Existentialist thought in African

American literature before 1940 Melvin

G Hill
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/existentialist-thought-in-african-american-literature-be
fore-1940-melvin-g-hill/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm: Asian, African, and

Euro-American Perspectives Richard Wolf

https://ebookmass.com/product/thought-and-play-in-musical-rhythm-
asian-african-and-euro-american-perspectives-richard-wolf/

Glencoe Literature American Literature, Teacher's

Edition Glencoe Mcgraw Hill

https://ebookmass.com/product/glencoe-literature-american-
literature-teachers-edition-glencoe-mcgraw-hill/

Collective Courage: A History of African American

Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice 1st Edition,
(Ebook PDF)

https://ebookmass.com/product/collective-courage-a-history-of-
african-american-cooperative-economic-thought-and-practice-1st-
edition-ebook-pdf/

Inequality and African-American Health: How Racial

Disparities Create Sickness Shirley A. Hill

https://ebookmass.com/product/inequality-and-african-american-
health-how-racial-disparities-create-sickness-shirley-a-hill/
African Americans in Conservative Movements 1st ed.
Edition Louis G. Prisock

https://ebookmass.com/product/african-americans-in-conservative-
movements-1st-ed-edition-louis-g-prisock/

Modern Death in Irish and Latin American Literature 1st

ed. 2020 Edition Jacob L. Bender

https://ebookmass.com/product/modern-death-in-irish-and-latin-
american-literature-1st-ed-2020-edition-jacob-l-bender/

the Language of Thought Napoleon Hill

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-language-of-thought-napoleon-
hill/

Aaron McDuffie Moore: An African American Physician,

Educator, and Founder of Durham's Black Wall Street
Blake Hill-Saya

https://ebookmass.com/product/aaron-mcduffie-moore-an-african-
american-physician-educator-and-founder-of-durhams-black-wall-
street-blake-hill-saya/

Empire of Letters: Writing in Roman Literature and

Thought from Lucretius to Ovid Stephanie Ann Frampton

https://ebookmass.com/product/empire-of-letters-writing-in-roman-
literature-and-thought-from-lucretius-to-ovid-stephanie-ann-
frampton/
Existentialist Thought
in African American
Literature before 1940
Existentialist Thought
in African American
Literature before 1940

Edited by Melvin G. Hill

LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York• London
Published by Lexington Books
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
450 1 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com

Unit A. Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street. London SE 1 1 4AB

Copyright© 20 1 6 by Lexington Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher. except by a reviewer who
may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 978- 1 -4985- 1 480-4 (hardcover)

ISBN 978- 1 -4985- 1 48 1 - 1 (e-book)
'°'™
� The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSl/NISO Z39.48- 1 992.

Printed in the United States of America

 Contents

Acknowledgments vii

I ntroduction : The Legacy of Existential ism i n African A merican

Literature before 1 940 ix
Melvin G. Hill

1 Moral ity, Art, and the Self: Existentialism in Frederick Douglass

and S0ren Kierkegaard
Timothy Golden
2 I ' m Not Here : Existential Acts in Nineteenth-Century
African A merican Women' s Narrative 21
Jeannine King
3 Sutton E. Griggs' s Existential Vision in Imperium in Imperio:
The New Negro 35
Melvin G. Hill
4 Existential A uthenticity in Early Twentieth-Century African
American Passing Narratives 51
Renee Barlow
5 "Clare Kendry Cared Nothing for the Race. She Only
Belonged to It": The I ntersectional Bad Faith of Race and
Gender in Nel la Larsen ' s Passing 65
Chase Dimock
vi Contents

Index 83
About the Contri butors 85
 Acknowledgments

The talented contri butors within this collection are acknowledged and
thanked for their effort to produce an important text that extends our conver­
sation of black existential thought. 1 would like to thank members who served
on my dissertation committee several years ago who saw the potential of this
project and believed that it has a genuine purpose within African American
Studies. Most important, I would like to thank Ronald L. Strickland for his
will ingness to help me achieve my goals, and ulti mately, for his friendship.
His intellectual kindred spirit and expression of insights have hel ped me
conti nue to develop as a scholar. 1 also would like to thank Li ndsey Porambo
and Lexington Books for thei r support and understandi ng, and for seeing
the i mportance of this book. 1 would like to especially thank Rita Reese for
her energy and support. Marvin and Erma H i l l , my parents, are thanked for
their dedication in insti l l ing in me values and principles that have become a
cornerstone of our fam ily heritage. Without question, gratitude goes to my
three children (who are not small anymore) Brandon, Brittney, and Chris,
who have been a site of inspiration and hope. And to Darlene, my wife, thank
you for your endurance and fortitude, patience and love. Words are too weak
to adequately express what you mean to me.
 Introduction

The Legacy of Existentialism in

African American Literature before 1940

Melvin G. Hill

The essays included in this col lection, Existentialist Thought in African

American Literature before 1940, serves as an ontologi cal discussion of the
legacy of existential thought in African American l iterature that predates the
codification of the term by Jean- Paul Sartre in the post-World War II period
and twentieth-century canonical figure in African American existential ism
Richard Wright. It expl icitly situates within African American l iterary tradi­
tions a histori cal context of what it means to be human, and uti l izes exi sten­
tial concepts to better understand the l ived-situation of black exi stence or
bl ackness in America before the Sartrean period. This period is emphasized
in large part because Sartre stands as the nexus between existential thought
and the African American experience. He was particularly interested and
expressly concerned about the lived-situation of African Americans as seen
in his "Retour des Etats Unis: Ce qui j ' ai appris du probleme noir" ("Return­
ing from the United States: What I Learned about the Black Problem," 1 945)
and in Cahiers pour une morale ( 1 983). Simi larly, most scholars consider
Wright's contribution to existential ist thought in African American l iterature
as a defi n itive marker during the twentieth century. Certai nly, both of his
novels Native Son ( 1 940) and The Outsider ( 1 953) are hal lmarks of exis­
tential ist thought and continue to exempl ify his phi l osophical i mportance as
seen in James B. Haile I l l ' s Philosophical Meditations on Richard Wright
(20 1 2) and Julien Coom lan Hounkpe's Existentialism in African American
Literature: Essays on Richard Wright's Native Son and The Outsider (20 1 2).
However, existential i st thought emerges i n much earl ier l iterary works writ­
ten by African Americans who engaged ontological questions about black
exi stence and the desire for meaning against the i l l s of modernity .1
x Introduction

Existential ism is, arguably, the ultimate philosophical statement of moder­

nity. Modernity emphasizes individualism, self-reliance, scientific objectivity,
the decl ine of rel igion and community, the commodification of values, and
a preoccupation with the definition of humanity. Arising out of European
Enlightenment, modernity accentuates a worldview enabling a person' s socio­
psychological disposition to be open to the future and shapes the conviction
that a person' s hopes and expectations need not be anchored in the context
of his or her previous experience.2 These features of modernity have shaped
the experiences of African Americans, or the "New World diaspora," more
profoundly than perhaps any other group, yet, existentialist thought articulates
a set of problems and concerns that the European tradition has often ignored
or dismissed. The experience of being "Black" in the context of Western
modernity is distinctly an existential experience that engages ontological and
teleological inquiries of identity and belonging. Such concerns have existential
significance when radicalized through states of being, such as agency, dread,
anguish, despair, identity, nihil ism, nothingness, freedom, al ienation, and
suffering. In this context, African American existentialist thought becomes a
methodological practice where singular or col lective consciousness questions
the meaning of one's existence in relation to being-in-the-world.
African American .existentialism 's abiding concerns with the definition
of humanity as wel l as with the individual ' s need to actualize oneself under
conditions of social, rel igious, and psychological al ienation are epitomized,
in very l iteral terms, by the black struggle to assert one's essential humanity
in the face of dehumanizing slavery, segregation, and other forms of racism. 3
Against such staggering odds, communal ly oriented structures of traditional
African societies survive in the col lective unconscious of African Americans
living under communal-and fami ly-destroying social structures imposed by
slavery, poverty, and complex social forces of racism . Against social con­
structs foregrounded in American racism, African Americans exist, virtually,
stand out; that is, emerge from a vastness of nothingness and state of mean­
inglessness in order to consciously define their own meaning. George Yancy
asserts that to exist is to "take a stand regarding one's being, direction, and
destiny," and Lewis R. Gordon ably points out that "to exist at al l is to appear
to some consciousness, even if that means from one's point of view."4 As
such, African American existential ism becomes an attractive mode of thought
because it offers African Americans a way to reimagine and redefine their
identity, and reaffirm value in their existence. Christine M. Korsgaard sug­
gests that human beings must value-their "own humanity" if they are going to
value anything at al l . 5 African American existential ism is an act of conscious­
ness and a commitment to one's own humanity. African American existential­
ism is as much a legacy as it is a phi losophical and literary tradition.
 Introduction xi

