I thought this article offered a really interesting perspective on how our cultural/racial/historical identity affects our capacity to critically appreciate art from cultures and traditions outside our own.
Is “black art” only really, essentially comprehensible to African-Americans? But then could the same be said for “white” (or European) art in reverse? The author argues strongly against this point of view…
I’m especially interested in these questions in the context of a “theory of everybody” as well as the transgenre/transdisciplinary art we will be exploring through #metapsychosis journal—not to mention current and future #litgeeks book club picks.
Interestingly, the New Yorker piece recapitulates aspects of a dialogue I heard recently between cultural critics @Greg_Thomas and Greg Tate playfully recreating a debate between Amiri Baraka and Ralph Ellison (who are discussed in the essay) on the relationship between black art, pop culture, and cultural politics.
Does art ultimately transcend social and political categories, aspiring toward some form of universalism, or must it remain bounded by historical categories—or both?
I especially enjoyed the mind jazz between these two and recommend taking the time to check out not only the content of their talk but also the form and style, which was quite unlike a typical academic debate.
Writers Greg Tate and Greg Thomas present an epistolary exchange on the individual and mutual legacies of Ralph Ellison and Amiri Baraka that brings to life their contemporary relevance.
Considering the fact that biologically, there is no such thing as “race”, but in reality we recognize (as the author poignantly points out) there are somehow differences, all I can say is that this piece is a Gebserian goldmine.
The moment we step back and see that what is being presented is, in essence, the difference between vital and lived experience (or, as Gebser would put it, Erlebnis vs. Erfahrung), I think we can rapidly gain an appreciation for what some individuals, like Green, master the transitions more effectively than, say, Elison and Jones/Baraka (whereby I appreciated very much Invisible Man and Blues People for the additional shift in (vicarious) experience that each has provided me).
It would seem that there is a lot here but it tends to get obscured and, at times even, pidgeon-holed because of our linear, mental-rational schooling and upbringing.
Green is Ryan Speedo Green, mentioned in the article. (In looking back at my post, I see I failed to place a comma (,) after his name, making the sentence less than fully intelligble.
As for the Gebser question … Since I don’t know how familiar you are with Gebser, allow me to start wider and narrow the answer in. If you have familiarity with him, you can skip the first part.
Gebser, who wrote in German, used two different verbs that can be translated as “to experience” in English, namely erleben and erfahren. The nouns derived from each are Erlebnis and Erfahrung, respectively. The Gebser translators Barstad/Mikunas dealt with this issue by translating the former as “vital experience” and the latter as “lived (or undergone) experience”. For example, “That roller coaster ride was quite the experience” (Erlebnis) in contrast with “Spending two years abroad was quite the experience” (Erfahrung).
Each of these types of “experience” is associated in Gebser’s framework with a different structure of consciousness. Vital experience is associated with the Magical structure, while lived experience is associated with the Mythical structure of consciousness. In both cases, Gebser presents them as the expression of forms of thought and realization. Wheras the Magical structure of consciousness is one-dimensional, point-like, and highly undifferentiated, the Mythical structure is two-dimensional, imaginistic; that is, where vital experiences are consolidated into stories, so to speak. Gebser, of course, is describing and analyzing the consciousness unfoldment of humanity as a whole, but a similar movement through the structures can be seen in the individual as well. This is analogous, at least in my mind, to Jung’s notion of the ego (where it’s all brought together), the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. We all share, as human beings, some very deep something that binds us all together, yet at, let us say, certain not-so-deep levels, this connectivity manifests as culture or shared vital and lived experiences. Now …
In the article, it is clear that Green, Elison and Baraka all share something common that manifests in their particular approach to and understanding of aesthetics, yet, each is differentiated in some way from the others. The usual approach to “explaining” this would be race, but for me that’s a bit problematic because there is actually no such thing, at least biologically, which is what too many folks would have us believe. Alternately I prefer to see Gebser’s structures at work as a way of “explaining” the similarities/differences of the individuals involved: there is a commonness of experience (both vital … let us say at the deepest roots of our being … and undergone … for example growing up black-skinned in the United States) they share but which receives very individualistic shaping, namely the stories from the common pot that speak to one more than other stories do, or undergone experiences that then modify one’s own vital experiences.
