that violent, self-serving act of erasure to the hands, the fingers, the fingerprints of the one who does the pouring? Do they remain acid-free? The literature itself suggests otherwise.
3 Default-whiteness
"There is another person aboard, an alcoholic named Eddy. Eddy is white, and we know he is because nobody says so." This is still a problem in modern literature. Unless otherwise specified, all characters are read and seen as white. The visibility of minority characters is something that needs to be worked on, however, we should preceed with caution. The most common problem we see today is that minority characters become token characters - their skin color/ sexuality/ religion being their only defining feature.

Personally, I think that there are many great ways of including diversity in a more 'organic' way, e.g. through the language the characters are usual or the inclusion of certain cultural practices. Nonetheless, it's still something that can be easily fucked up, and be turned into insensitive bullshit.

In conclusion
Toni Morrison's approach is not only meant to teach a black author about white motivation. It should also teach whites about how they have constructed not only black but white identity, and how they have contemplated their own humanity by observing the dehumanization of others. While I wish that these essays would have been more comprehensible, I still highly appreciate the ideas that Morrison provided, and would recommend Playing in the Dark to anyone interested in the subject matter and anyone willing to put in the needed time and effort.