The legacy of existentialist thought i n African American l iterature is preva­

lent and present in various l iterary traditions. B ut it is uni ntentional ; l ittle
attention has been given to what I call first-wave existential i st thought i n Af­
rican American l iterature.6 Gordon pinpoints that "existential insights can be
found i n the 1 8th-century poetry of Phi l l i s Wheatley and various early narra­
tives and novels by former slaves and freed blacks in the 1 9th-century."7 His
observation has not been followed by any extensi ve exami nation of particular
authors during these periods. Although a few scholars have explored exis­
tential motifs found in African American l iterature, they have focused thei r
attention predominately on n ineteenth-century freedom fighter Frederick
Douglass and his autobiography, and on twentieth-century exploratory exis­
tential i st writer Richard Wright and his novels Native Son and The Outsider.
The significance of exi stential i st thought i n African American l iterature
is its framing of African American experiences, writing from an existential
context that renders i ndividual experiences meani ngful whil e allowing those
personal particularities to be a profound provenance of knowledge. Gordon
argues, "for a long time there was a deni al of black i nner l ife, for black sub­
jectivity; the notion of a black person ' s point of view suggested conscious­
ness of the world, which would call for dynamics of reciprocal recognition."8
As a valuable medi um of expression, African American existential i st litera­
ture functions as a lens through which to vividly convey the l ived-situation
of African Americans and communicate the emotions and attitudes that are
relevant and specific to black l i fe. In other words, these embodied experi­
ences are exposed. Remarkably, existential i st thought in African American
l iterature sets forth to expose the significance of African American humanity
through language that not only provi des existenti al i nsights, but also, and
perhaps equally i mportant, reinforces the fixity of what Desiree H. Melton
calls "existential tones."
Melton poignantly articulates that the usage of existenti al themes-such as
dread, despair, alienation, and anguish---d o not solely constitute existential­
i st l iterature, but in fact, it's the existential tones by which the reader is able
to connect with the character and/or condition that makes for more authentic
existential i st l iterature. She notes, "an existentiali st tone that captures and
conveys the paradoxes of existence in a profound way allowing the reader to
experience it is crucial to existential ist fiction."9 Melton ' s analysis suggests
that existenti al i st tones have the potential to bridge the reader and the experi­
ence in meani ngful ways. It is the existentiali st tone that primarily i nvites the
reader to better understand the experience.
For instance, in Twelve Years a Slave, Narrative of a Citizen ofNew York,
Solomon Northup, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in
1853, from a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River, in Louisiana ( 1 853),
xii Introduction

Solomon Northup provides a harrowing memoir about his l i fe as a slave for

twelve years on a Louisiana cotton plantation. As he narrates his own experi­
ences within the historical context of slavery, he provides the most tel l ing
account of "the unfortunate Patsey," inviting the reader into his arduous
undertaking of breaking Patsey. Northup writes:

When I had struck [Patsey] as many as th irty times, I stopped, and turned around
toward Epps, hoping he was sati sfied; but with bitter oaths and threats, he or­
dered me to continue. I inflicted ten or fifteen blows more. By th is time her back
was covered with long welts, intersecting each other like net work [ . . . ] Throw­
ing down the whip, I declared I cou ld punish her no more. He ordered me to go
on, threaten ing me with more severe fl ogging than she had received, in case of
refusal . My heart revolted at the inhumane scene, and risking the consequences,
I absolutely refused to raise the whip.10

Northup enabl es the reader to draw nearer to his experience without grappl i ng
with ideas of anguish because the existential tone of angui sh al lows the reader
to feel it: "My heart revolted{ . . . ] I absolutely refused to raise the whip. " He
descri bes the moment, and the moment is cast on the reader' s imagination,
providing a more meaningful engagement with the character as the language
and mood contextualizes the experience.
Through a disjoi nted relationship with his own body, Northup experiences
his identity from the locus as slave and slave breaker. In short, Mr. Epps
forced Northup i nto a decision that produced acts of brutal ity that articulated
his angu ish. Rather than j ust tel l ing the reader that he is experiencing anguish
while brutal ly wh ipping Patsey, Northup-as author-pens his particularity
in such a way that it al lows the reader a certain connectedness through both
language and mood. As such, the reader gets a sense of what anguish is like
for Northup in that moment. The double hel ix of existential insights and tones
provides a richer understanding of what it means to be human and exposes
the reader to meaningful experiences. To better situate historical existential ist
writings, it would be best to frame the progression of the legacy of existential­
ist thought in African American l iterature.
The legacy of exi stential ism in African American l iterature is apparent
in texts that mobi lized a discourse of race and humanity during the social
and epistem ic violence of American slavery . Through the lens of an African
American agential real ity, a network of African Ameri can writers del ivered
pol itical , social, and eth ical projects that chal lenged the discourse of white
dom inance, rhetoric, and id eology . Th is moment was not simply an indica­
tor of black embodied subjectivity within the colonial situation, but more so,
it specifical ly characterized the black struggl e for humanity that had been
crucial ly denied. As faithful adherents to the ideals of l i berty and eq ual ity,
 Introduction xiii

early A frican American writers explored human existence in a world where

black bodies were not seen as a source of meaning and significance. Those
who developed an exam i nation of the bleak existential real ities of black l i fe
simultaneously shaped and enriched the manner i n which t o understand those
experiences historical ly.
The first and foremost proponents of early existential ist thought i n African
American l iterature can be found in the works of writers such as, but not lim­
ited to, David Walker, Hosea Easton, Martin R. Delany, Harriet Jacobs, and
Frederick Douglass. However, Douglass remains the most frequently cited
forerunner as seen in the scholarship of prominent phi losophers Lewis R.
Gordon and George Yancy. Moreover, one could expand the scope of early
existentialist thought to include its precursor such as Phi l l i s Wheatley, who
provides a conceptual body of existentialist insights. In her Poems on Various
Subjects, Religious, and Moral ( 1 773), readers can find evidence of al ienation
and despair that are i nextricably bound together to her experiences as a slave
as seen in "Being Brought from Africa to America" and "On Recollection."
Whi le Harriet Jacobs' s narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written
by Herself( 186 1 ), is an examination of both the institution of slavery and the
system of patriarchy, it also recounts the feminist existential di lemma of black
motherhood, existential resistance to sexual brutal ity, and the fundamental
absurdity of choice. Living in the context of dehumanization, oppression, and
enslavement, these works-l ike many others-exemplify early manifestation
of existentialism that not only emerged as philosophical thought and practice,
but also, defined black agency within their own cultural space.
The m id-to-late nineteenth century ushered in concerns for African Ameri­
cans and their future i n the United States that involved emancipation without
means of economic survival and national citizenship. As such, an existential
project was produced to address questions of identity, essence, and action,
which are the locus of African American existential thought. I n Sartrean
language, it was a project of being and becoming. As such, th is exi stential
project renarrates, redefines, rearticulates, and expands the meaning of its
being-in-the-world against the constructs of whiteness and its racist func­
tions and ram i fications within modernity. Yancy emphasizes that such an
existential project i nvolves a "continual hermeneutic reassessment of who
and what Black identity means, and what the social, pol itical, and existential
implications are." 1 1 African American writers understood the social, pol itical,
and existential implications of such an underpinning and strove to produce
literary works that fundamental ly shaped identity and meaning through
critical consciousness towards the turn of the nineteenth century. Their works
embodied existential thought and action that were necessary to affi rm their
humanity and dignity against white racism, oppression, dehumanization, and
xiv Introduction

violence. Although th is period in African American exi stential ists ' genealogy
might have been overlooked, it is important to note, one of the central ideas
that emerged duri ng the ontogen ic existential project is the treatment of the
New Negro as a critical framework for rethinking black identity . 12
As a di mension of this existential project, several writers spoke coura­
geously from m ultiple viewpoints to deconstruct the assumptions that sup­
ported j udgments that people of African descent were worthless and subhu­
man . The central interlocutors of this existential project, namely, Anna Julia
Cooper, Sutton E. Griggs, and W. E. B. DuBois, envisioned an active engage­
ment of race consciousness to create spaces of l iberation and equal ity within
the complexities of black life. Anna Julia Cooper-intell ectual , educator, and
activist-authored numerous pamphlets and articles, and publ ished a compi­
lation of speeches and other writi ngs i n her most infl uential work, A Voice
from the South (1892), where she exempli fied an exi stential and ontological
paradigm that takes seriously black womanist exi stence. She expressively
argues "for bl ack women ' s voices and the tel ling of their own hi storical truths
so that everyone would know their status and aspirations from black women
themselves."13 Cooper' s i deas inextricably resonate with an existential thesis
of subjectivity, as seen in "Womanhood : A Vital Element in the Regenera­
tion and Progress of a .Race" ( 1892) where she outspokenly argues that the
adequate education of African American women is criti cal to the racial upl i ft
paradigm . And, i n "What Are W e Worth?" (1892), she poi nts out that there i s
substantial val ue in African American women compared t o their male coun­
terparts and there is j ustification for such an investment. Cooper serves as an
early womanist contributor in the exi stential project, formulating a hal lmark
thesis of not only black val ue, but also, the importance of black womanist
investment in the advancement of the community at large.
Sutton E. Griggs was systematical ly devoted to the existential proj ect of
fosteri ng ideas that would produce economic, cultural, social, and political
advancement among the black populace. Griggs's l iterary canon includes
five novels and a plethora of autobiographical, political, and religious essays,
as wel l as publ ic speeches and sermons on moral guidance and social upl ift.
His contribution to the exi stential project is first seen in Imperium in Imperio
(1899), where he not only addresses concerns of belonging and al ienation, but
also notions of a new identity that embodies a consciousness that proactively
creates a space for African Americans to exist. Thi s rai ses paramount ques­
tions regarding what is indicated by one's blackness and how blackness gets
defined in the world of whiteness. -This is the existential crosscurrent that
is present with Griggs ' s lead protagonists-Belton Piedmont and Bernard
Belgrave-who become the locus of racial upl ift, political power, and social
progress in order to create and sustain civil and national identity.
 Introduction xv