Having had my own experiences (of both types) which shape me, I find the access that, in this case, Green, Elison, and Baraka have toward the subject another layer (hence, vicarious) of experience that becomes helpful in gaining a deeper appreciation of the subject. By the same token, I don’t feel excluded (which could easily happen via a race-based approach to explanation), but rather am aware of how it is that we can get to places where we are in our lives and why some folks simply have more deeply based access to notionalities that may escape me.
This is, I see, starting to get a bit abstract, so I’ll leave it at that for the moment. Of course, if all of this really doesn’t help, don’t hesitate to call me on it and get back with your questions.
Thanks for taking the time to share your insights and perspective(s) in detail. I’m familiar with Gebser, especially having taken part in the recent read-through with Marco and Jeremy’s guidance. But Gebser is deep and profound enough that a developmental summary and etymological review of terms is always good! Especially when handled with the care and precision you’ve displayed above.
In looking back over the Packer piece, I saw that Green is the black American chap to which you referred. If I’m reading your first statement correctly, then I think we have a slight disagreement. You wrote:
“The moment we step back and see that what is being presented is, in essence, the difference between vital and lived experience (or, as Gebser would put it, Erlebnis vs. Erfahrung), I think we can rapidly gain an appreciation for what some individuals, like Green, master the transitions more effectively than, say, Elison and Jones/Baraka (whereby I appreciated very much Invisible Man and Blues People for the additional shift in (vicarious) experience that each has provided me).”
You imply that as an artist Green was able to navigate the developmental tensions and transitions in his art more effectively than Ellison and Baraka. (If my characterization is inaccurate, please clarify.) If this is indeed your implication, I’d say in response that it may be true that Green mastered the transitions better than Baraka, but Ellison, rather, is a grand master, a master of masters.
Take this statement from “The World and the Jug,” which, recall, the article’s author quotes from. It speaks to the issues we and the author are discussing with typical Ellisonian eloquence:
“One unfamiliar with what Howe stands for would get the impression that when he looks at a Negro he sees not a human being but an abstract embodiment of living hell. He seems never to have considered that American Negro life (and here he is encouraged by certain Negro ‘spokesmen’) is, for the Negro who must live it, not only a burden (and not always that) but also a discipline–just as any human life which has endured so long is a discipline teaching its own insights into the human condition, its own strategies of survival. There is a fullness, even a richness here–and here despite the realities of politics, perhaps, but nevertheless here and real. Because it is human life. And Wright [Richard Wright, author of Native Son], for all of his indictments, was no less a product than that other talented Mississippian, Leontyne Price. To deny in the interest of revolutionary posture that such possibilities of human richness exist for others, even in Mississippi, is not only to deny us our humanity but to betray the critic’s commitment to social reality. Critics who do so should abandon literature for politics.”
Ellison’s stance, published in December 1963, actually gives aesthetic and philosophical grounding and validation for Green’s, as did Green’s predecessor, Leontyne Price.
If by chance you are referring to the author’s claim that “Ellison withdrew into a world of mandarin privilege that isolated him from younger black artists—to the detriment of both sides,” I’d say that the author is too beholden to the viewpoints of latter day critics of Ellison, such as his biographer Arnold Rampersad. See Conversations with Ralph Ellison for evidence of master-journeyman conversations between Ellison and younger black artists. Ellison was open to writers such as Stanley Crouch and James Alan McPherson in the very period in which he was supposedly in a world of mandarin privilege. Me thinks that George Packer may have unwittingly committed the same error for which he pillories Moody.
To witness my take on Ellison’s contribution, in retrospect, after the Mau-Mau days of slinging Molotov “Uncle Toms” by black nationalists and their ilk in the '60s, and in relation to Baraka as well as Consciousness & Culture vs. The Fallacy of Race (or, as my colleague Crouch calls it, the “decoy” of race), then take an hour or so and check out the debate that Marco graciously linked to above. Then let’s continue our dialogic colloquy.
Ed, I do think you’re getting to something with this notion of experience in both senses of Erlebnis and Erfahrung, as these terms apply both to an individual artist’s experience (out of which the art is made) as well as the experience necessitated by one who would seek to understand…or really grok that art.
Could we say there are vital and lived dimensions to art, and that the vital might be more immediately accessible (especially in music) than the lived experience, which we actually have to undergo in our own lives, and work for, to appreciate?
I think we often regard vicarious experience as sort of secondary to one’s own “lived experience”—but maybe it becomes something really important and essential when we interpret it in terms of a capacity for empathy. It seems to take a fair amount extra effort to have “authentic” vicarious experience, as it were, which involves learning about and resonating with another mind across all sorts of differences of lived experience.