It would be difficult to discuss the existential project within African

American existential ist l iterature without giving attention to the work of
W. E. B. DuBois. Often seen as one of the earl iest black phi losoph ical thi nk­
ers of the twentieth century and recognized as the "dean of African American
scholars," DuBois brought out existential insights concern ing black suf­
fering, n i h i l ism, and belonging. He was aware of how white imagination
and its system of negation gave rise to mythopoeic constructions of black
humanity, and its hardeni ng impact on black exi stence resulting in exi sten­
tial phenomenological concerns. In his famous essay "The Conversation of
Races" ( 1 897), DuBois explains the existential di lemma of confl icting social
identity and j ustified the significance of the Negro in white America. He
extends his argument in his most reveal i ng work, The Souls of Black Folk
( 1 903), where he provides profound revelations into how the black body gets
configured into the vastness of white space and how it experiences its "two­
ness," "second sight," "double consciousness." DuBoi s ' s concept of double
consciousness addresses confl icts of identity, specifical ly, black identity that
suffers anguish. He writes: "one ever feels his twoness-an American, a Ne­
gro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals
in one dark body."1 4 In short, one never experiences a unified identity from
the locus of self-imposed meani ng, able to embrace al l that one is, feel ing the
intersecti onal ity of both ethnicity and human ity. I ndeed, th is is the existential
di lemma. At the heart of both aforementioned DuBoisian works is the ques­
tion of identity-Who am l ?-and it is the exi stential question that conti nues
to play itself out in African American l iterature throughout the twentieth
century.
Unq uestionably, the first three decades of the twentieth century marked
a flourishing moment of existential thought in African American l iterature.
Works publ ished during this period made significant contributions to the
exi stential project, reveal ing new di mensions in addressing existential i s­
sues : identity and l iberation, affirmation and nihil ism, despai r and anguish,
being and meaning. Many African A merican writers and i ntel lectuals were
tasked with formulating arguments agai nst white racist ideology, promoting
black subjectivity and consciousness, and affirm i ng heritage and culture in
meani ngful, creative ways. This, in turn, signified a profound rescripting of
black identity, transform ing the black sel f-image in a way that "involves the
asymmetry of representational power." 1 5 Several writers have recogn izable
exi stential i nsights located i n their works although they have not been con­
sidered existential ist writers. Writers as di verse as Charles Chesnutt, Rudolph
Fi sher, Wal lace Thurman, Nel la Larsen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Alain Locke,
Zora Neal Hurston-to name a few--can be appropriately placed within the
exi stential ist tradition.
xvi Introduction

Charles Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars ( 1 900) and Jessie Red­
man Fauset's Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral ( 1 928) examine complex
political and social problems embodied in corporeal distortions of epidermis
schema. In these works, the "color l i ne" barrier is blurred without detection
in order to not only envision an alternate identity, but also to ontologically re­
write an existing narrative. Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars tells the
story of siblings-Rena and John Walden-who attempt to provide meaning
to their existence through self-invention i n order to transcend social and raci al
limitations. The ideas of anguish and embodied agency are underlying exis­
tential themes that take precedence and "passing" becomes the metaphor for
authenticity in the novel. While Fauset's Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral
contains simi lar existential elements, it explores the constitutive i mportance
of choice and necessity of "existential commitment" where protagonist A n­
gela M urray (Angele Mory)-second "passing" generation-deci des to not
only continue the fam i ly tradition of racial passing, but also takes responsibi l­
ity to tackle and dismantle her constructed identity as a necessary process of
subjective conviction i n oFder to obtain freedom.
The idea of existential absurdity appears i n Nel la Larsen's first publica­
tion Quicksand ( 1 928) where Helga Crane, a tragic m ulatta figure, struggles
not only to find acceptance and meaning in her l ife, but also to find a sense
of val ue across racial divides from blood kinship, friends, and "Others."
What remains at the conclusion of the novel is her "longing for reason"­
using Albert Camus' idea-and the truisms of an absurd world in which
she lived. Simi lar points-can be made in regards to Wal lace Thurman' s The
Blacker the Berry ( 1 929) where his "luscious black complexion" protagonist
Emma Lou Morgan searches for a sense of connectedness within her black
culture. Emma Lou experiences existential sorrows (al ienation and nothi ng­
ness) where she struggles to accept and find the mean ing of her darker black
skin. She saw her darker blackness as a "curse" and had fallen in need of
salvation from her "sin" as she attempted to remedy it by applying an "excess
of rouge and powder" to whiten her black face. 1 6 However, by the conclu­
sion of her journey, Emma Lou experiences an "existential conversion," or
in Heideggerian language, the "choice to choose oneself' when she rejects
the grounding val ue system that had been placed upon her blackness, and
eventual ly sincerely accepts her darker skin . On her view, she cancels out the
commentary of "Others" and lives with a high estimation of herself.
Other aspects of the legacy of existential ism i n African American l iterature
can be found in other wr iters who have grappled with the ontological con­
cerns that are enclosed within the everydayness of black l i fe. When I consi der
the complete corpus of African American l iterature, I recognize that there is
i ndeed a rich and sophisticated existential ist tradition in African American
 Introduction xvi i

l iterary history. Existential ist thought can be seen in the l i fe and works of
many African A merican writers and thinkers whose central ity addressed the
meaning of being human and the concept of freedom. Ralph El l ison noted it
best: "there is an existential tradition in A merican Negro l ife."1 7
The aim of this project is twofold. First, it is to engage the legacy of exis­
tentialism in African A merican l iterature, establishing that its roots are firm ly
planted in the consciousness of writers before recognizably existentialists
Richard Wright and Jean-Paul Sartre. In this light, it wi l l become more appar­
ent why a rel atively large number of writers' works provide existential insights
for rereading and analyzing the l ived context of African Americans. A lthough
I do not pretend to pursue or explicitly suggest that every text written within
African American l iterary traditions is existential-on the contrary-the
second objective is to present a provocative reflection of literary works that
exemplify its existential value in relation to its central concern with black ex­
istence. When one considers the legacy of existentialism in African American
l iterature, a continuation of consciousness is revealed that already has been
inaugurated within African and African A merican culture itself.
The vision for Existentialist Thought in African American Literature be­
fore 1940 emerged from reading prominent phi losophers George Yancy and
Lewis R. Gordon, who interpreted Frederick Douglass as an existential ist, and
his A Narrative ofthe Life ofFrederick Douglass, An American Slave ( 1 845)
as African American existentialist l iterature. I n The Encyclopedia of Black
Studies (2005), Gordon suggests that there are existential insights l ocated in
eighteenth and nineteenth-century African A merican literature, but offers that
African A merican existential l iterature begins during the 1930s. In A Com­
panion to African American Philosophy (2006), Come! West, prolific scholar
and professor at Princeton University, briefly sketches an African A merican
existentialist tradition mentioning several writers before arguing that the ze­
nith of African American existentialist tradition is inextricably bound in the
life and work of Richard Wright. Within the context of Yancy ' s, Gordon' s,
and West's perspectives, respectfully, the goal of the proj ect arrived in the
following questions: can one meaningfully estab lish a legacy of existential­
ism in African American l iterature that expands beyond Douglass and before
Wright? And if so, what diverse existential consciousness emerges, consider­
ing how black bodies exist within the dimensions of modernity?
This col lection situates these q uestions as a way to further critical discus­
sions and unearth deeper l ayers of understanding of black existence when
confronted with existential dilemma and ontological crisis. Many A frican
American writers since Douglass and before Wright have produced l iterature
that articulated what it means to be human-and a human of color-under the
gaze of whiteness. Indeed, thinking through writers such as Jacobs, Griggs,
xviii Introduction

Chesnutt, and McKay reveals not only an existential consciousness, but also
how important existential consciousness is to African Americans who strug­
gl ed to thrive within social and cultural spaces. The prem ise of the proj ect is
to expand academ ic conversation about the consanguinity between existential
thought and African American l iterature preceding Richard Wright.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS

Existentialist Thought in Aji-ican American Literature before 1940 is divided

into five chapters. They capture and reinforce the analysis set forth in the
Introduction. Each chapter engages the l iterature to reveal its exi stential
insights, offeri ng meaningful perspectives that continue to val idate the sig­
nificance of Afri can American literature and its importance in the study of
l ived-contexts of African Americans.
Timothy Gol den opens the col lection with an insightful and fresh explo­
ration of Frederick Douglass. Instead of shadowing Lewis Gordon ' s and
George Yancy 's analysis of Douglass, Gol den reads Douglass with S0ren
Kierkegaard because Kierkegaard provides an exi stential ist Chri stian point
of view-a view that is evident in Dougl ass 's work throughout his career as
an abol itionist and publ ic intellectual . Golden argues that there are three dis­
ti nctive likenesses between Douglass and Kierkegaard that are rooted in the
same moral and ph i l osoph ical/theological motivation, which is the catalyst
for authentic Chri sti an practice. Th is perspective offers a pi cture of Douglass
that is yet unseen in the extant l iterature and existentialism. In this context,
Douglass appropriates and transforms Christianity for just ends.
Jeanni ne Ki ng's chapter powerfully l i nks existential ism in pre- 1 930s
African-American women ' s oral and written narratives: Sojourner Truth ' s
Ain 't I a Woman? ( 1 85 1 ) and Harriet Jacobs' s Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl. These texts ask two paramount phi losoph ical questions, "why go on?"
and the more cultural ly specific "ain't 1 a woman?" Wh ile black women 's
phi losophy intersects thematical ly with the ph i losophy of Jean-Paul Sartre on
questions of freedom and will, its histori cal context diverges sharply. King
makes the case that black female· existential ism holds to the core of Sojourner
Truth rather than to the th inking of Si mone de Beauvoir. She sees that Truth ' s
and Jacobs's narratives provide new interpretations t o an obscure area o f ex­
istential studies, wh ile chal lengi ng the boundaries of gender studies, African
American l iterary and critic a l theory, and the hi story of phi losophy.
Melvin H i l l focuses his chapter on Sutton E. Griggs's Imperium in Imperio
( 1 899), recognizing that the text fashions Griggs's vision for African Ameri­
cans that captures the ki netic essence and potential ity-for-being-whole within
 Introduction xix

the boarders of the J i m Crow South. His existential vision thrives on the im­
plementation of the New Negro identity narrative formation, an undertaking
that would have the possibil ity to be a paradigm for a more authentic black
existence. Imperium in Imperio, and its relevance to the New Negro identity
narrative formation, more specifical ly, is marked by one significant existen­
tial question : how does one exi st in-situation, or rather, how is an authentic
life achieved for the black? H i l l pul ls from the significant work of Martin
Heidegger' s Being and Time to help address this question, which underscores
Griggs ' s existential vision that is characterized by education, assertion of
rights, and comm unal responsibi l ity within transformative occurrences.
Renee Barlow ' s chapter offers a powerful critique of James Weldon
Johnson ' s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man ( 1 9 1 2) and Nella Larsen ' s
Passing ( 1 929). She explains passi ng by exam ining the authors' depiction of
the process as wel l as its meaning, both individual ized and social, in post­
Reconstruction A merica. By scrutinizing the history of institutional ized op­
pression and slavery and its consequential effect on the struggles of African
Americans, Barlow questions authenticity and the nexus between i ndividual
action and cultural context. Each book, chosen for its excavation of the exis­
tential legacy of African American thought predating 1 940, provides discus­
sion on passing and provokes existential questions equivalent to canonical
existential ist writers.
In the fi nal chapter of the col lection, Chase Dimock i mportantly expands
the discussion of Nel la Larsen ' s texts Quicksand ( 1 928) and Passing ( 1 929)
against the backdrop of bad faith of race, colonial heritage, and sexuality. He
argues that Larsen advances the exi stential conversation on the concept of
bad faith and its influence on racial identity by probi ng mixed-racial identity,
which expands the range of black subjectivity. Larsen ' s discourse echoes
Sartre' s formulation of bad faith in Being and Nothingness, which uses the
story l i ne of a homosexual man ' s denial of his homosexual ity to a "champion
of sincerity" who presses him to reveal his sexual orientati on . Both i ndivi du­
als operate in bad faith; the homosexual to avoid persecution, and the cham­
pion of sincerity by assuming the right to compel this confession though it
is under the del uded notion that the homosexual ' s identity is essential ly and
authentically summarized by homosexuality.

NOTES

I. For extensive perspectives on modernity and black existence, see Lewis R.

Gordon, A n Introduction to A fricana Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge Un iversity
Press, 2008); Frank M. Kirkland, "Modernisms in Black," in A Companion to African-
xx Introduction

American Philosophy, eds. Tommy L. Lott and John P. Pittman (New York: B lackwel l
Publishing, 2006), 67-86 and his "Modernity and Intel lectual Life in Black," in Aji'i­
can American Perspectives and Philosophical Traditions, ed. John P. Pittman (New
York: Routledge, 1 997), 1 36--65 ; and Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and
Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1 993 ).
2. Frank M . Kirkland, "Modernity in Black," African American Perspectives and
Philosophical Traditions, ed. John P. Pittman (New York: Routledge, 1 997), 1 40.
3 . See Lewis R. Gordon ' s "African American Existential Philosophy," in A Com­
panion to African-American Philosophy, eds. Tommy L. Lott and John P. Pittman
(New York: Blackwel l Publishing, 2006). His chapter outl ines and offers an influen­
tial discussion on the body of l iterature on A frican A merican existential philosophy
and bui lds a bridge between Africana and black philosophies of existence.
4. George Yancy, Black Bodies. White Gazes (Lanham , MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2008), 1 65 . Lewis R. Gordon, An Introduction to Africana Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1 3 2.
5 . Christine M . Korsgaar� . The Sources of Normatfrity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1 996), 1 23 .
6 . I define first-wave African American existential ist literature as the writings
that have expressed significan t existential themes and tones beginning with Phi l l i s
Wheatley t o the mid-twentieth century .
7. Lewis R. Gordon, "Black Existential ism," in Encyclopedia of Black Studies,
eds. Molefi Kete Asante and Arna Mazama (Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage, 2005), 1 24.
8. Lewis Gordon, "Africana Thought and African Diasporic Studies," The Black
Scholar 30, nos. 3-4 (2000-200 1 ): 25 .
9. Desiree H . Melton, "Experiencing Existential ism through Theme and Tone:
Kierkegaard and Richard Wright," Philosophical Meditations on Richard Wright ed.
James B. Haile, Ill �Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 20 1 2), 5 2 .
1 0. Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, Narrative of a Citizen of New fork,
Solomon Northup, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853,from
a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River. in Louisiana, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (New
York: Penguin, 1 853/2008), 1 70-7 1 .
1 1 . Yancy, Black Bodies. White Gazes, 1 1 7.
1 2. The first treatment of the New Negro concept appeared before A lain Locke
and the New Negro Movement. In 1 900, Booker T. Washington, assisted by Fannie
Barrier Will iams and N . B . Wood, published A New Negro for a New Century, a col­
lection of biographies, histories, and journal entries that provided an account of the
upward struggles of African Americans. And years later, Will iam Pickens's The New
Negro: His Political, CM/ and Mental Status ( 1 9 1 6) recaptured his experiences in
short essays aimed to affirm the humanity by which "full citizenship" would guar­
antee the rights of African Americans. But it was Sutton E. Griggs who first offered
substantial treatment to the New Negro ideology, and incorporated the term in his first
publication, lmperium in lmperio ( 1 899). I argue that the spirit of the New Negro is
evident in much earl ier works demonstrating the dimension of the existential under­
taking and its currency in previous decades.
 Introduction xxi

1 3 . LaRese Hubbard, "Anna Julia Cooper and Africana Womanism : Some Early
Conceptual Contributions," Black Women. Gender, and Families 4, no. 2 (Fall 20 1 0): 32.
1 4. W . E. B . DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, eds. H enry Louis Gates Jr. and Terri
Hume Oliver (New York: Norton, 1 903/ 1 999), 1 1 .
1 5 . Yancy , Black Bodies, White Gazes, 70.
1 6 . Wal lace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry (New York : Simon and Schuster,
1 929/ 1 996), 2 1 7.
1 7. Maryemma Graham and A mritj it Singh ( Eds.). Conversations with Ralph El­
lison. (Jackson, Mississippi : University Press of M i ssissippi, 1 995 ), 84.