But insofar as a work or style of art is explicitly or implicitly about a particular shared experience—for example, the experience of being identified with a racial or other cultural (mental) category—then I think it’s fair to argue that there is more of an immediacy of resonance if one shares that lived experience.
But what if the art is not only about a specific, culturally shared lived experience, but simultaneously (without diminishing, negating, or erasing the former) a more individual and universal, multidimensional form of experience?
Maybe another way of saying this is: At what point does Black Art just become Art?
At the same time, one of the questions I’m interested in is whether there IS something essential to be learned from the lived experience of Artists who are black?
For example, when we began reading The Ever-Present Origin, one of the contextual realities I tried to keep in mind was that Gebser was essentially a war refugee, writing during a time of great, violent upheaval, and that this certainly must reflect in his thought. It’s not the only important thing about him, biographically, but it’s part of what makes his writing embody a certain quality of intensity, a seriousness and sobriety of purpose, I believe.
And to tie in to Greg’s reply (which he posted while I was composing my own, so I won’t be able to include it fully), there is discipline of being human which is particularly instructive, I believe, in work forged under conditions of transition and duress. There is a quality of vital experience, as well, which manifests in powerful ways from that undergone experience. (And the alchemy of art transforms death and destruction into life and re-creation.)
That intensity of vital AND lived experience is what comes through in the Blues…or Shostakovich…or David Foster Wallace…or Toni Morrison…or any great artist, really.
It’s pretty cool that we can find some ways of getting Gebser in dialogue with Ellison!
PS. I’d love to follow up further with your post, Greg, but I need to take a computer break. But there is no rush here. This is a very rich and complex topic…
This is an accurate characterization, and an excellent deepening of the dialog to say the least.
There is certainly a difference between an impression I get when reading (and I’ll admit probably faster than I should be) and what might lie behind that impression when considered by someone, like yourself, who has engaged and is engaging the subject more intensively. This is good, and helpful.
Your follow-up explanations are both enriching and challenging, so as soon as I do find an hour (my daughter’s getting married next weekend and things are, let us say, a bit on the hectic side at the moment), I will certainly check out the debate Marco linked to. (What is more, it may give Marco the opportunity to drop his own two-cents into the discussion, as he said he intends to.)
My initial impression, though, has certainly been reinforced by what you said, and by that I mean the vital/lived experience distinction that Gebser brings to the party. I certainly appreciate your taking time to answer so thoroughly … I’ll be back.
[quote=“madrush, post:8, topic:341”]
Could we say there are vital and lived dimensions to art, and that the vital might be more immediately accessible (especially in music) than the lived experience, which we actually have to undergo in our own lives, and work for, to appreciate?[/quote]
My immediate reaction would be to say “yes”. I think this is what underlies what is too often incorrectly attributed to “race”, and I think these apply across the board, not just to art. Even if we start accumulating experience in that particular mileau, it is still primarily undergone, and I can only say from my many years of living in a foreign culture (which may have analogical value) I’m still only scratching the surface on what’s “Germanness”, for example, but it certainly resonates with what you also wrote, namely:
[quote=“madrush, post:8, topic:341”]
I think we often regard vicarious experience as sort of secondary to one’s own “lived experience”—but maybe it becomes something really important and essential when we interpret it in terms of a capacity for empathy. It seems to take a fair amount extra effort to have “authentic” vicarious experience, as it were, which involves learning about and resonating with another mind across all sorts of differences of lived experience.[/quote]
The empathy aspect resonantes well with me. Though I don’t react Germanly in many instances, I do have a greater understanding of why they react as they do in certain situations. My general everyday capacity for empathy is certainly helpful, but there are times when I feel that the empathy is more intense because of the gathering of both vital and lived experience. I think such is generally possible but obviously it requires more attention and effort the less direct the connection is. You’ve picked up precisely on what I was trying to get across using the word “vicarious” in differing contexts. Too often we associate “vicarious” with “only” or “merely” reading, but I think you would agree it goes beyond this. Discussions (or “colloquies” as Greg aptly labeled them) are one of the varying forms of vicariousness that I would include in my own understanding of the notion.
Agreed, and in this respect I may have missed something important in my first reading of the article and which Greg pointed out in his response to my other post.
[quote=“madrush, post:8, topic:341”]
But what if the art is not only about a specific, culturally shared lived experience, but simultaneously (without diminishing, negating, or erasing the former) a more individual and universal, multidimensional form of experience?