REFERENCES

Chesnutt, Charles W. ( 1 900) 1 993 . The House Behind the Cedars. New York: Pen­
gu in Books.
Cooper, Anna Jul ia. ( 1 892) 1 988. A Voice from the South. New York: Oxford Uni­
versity Press.
-- . ( 1 892) 1 992. "What Are We Worth?" In The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper:
Jncl11ding A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers. and letters.
Edited by Esma Bhan and Charles Lemert. Lanham, M D : Rowman and Littlefield
Publ ishing.
-- . ( 1 892) 1 992. "Womanhood: A V ital Element in the Regeneration and Prog­
ress of a Race." In The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: lncl11ding A Voice from the
South and Other Important Essays. Papers. and letters. Edited by Esma Bhan and
Charles Lemert. Lanham, M D : Rowman and Littlefield Publ ishing.
DuBois, W . E. B . "The Conversation of Races." ( Washington, D.C., 1 897) .
-- . ( 1 903) 1 999. The So11ls of Black Folk. Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and
Terri H ume Oliver. New York: W . W . Norton & Company .
Fauset, Jessie Redmond. ( 1 928) 1 990. Plum Bum: A Novel Without a Moral. N ew
York : Beacon Press.
Gordon, Lewis R. 2000. "Africana Thought and African Diasporic Studies." Tran­
scending Traditions. The Black Scholar 30 (3-4): 25-30.
--. 2008. An Introduction to A.fricana Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­
versity Press.
-- . 2005. "Black Existential ism." In Encyclopedia of Black Studies. Edited by
Molefi Kete Asante and A rna Mazama, 1 23-27. Thousand Oaks, C A : Sage, 2005 .
Graham , Maryemma and Amritjit Singh ( Eds.). 1 995. Conversations with Ralph El­
lison. Jackson, M S : University Press of M i ssissippi .
Griggs, Sutton E. ( 1 899) 2003 . Imperium in lmperio. New York: Modern L ibrary .
Haile I ll, James B. 20 1 2. Philosophical Meditations on Richard Wright. Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books.
H ounkpe, Jul ien Coom lan . 20 1 2. Existentialism in African American literature: Es­
says on Richard Wright's Native Son and The Outsider. Saarbrilcken, Germany :
LAP LAMB ERT Academ ic Publishing.
xxii Introduction

Hubbard, LaRese. 20 1 0. "Anna Julia Cooper and Africana Womanism: Some Early
Conceptual Contributions." Black Women, Gender, and Families 4 (2): 3 1 -5 3 .
Jacobs, Harriet. ( 1 86 1 ) 2000. Incidents i n the life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself.
New York: Penguin Books.
Kirkland, Frank M . 1 997. "Modern ity in B l ack." In African A merican Perspectives
and Philosophical Traditions. Edited by John P. Pittman, 1 3 6--65 . New York:
Routledge.
Korsgaard, Christine M. 1 996. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1 996.
Larsen, Nella. ( 1 928) 2002. Quicksand. New Y ork: Modern Library .
Melton, Desiree H . 20 1 2 . "Experiencing Existential ism through Theme and Tone:
Kierkegaard and Richard Wright." In Philosophical Meditations on Richard
Wright. Edited by James B. Haile I l l , 5 1 --62 . Lanham, M D : Lexington Books.
Northup, Solomon. ( 1 853) 2008. Twelve Years a Slave, Narrative ofa Citizen ofNew
York, Solomon Northup, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in
1853, from a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River, in Louisiana. Edited by H enry
Louis Gates Jr. New Y ork: Penguin, 2008. First pub l ished 1 853 by Derby and
M i l ler.
Pickens, Will iam . ( 1 9 1 6) 1 9 75 . The New Negro: His Political, Civil, and Mental
Status and Related Essays. New York: A rno Press.
Sartre, Jean Pau l . 1 983 . Cahiers pour une morale. Paris: Gal l imard.
-- . 1 945. "Retour des Etats-Unis: Ce qui j ' ai appris du probleme noir." le Figaro.
Thurman, Wal lace. ( 1 929) 1 996. The Blacker the Berry. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
Washington, Booker T., Fannie Barrier W i l liams, and Norman Barton Wood. ( 1 900)
1 969. A New Negro for a New Century: An A ccurate and Up-to-Date Record of the
Upward Struggles of the Negro Race. New York: Arno Press.
West, Cornet. 2006. "Philosophy and the Afro-American Experience." A Companion
to African A merican Philosophy. Edited by Tommy L. Lott and John P. Pittman,
7-32. New York: Blackwell Publishing.
Wheatley, Phill is. (London, 1 773) 1 988. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious, and
Moral. Edited by John Shields. In The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Wright, Richard. 1 940. Native Son. New York: M i l estone Editions.
--. 1 95 3 . The Outsider. New York: Harper and Row.
Yancy, George. 2008. Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of
Race. Lanham, M D : Rowman and L ittlefield.
 C h a p ter One

Morality, Art, and the Self

Existentialism in Frederick Douglass

and Seren Kierkegaard

Timothy Golden

Immanuel Kant once said that mathematics is the good l uck of human
reason. In the same way, one coul d say that existentialism is the good luck
of Christian theology . It has helped to rediscover the classical Christian
interpretation of human existence.

-Paul T i l lich, Systematic Theology 1

I.

Existential ism is not monolithic. Within the range of what philosophers

consider as the existential i st l iterature, there are varying philosophical and
theological views. For example, Martin Heidegger refused the label of ex­
i stentiali st, developing a humanistic ontology in Being and Time that differs
from Jean-Paul Sartre' s ontology of etre-en soi, and etre-pour soi that he de­
veloped in Being and Nothingness. Yet Sartre openly embraced the l abel ex­
i stentiali st, effectively coining the term to apply to thinkers such as himself,
Cam us, and Kafka. And if we extend our view of existentialism back i nto the
nineteenth century, we see an atheistic strain of existentialism in Nietzsche,
and a Christian strain in Kierkegaard. B ut whether one is a twentieth-century
atheist such as Sartre or a nineteenth-century Christian such as Kierkegaard,
al l of the existential ists wil l l i kely agree that we spend too m uch time on
theoretical abstraction and too l ittle time on the concrete problems surround­
ing what it means to be a human being.
It is in this broader phi losophical context that several black phi losophers
have interpreted Frederick Douglass. These phi losophers may be divided into
2 Chapter One

two groups. In the first group are phi losophers who have provided phenomeno­
logical and existential interpretations of Douglass. Representative of this group
are philosophers such as George Yancy and Lewis Gordon, who have inter­
preted Frederick Douglass as an existential ist by reading him with post- 1 945
phenomenological and existential ist l iterature with thinkers such as Frantz
Fanon, Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir.2 These existential ist interpretations of
Douglass represent groundbreaking scholarship as they are the first rigorous
existential ist readings of Douglass by black philosophers. The second group
consists of those phi losophers who have interpreted Douglass in terms of his
moral and political thought. The second group of phi losophers incl udes Bill E.
Lawson, Frank Kirkland, and Charles Mills.3 I have entered the philosophical
conversation on Douglass by putting myself in dialogue with the second group
of philosophers and by attempting elsewhere to expand on the work of Law­
son and Kirkland. Whereas Lawson and Kirkland have argued that there are
similarities between Douglass and Kant in tenns of their moral and pol itical
thought, I have argued that there are similarities between Douglass and Kant in
their philosophical approaches1:o the relationship between moral ity and Christi­
anity.4 I continue my exploration of Douglass's account of moral ity and Chris­
tianity in this chapter, where I intend to join the conversation begun by the first
group of ph ilosophers and offer some nuance to existential ist interpretations of
Douglass. Specifical ly, I am interested in expanding the work of scholars like
Yancy and Gordon-as I did el sewhere with Lawson and Kirkl and-by asking
the fol lowing questi ons: can one read Frederick Douglass as an existential ist
without resort to the twentieth-century atheistic existential ist tradition? And if
so, what sort of Douglass emerges from such a reading, consideri ng Douglass 's
interest in and ongoi ng critical engagement with Christianity? In attempting
to answer these questions, the groundbreaking work of Yancy and Gordon is
expanded into areas of Douglass' s thought that have yet to be explored.
To answer these questions, I read Douglass with S0ren Kierkegaard . I
choose Kierkegaard because he provides exi stential i st categories (anxiety,
despai r, freedom, choice, responsibil ity, and subjectivity) from a Christian
poi nt of view-a point of view with which Dougl ass was actively engaged
throughout his career as a phi losopher, abol itionist, and public intel lectual . I
argue that there are three affi nities between Douglass and Kierkegaard that
are rooted in the same moral and ph ilosoph ical/theological motivation, which
is a demand for authentic Chri stian practice. These three affi nities relate to
both Douglass' s and Kierkegaard ' s longstanding critical engagements with
corrupt "Christian" com munh ies, their mutual appreciation for the relation­
sh ip between aesthetics and moral ity, and thei r understandi ng of existential
despai r. These three affi nities thus reveal a Dougl ass yet to be seen in the
extant I iterature: a Douglass who appropriates Chri stianity for the task of self-
 Morality, Art, and the Self 3

understanding and thus helps us to, as Paul T i l l ich poi nts out, "rediscover the
classical Christian i nterpretation of human existence."5
In the next section, I argue that both Douglass and Kierkegaard emphasize
existential subj ectivity as a normative; that is, both argue that subj ectivity is
moral ly preferable to the objective process of theoretical abstraction. After
discussing some of Kierkegaard' s works where I bel ieve thi s to be the case,
I argue that the normativity of exi stential subj ectivity is found in various
places throughout Douglass' s corpus such as his 1 84 1 speech, "The Church
and Prej udice," his 1 847 essay, Bibles for the Slaves, sections of My Bondage
and My Freedom, and of the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass entitled
"Religious Nature Awakened," his novella, The Heroic Slave, his assessment
of Dr. Godwin's argument in favor of baptizing blacks into Christianity as it
is found in his 1 883 speech "The United States Cannot remain Half-Slave and
Half-Free," and his 1 894 essay, Why is the Negro Lynched? The next section
thus tries to make the case that the fi rst of the three affinities between Doug­
lass and Kierkegaard is thei r moral ly motivated critical engagement with cor­
rupt Christian comm unities by eschewing abstracti on in favor of existential
subjectivity. Against this comparative backdrop, I then turn to the remaining
two affinities between Douglass and K ierkegaard in sections three and four.
These are thei r commitments to an aesthetic methodology through the use of
l iterary devices (section 3) and their accounts of despair and the self (section
4). I concl ude in section 5 .