Maybe another way of saying this is: At what point does Black Art just become Art?[/quote]
If I were to approach this via a Mental structure approach, I would say that Black Art always is Art, much like the relationship between genus and species. The characterization neither adds to nor detracts from its artness, but there are aspects of that art that are certainly more accessible to and more poignant when considered in a specific experiential modality. I would also think that integral experiences intensify certain aspects of a given work of art and that integral art calls forth more multidimensional forms of experience even if these are neither uniquely individual nor generally integral.
Again, my immediate, gut reaction is “yes”, unequivocally. The sharing of experience is, in my mind, always a good thing. It depends a lot on the recipient what s/he wants to/can/may/will do with the engagement, as well as how intense it is, how determined and how open it may be.
One of the things I learned from Gebser, I might add, is what “being open to something” means. What was once a rather vague, hopeful, perhaps even wannabe, “tolerance” has become much more of a down-and-dirty, essential, vital, vivid willingness to engage. Or, put another way, no mere passive reaction to but rather an active engagement with whatever I encounter.
And yes, these are just some initial thoughts. I need some reflection time.
All the best to you and your family, proud Poppa! Having walked down the aisle twice I know what it’s like a week before the big day. Look forward to your return.
I took another pass at the material, going a little more deeply this time (I hope), including reading through a discussion on Greg’s Facebook page about the same essay:
I also just gave it some general thought over weekend, and came to feel that (among other things) it might be important for me to express more clearly why I’m even interested in the discussion in the first place.
Frankly (in case it wasn’t obvious), I feel very much like an outsider to inner cultural nuances of this particular debate—indeed, black culture in general—even through I’ve grown with it in so many ways, as it’s simply part of American (and global) culture. (I appreciate your point, Ed, about black art always already being art. Why do the universal and the particular have to be in opposition, except by deficient mentality?)
But I think black art is unique in our larger, shared and emergent culture(s) because in so many ways it subverts and puts into question predominant narratives. At the same time, like all counter-narratives, it becomes subject to (sometimes willing) co-optation by the structures sustaining those predominant narratives. There is a real struggle there, always a tension—which is basically the criticism against Ellison, as I understand it, a claim that he sold out to those structures.
What I understand Greg to be saying, however, is that Ellison was actually engaged in holding a complexity of tensions in a way his critics might not recognize or value, neither “selling out” to a dominant culture nor “buying in” to a deficient racial ideological contruct. Greg’s emphasis (made in one of his Facebook comments) on the distinction between race and culture is crucial, I’ve come to see, as race is essentially a deficient mental category, whereas culture is about lived experience; it’s inherently complex, deep and lateral. Yet in much discourse, the two are conflated.
The reason this is important to me, personally, is because I feel a great deal of suspicion regarding “predominant cultural narratives” and I’m finding in black artists some really powerful expressions validating my suspicions…indeed, my outright disagreement with these constructions of the world.
I might not share the Erfahrung of being a black man in America, but neither am I completely untouched by the incredible violence human beings have unleashed on other human beings going back at least 10,000 years, of which modern racism is just one ugly expression. The question is, what do we, as human beings, do with these experiences? How we redeem the traumas of history, as much as of our own lives? How do we create something better? And to my mind, one of the answers to this, one of the most profound gifts we can receive/give, is that we can use our experiences to make art. To create beauty, inspire joy, feed our hunger for real freedom…
I’m learning to be a humble student of the path.
But one thing I know is that art is about the expansion, intensification, and integration of experience. And in a sense, all cultural experience is vicarious. But the vicarious can become lived experience through the act of empathic engagement—has to become so, in fact, for real integration to occur. And it might even be that an outsider perspective—if there’s real aesthetic and ethical empathy there—could be unique and valuable in its own right, though different from the insider view; and that, moreover, it could be a conduit to its own valuable contexts, insights, gifts. This is what I might aspire to. The problem lies in disqualifying any view a priori, which is perhaps one of the underlying dynamics in the Packer-Moody debate that I’m more sensitized to now.
Ultimately, I think the question we need to ask is: What does the art itself have to say?
This is why I think we need to go to sources (such as Gebser, Ellison, et al), do our homework—and actually integrate the lived experiences of those engagements within ourselves—as a matter of cultural edification and spiritual intensification, and not the least of which, to make our own art.
Thanks, Greg and Ed, for your openness to the conversation! I’m curious what others might think, too…