II.

Both Douglass and Kierkegaard are interested in critiques of theoretical ab­

straction in Chri stianity, which both thinkers bel ieve detracts from authentic
existential subj ectivity. I focus attention in this section of the chapter on Ki­
erkegaard' s account of the epistemological barriers to Christianity as he sets
them forth in Philosophical Fragments (PF). I then move to Kierkegaard ' s
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (CUP),
focusing on Kierkegaard' s notion of "truth as subj ectivity." After exploring
the meaning of this pecul i ar phrase through an exam ination of the CUP, I try
to show how thi s Kierkegaardi an notion is present in Douglass' s criticism
of slaveholding Chri stianity. We turn first to Kierkegaard, then to Douglass.

Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard bel ieved that the Christians of his day in Denmark were del uded
into thinking that their Christianity consisted solely in objectively measurable
4 Chapter One

factors such as their church attendance, their fami l ial l i neage, and their na­
tional heritage. In CUP, Kierkegaard' s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, poi nts
out that "if someone were to say, plainly and simply, that he was concerned
about himself, that it was not quite right for him to call himself a Christian . . .
i f he were married, his wife would tel l him, ' Hubby, darl ing, where did you
ever pick up such a notion? How can you not be a Christian? You are Danish,
aren't you? Doesn't the geography book say that the predom inant rel igion in
Denmark is Lutheran-Christian?"06 Climacus then comments on the wife' s
rhetorical questions to her husband: "Lo, we have become so objective that
even the wife of a civil servant argues from the whole, from the state, from
the idea of society, from geographic scientificity to the si ngle individual . It fol­
lows so automatical ly that the single individual is Christian, has faith, etc. that
it is flippant to make so much ado about it, or certainly capricious."7 Christi­
anity is thus for Climacus a matter of objectively verifiable "truths" such as
the religious demographic of ni neteenth-century Denmark. The civi l servant's
wife has committed the logical fal lacy of division: she has incorrectly inferred
that what is true of the whole (Denmark being Christian) is also true of each
of its parts (her husband).
But is this the right approach to one ' s Christianity? For Climacus, the
answer is an unequivocal and emphatic "No ! " Christianity is not something
objective that one can measure from without through the use of a geography
textbook to merely locate Denmark, but rather it is something subjective that
must be l ived from with i n an existing i ndividual . Hence the use of the term
"unscientific" in the title of the CUP. Unlike in science. where one must
thoroughly divest oneself from experi mentation to achieve objective results
that are free from the researcher's bias, Christianity demands the opposite:
that one completely and passionately invest oneself into it. Thi s is the reason
for Climacus' s emphasis on "passion," "i nwardness," and "subjectivity."
Whence comes the emphasis on objectivity? How is it that so many Chris­
tians in nineteenth-century Denmark were so off base, according to C l ima­
cus? The answer lies, i n part, according to Kierkegaard, with the abstractions
of Hegelian theology, which made Christianity and its attendant doctrines
such as the I ncarnation and faith comprehensible through a process of theo­
retical abstraction. For Kierkegaard, it was notions such as Hegel ' s doctri ne
of mediation as appropriated by Hegelian theologians such as Hans Mar­
tensen who, in defense of Hegel, argued that Jewish theological adherence
to the Aristotelian logic of the principle of the excl uded m iddle represented
a rejection of the Christian doctri ne-of the Incarnation. Neither "God" nor
"man" could be mediated into a higher third term, or synthesis, as Hegel ' s
dialectic demanded. In contrast, the Christi an doctrine o f the Incarnation be­
comes the ultimate theological expression of Hegelian metaphysics: God and
 Morality, Art, and the Self 5

man are synthesized i nto a higher, third term, which is Christ.8 According to
Kierkegaard, it was th is sort of speculative thi nking that made Christianity
lucid and comprehensible, transform ing the great mysteries of Christian faith
i nto mere cogs of the Hegelian metaphysical machine. With thi s theoretical
antecedent fi rm ly in place, the social correlate of moral and spi ritual compla­
cency becomes easier to understand. For i f Christianity can be comprehended
theoretically, then "faith" becomes merely a matter of theoretical abstrac­
tion. And if faith can be taught, it need not be experienced. If it need not be
experienced, then so long as one "understands" faith, one has faith. So it i s
not a stretch fo r the wife a civi l servant t o assume her husband' s Christianity
on the basis of his mere physical presence i n a "Christian" nation. Much of
Kierkegaard ' s corpus is thus devoted to reproblematizing Christianity so that
its Hegelian theoretical antecedent fal ls apart, and with it, its corresponding
religious lethargy as man ifested in the Sittlickheit of the Danish State Church.
In order to do this, Kierkegaard must recapture the theoretical and practical
complexities of Christian theology. He attempts this in Philosophical Frag­
ments (PF), where he presents an alternative to the notion of a purely theoreti­
cal "knowledge" of God.
For Kierkegaard, there are i nsurmountable impediments to knowledge as
it relates to Chri stian theology. In PF, Kierkegaard' s pseudonym, Johannes
Climacus, critical ly engages the traditional arguments for God ' s existence
in an attempt to show that they are bad arguments. In doing so, C l i m acus
criticizes theoretical abstraction about God as a barri er to authentic Christian
practice. First, he critiques the teleological argument by indicating that it i s
not possible t o show someone' s existence b y making reference t o thei r works.
For i f l make reference to the works of God in an attempt to prove God ' s ex­
istence, then I have comm i tted the logical fal lacy of begging the question; I
have assumed the truth of what I seek to prove.9 And if l argue that the works
of nature show me God ' s existence without saying that those works are God ' s
works, then i t turns out that the works o f nature could merely b e the works o f
a great arch itect that need not b e God.
C l i macus also criticizes Spinoza's version of the ontological argument by
trying to show that the clai m that essence entai ls existence is erroneous. C l i ­
macus notes that the Spi nozisti c notion o f more or less bei ng i s nonsensical .
For if a fly exists, then it has as much bei ng as God, and merely to think the
exi stence of a fly is not to prove its existence. S i m i l arly, merely thinking the
exi stence of God does not result in God's exi stence because-as Kant tried
to show-existence is not a predicate; it adds nothing to the concept of a
thing. 1 ° C l i macus thus tries to show the objecti ve uncertainty of God through
criti cism of the ontological arguments, and through this objective uncertai nty,
he makes a demand for a turn to authentic existential subjectivity, which i s
6 Chapter One

the gist of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript (CUP). By criticizing these

arguments for the existence of God, Climacus wants to show that God is not
a matter of theoretical abstraction, but rather is a matter of faith. In doing so,
he wants to eradicate the prevai l i ng Hegelian abstractions that he bel ieves
have so beset Christendom, and in doing so, restore Christianity as a matter
of subjective inwardness and passion rather than mere objective belief.
Another of Kierkegaard' s works, CUP shows a simi lar rej ection of rel i­
gious objectivity and a shift toward what Kierkegaard cal l s "truth as sub­
jectivity." Indeed, one can argue that the very structure of CUP shows that
objectivity, or the historical accuracy and certainty of Christianity, is far less
i mportant to him than is the existing i ndividual as a subject who never is but
rather is always becoming a Christian. The first part of the treatise, entitled
"The Objective issue of the Truth of Christianity," is a mere thi rty-six pages,
as compared with the second part of the treatise, entitled "The Subjective
Issue, the Subjective I ndividual ' s Relation to the Truth of Christianity, or
Becoming a Christian," which is 553 pages long.
But what does this ph11ase "truth as subj ectivity" mean? Does it mean
that Kierkegaard is an ethical relativist? Is he a Protagorean? Does he mean
that the truth is whatever the subject claims it to be? Affirmative answers to
these questions would. in my view, be m istakes resulting from a caricature of
Kierkegaard that has emerged from some of his other works such as Fear and
Trembling (F1), where some interpret Kierkegaard as a divine command ethi­
cist that has no regard for objective truth. Such a caricature of Kierkegaard
develops because one fai ls to careful ly consider FT in light of Kierkegaard' s
other works such as the CUP, and Works ofLove. Kierkegaard, l ike Douglass,
is using Christianity against itself, and tries to awaken Christianity from a sort
of rel igious lethargy and malaise through a careful exam ination of the Bible.
So, as Ronald M . Green has noted in his article "Developing Fear and Trem­
bling": "Fear and Trembling is a stinging critique of both the popular and
cultured Christianity of his [Kierkegaard' s] day and a reminder of the primi­
tive chal lenge of Christian faith."1 1 Green continues: "Kierkegaard bel ieved
that the cultural triumph of Christian civilization had effaced the prim itive
meaning of Christianity. A rel igious identity whose acquisition once entai led
great risk had become a matter of merely being born to Christian parents in
a Christian nation."12 This interpretation of FT is far more consistent with
Kierkegaard 's attitude toward objective truth in the CUP, and his attitude
toward our obl igations to others in Works ofLove; an essay in which Kierke­
gaard expounds upon th e biblical directive to love one's neighbor, and thus
attempts to enhance our understanding of our moral obl igations to others.
So, Kierkegaard' s claim is neither that obj ective truth does not matter,
nor that it does not exist, but rather that objective truth is not the beginning
 Morality, Art, and the Self 7

and the end of al l truth. What is more important for Kierkegaard i s that the
individual live with self-reflection and passion about the truth that one knows
or believes. Of the relationship between obj ectivity and subjectivity, in the
CUP, Kierkegaard, through his pseudonym, Johannes C l imacus, writes:

Objectively the emphasis is on what is said; subjectively the emphasis is on how

it is said . . . B ut this is not to be understood as manner, modu l ation of voice,
oral del ivery, etc., but it is to be understood as the relation of the existing per­
son, in his very existence, to what is said. Objectively, the question is only about
categories of thought; subjectively, about inwardness . . . Only in subj ectivity
is there decision, whereas wanting to become objective is untruth. The passion
of the infinite, not its content, is the deciding factor, for its content is precisely
itself. In this way the subjective "how" and subjectivity are the truth.13

Cl imacus thus argues that one m ust live in relation to what i s said with
"inwardness" and rel igious passion, not with any objective certainty of the
truth, but, in spite of this uncertainty, developing oneself with a passion for
the infinite, and toward the infinite, although the infinite is utterly uncertain,
and thus not objectively "true." For Climacus, obj ective certainty l eads to the
condition of Christianity that he wants to avoid: an epistemologically certain
but morally and existential ly stale version of Christianity devoid of rel igious
passion and inwardness.
Another example from CUP will be helpfu l here. C l imacus offers the
example of a man who has escaped from an insane asylum, and whose ob­
j ective it is never to return. So, the man places a ball in the tail of his coat,
and with each step he takes, the bal l hits his rear end. Each time this hap­
pens, he says "Boom ! The earth is round." B efore too long, peopl e are more
convinced of his insanity than they were when he was institutional ized. For
the repetitive articulation of an obj ectively true statement reflects poorly on
the man ' s self-awareness. 14 Kierkegaard' s point here is that thi s man knows
obj ective truth, but there is no self-reflection; this man has no regard for
how he is l iving, but rather only for what he knows to be true. For another
example from the CUP, recal l our earl ier example of the wife of the civil
servant who comm its the logical fal l acy of division; she reasons from the
general composition of a thing (the Christianity of the Danish State Church)
to the conclusion that al l of its individual members are, in fact, Christians.
B ut again, for Kierkegaard, and for Douglass, neither mere membership in
religious organizations nor association with persons who are "obj ectively"
Christian can make one a Christian . What is most important for K ierkegaard
is that one l ive with self-reflection and rel igious passion in relation to the
truth that one claims to know. Mere knowledge, while important, is not the
sole criterion for truth. Such is the nature of "truth as subj ectivity" according
8 Chapter One

to Kierkegaard : the human sel f evolves along rel igious l i nes in relation to the
objectivity of Christian bel iefs; more specifical ly to the God of Christianity.

Douglass

Douglass labors agai nst a community that is arguably as del uded about thei r
status as Chri stians as those "Christians" whom Kierkegaard believed were
del uded in Denmark. I n support of th is claim, I exam i ne certain chapters of
two of Douglass's autobiographies: ( 1 ) his Narrative of the Life of Freder­
ick Douglass ( 1 845), and (2) My Bondage and My Freedom ( 1 855). These
texts, when read with two of Kierkegaard' s pseudonymous works, CUP, and
Fear and Trembling, display a remarkable similarity between the m indset of
slaveholdit'lg Chri stians in the United States and that of the "bapti zed pagans"
castigated by Kierkegaard ' s pseudonym, Johannes C l imacus. Both Douglass
and Kierkegaard thus expose the serious moral lim itations of an "ethical"
community (Sittlickheit) that is indeed rather unethical .
I ai m to show the KierkegaaKlian Chri stian di mension of subjectivity as it
is present throughout Douglass's narratives, speeches, and writi ngs. Doug­
lass, throughout his corpus, tried to show not only the hypocrisy of slavehold­
ing Chri stianity, but also ca,l led for a new and improved brand of Christianity:
the kind of Christianity where individual Christians l ive their Christianity not
based upon mere adherence to ecclesial doctrine, or as Kierkegaard would put
it, a mere adherence to "objective" set of bel iefs that are readily identifiable in
some sort of creed . To the contrary, Douglass-l i ke Kierkegaard-supported
the ki nd of Christianity where people live a life in relation to those bel i efs that
require rel igious passion and critical self-reflection, and is thus conducive to
the development of the self along moral li nes. The existential subjectivity in
Douglass 's works is present insofar as there is a need to l ive authenti cal ly in
relationship to the truth that one purports to know, and normativity is pres­
ent in this notion of existential subjectivity insofar as Dougl ass argues that
authenticity is a goal for which Christianity and Christians should strive. I n
what follows, I di scuss how I bel ieve one can see th is cal l from the hypocriti­
cal brand of slaveholding Christianity to the more authentic kind in Doug­
lass's ongoing criti cal engagement with slaveholding Christian ity.
The first instance of a cal l for the authenticity of rel igious existential sub­
jectivity of a Kierkegaard ian sort is found in Douglass' s 1 84 1 speech, "The
::: h urch and Prej udice." In this essay, Douglass is criticizi ng not only the
1ypocri sy of the slaveholding Chri stianity of the South, but also the racist at­
itudes of northern Christians. Douglass offers a total of four examples; three
)f northern prej udice and one of southern prej udice. Fi rst, Douglass recounts
he experience of attend ing a church service at a Method ist Church during
 Morality, Art, and the Self 9

communion . The communion service is a religious event in which the par­

ticipants of the congregation are cal led to partake of bread and wine, which
represents the bel ief i n the broken body and shed blood of Jesus on the cross
and its sufficiency to atone for one 's sin. By partaki ng in th is ritual , the mem­
bers of the church are cal led to a common ground with one another as they
are rem inded of their bel ief that Jesus sacrificed himself for al l of them ; they
are thus cal led to unity, to "commune" with one another in a spirit of Chris­
tian brotherhood and sisterhood. With this purpose of communion in m i nd,
Douglass tries to show how absurd it looks for the Christians in the church
to behave as they do. On one occasion, the minister served al l of the whites
communion first, and then served al l of the blacks, quoti ng the Bible passage
that indicates that "God is no respecter of persons. " 1 5 On another occasion
at comm union in New Bedford, a black church member, who, according to
Douglass, "was baptized in the same water as the rest" was rel uctantly handed
the communion cup, drank from the cup, and then the wh ite woman who was
to receive the cup after her "rose in disdain, and walked out of the church." 1 6
Also in New Bedford, he spoke of how a church member "fell into a trance,"
and how "when she awoke, she declared that she had been to heaven. Her
friends were al l anxious to know what and whom she had seen there." When
someone asked her if she had seen any blacks i n heaven, her response was :
"Oh! I didn 't go into the kitchen!"1 7 Dougl ass' s fi nal example i n this speech
is best recounted in his own words :

I used to attend a Methodist church, in which my master was class-leader; he

would talk most sanctimoniously about the dear Redeemer, who was sent "to
preach del iverance to the captives, and set at l iberty them that are bruised"-he
could pray at morning, pray at noon, and pray at night; yet he could lash up my
poor cousin by his two thumbs, and inflict stripes and blows upon his bare back,
till the blood streamed to the ground! A l l the time quoti ng scri pture, for his
authority, and appealing to that passage of the Holy Bible which says, "He that
knoweth his master' s will, and doeth it not, shal l be beaten with many stripes ! "
Such was the mount o f this good Methodist' s piety . 1 8

A l l o f these examples show the kind o f Christianity that i nfuriated Douglass

and made him cal l for a more authenti c religious experience wherein the prin­
cipal concern of rel igion is not about the epistemological and metaphysical
j ustifications of what one bel ieves, but rather moral and eth ical j ustifications
for how one lives. One can thus see a move in Douglass from epi stemology
to eth ics. Douglass uses these examples to show how s i l ly one looks through
mere adherence to a creed or a set of obj ective bel iefs without any critical
self-reflection on one ' s conduct; much l i ke the man who escaped from the
insane asylum in Kierkegaard' s exam ple in the CUP. This kind of religion
10 Chapter One

is entirely obj ective; it gives no thought for how one l ives in relation to the
bel iefs that one holds, but rather is so concerned with adherence to objective
practices like church attendance, public prayer, and a "knowledge" of the
Scriptures, that there is no subjectivity of which to meaningful ly speak; no
concern about the authenticity of one' s life in relation to one's bel iefs, but
rather only a concern about the bel iefs themselves, and, more significantly, a
bel ief that one is a Christian merely because of adherence to a certain creed.
Furthermore, the religious passion in these exam ples is fueled by a theology
that is infused with unj ustifiable metaphysical and epistemological claims
that have no concern for ethics, moral ity, or personal responsibil ity, which are
questions of an exi stential variety that contribute to the formation of religious
subjectivity, and about which Douglass and Kierkegaard were thoroughly
concerned . •

Another example of Douglass' s disdain for objectivity in Christianity is his

criticism of the program to. give Bi bles to slaves in his 1 847 essay, "B ibles
for the Slaves." Douglass is responding to an overwhelm ing show of nation­
wide support to give Bibles k> the slaves. He refers to a "numerous class of
persons, whose ostensible o bj ect seems to be to give Bibles to the American
slaves."19 He writes that ''So full of promise and popularity is this movement
that many of the leaders jn Church and State are pressing into it."20 But Dou­
glass is not persuaded by the current of public opinion. His criticism of an
inauthentic Christianity ensues : "Churches, which have al l along slumbered
unmoved over the cruel wrongs and bitter woes of the Slave,-which have
been as deaf as Death to every appeal of the fettered bondman for l iberty" are
somehow now motivated enough to provide Bibles to the slaves.2 1 Douglass
then raises the question "of what value is the Bible to one who may not read
its contents?"22 Later in the essay, Douglass notes that "[t]he Bible is only
useful to those who can read and practice its contents. It was given to Free­
men, and any attempt to give it to the Slave must result only in hol low mock­
ery ."23 Notice what Douglass is doing here. He is emphasizing the need for
subjective ethical practice as opposed to mere adherence to obj ective belief.
Proponents of the "Bibles for the Slaves" measure seem to be suggesting that
the mere possession of the Bible wi ll be of some moral and ethical benefit.
Douglass, who strongly disagrees with such an approach, claims that giving
a slave a Bible when he cannot read it is worse than the immoral ity of giving
"a hungry man a stone," "a freezing man" some ice, and a "drowning man
a dol lar."24 There is, then, for Douglass, a moral disconnect between the ob­
jectivity of religious bel ief and the existential subj ectivity of its practice: the
Bible is seen as a moral compass solely in its possession, without any regard
for how one lives in relation to the contents of it as those contents are stated
in the Bible itself. Such a life is impossible for the slaves to live as a direct
 Morality. Art, and the Self II

result of reading the Bible because of the barriers to l iteracy that prevent them
from knowi ng its contents. Douglass thus argues that the obj ectivity of bel ief
must be subordinated to the subj ectivity of practice. Douglass is also showing
us a two-layered epistemic difficulty for the slaves : they neither know God
in a primary sense as a spatiotemporal object because of their i nnate human
l imitations,25 nor can they know God through read ing the B i ble in a second­
ary sense because of their i l l iteracy. Moreover, Douglass is doing here what
Kierkegaard is doing i n the CUP with the example of the man ' s wife who i s
trying t o convi nce him that h e i s a Chri stian because o f "objective" factors
like his church membership: he is trying to show that Christianity cannot be
simply "known," but rather that it must be lived.
Exi stential subj ectivity of a Kierkegaardian variety is also found in My
Bondage and My Freedom i n the chapter entitled "Rel igious Nature Awak­
ened." It is in this chapter that Douglass speaks of a man whom he affection­
ately cal ls "Uncle Lawson." Douglass speaks of how his rel igious nature was
awakened upon hearing a sermon from a mini ster named Hanson, but then
actual ly seeing the religious message lived in the l i fe of Uncle Lawson. Of
this experience, Douglass writes that "[m]y rel igious nature was awakened
by the preaching of a white Methodist minister, named Hanson. He thought
that al l men, great and smal l , bond and free, were sinners in the sight of God,
and that they were, by nature, rebels against His government."26 Douglass
was thoroughly impressed by the theological notion that al l human beings
must "be reconci led to God, through Christ."27 Douglass then speaks of how,
with the utmost rel igious zeal, he sought "to have the world converted," and
how he wanted a thorough knowledge of the Bible.28 It thus appears that
the obj ectivity of a sermon was an initial motivating force for Douglass' s
rel igious awakeni ng, and that obj ectivity was important fo r Dougl ass. The
importance of existential subjectivity is recognized when Douglass writes,
"Wh i l e thus religiously seeki ng knowledge, I became acquainted with a
good old colored man, named Lawson. A more devout man than he, I never
saw."29 In the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, recounting this same
experience, Douglass writes of Lawson that "This man not only prayed three
times a day, but he prayed as he walked through the streets, at his work, on
his dray-everywhere. H i s life was a life of prayer, and his words when he
spoke to any one, were about a better world."30 Lawson, who could not read
very wel l , needed Douglass's help to learn ''the letter," but Lawson, through
the way that he lived his l ife, would teach Douglass "the spirit" of Christian­
ity.3 1 Agai n we have here a fine example of exi stential subj ectivity that is
superi or, i n Dougl ass' s view, to the "objectivity" of rel igious knowledge.
Indeed, Uncle Lawson suffers from the dual epistemol ogical impediment
that befell many slaves. For Uncle Lawson ' s reading abi l ity, hence his abi l ity
12 Chapter One

to acquire "objective knowledge" of Christianity, is severely compromi sed,

but his existential subjectivity is al ive and wel l ; to be sure, Lawson considers
what he knows about his rel i gion to be i mportant; thi s is why Douglass helps
him with "the letter"; but more i mportant for Lawson, and for Douglass, is
that Lawson l ives according to what he does know of his rel igion, however
much his i l literacy impedes his acquisition of objective knowledge. One can
thus understand how Douglass makes a shift from epistemology to ethics i n
h i s account o f Uncle Lawson.
Douglass' s move from objectivity (epistemology) to ethics (subj ectivity) is
present in two of his texts. First, recal l that in the Heroic Slave, when Wash­
ington is hiding in a tree, and overhears another slave praying, he speaks of
the "deep pathos" of the slave's prayer, and how it moved him to want to pray
with him. In contrasti ng the private passionate prayer of the slave man whom
Washi ngton overhears with the slaveholding Christians in church at the
beginning of the story, Douglass attempts to contrast a ki nd of unreflective
subjectivity characterized by epistemological commitments to the objective
"truths" of dogma and ritual, with a reflective subj ectivity characterized by
rel igious passion and th e l ived exi stence of an i ndividual ; an existing being,
embodied and real . For the slave' s prayer moves Washington, whom, to this
point in his life, is uQinterested i n rel igion, to such a degree that he "felt al­
most like com ing down and kneeling by his side, and m i ngl ing my broken
complaint with his."32 Moreover, Washington ' s claim that in simply hearing
this prayer, that thi s stranger, another slave "had already gained my confi­
dence" because he "knew enough of rel igion to know that the man who prays
in secret is far more l ikely to be sincere than he who loves to pray standing i n
the street, or in the great congregation,"33 speaks to Douglass' s fondness for
the rel igion of one whom, notwithstanding the epi stemological lim itations of
his i l l iteracy, is sti l l capable of l iving with religious passion.
Second, Douglass's ambivalence toward the arguments of Dr. Godwin on
the question ofNegro baptism shows his comm itment to existential subjectiv­
ity of the Kierkegaardian type. Godwin, when confronted with the question of
baptizing blacks i nto the church, argued that baptism was acceptable because
the black bodies belonged to thei r masters, but black souls belonged to God.
Douglass then points out that thi s argument, whi l e good insofar as it recog­
nized the humanity of slaves, fai led as a practical matter because it left slaves
with nothing to cal l their own. While on the one hand, it humanized slaves by
recognizing that they had souls, on the other hand, the argument was "some­
what metaphysical, to be sure."34 -The theoretical abstractions necessary for
this argument are rooted in a Cartesian m i nd/body dual i sm that, for Douglass,
is morally deficient. Metaphysical reflections on the nature of the soul make
Godwin's argument for Negro baptism a theoretical achievement-one that
 Morality, Art, and the Self 13

reconciles American chattel slavery with Christianity, n o l ess-but a moral

fai l ure. It is this sort of abstract theologizing that transforms Christianity from
salvific to oppressive. And Douglass wholly rejects this approach to Christi­
anity. Douglass thus shifts from objective belief in metaphysical argument to
the l ived reality of subjective moral and rel igious practice.

III.

To make their critiques of objectivity and abstraction, both Douglass and

Kierkegaard turn to artistic methodologies in the form of l iterary expression.
Douglass' s narratives reveal that an indirect communication i n the Kierke­
gaardian sense is what led Douglass to advocate for moral suasion. An indi­
rect communication influences Douglass based on what Kierkegaard would
call "double reflection"; for Douglass comm its to moral suasion after reading
a fictional account between a slave and his master i n the abolitionist tract, the
Columbian Orator. The narrative construct of his novella, The Heroic Slave,
is intended to do for others what the fictional dialogue i n the Columbian Ora­
tor did for him : commit others to moral suasion through a fictional account of
a slave and his struggle for freedom .
For K ierkegaard, the notion o f an indirect comm unication i s intended to
i nduce what he call s "double reflection." An indirect communication is a
message that is communicated to someone who is deceived, and who, as a
matter of urgent moral concern, needs to be d isabused of the deception.35
But, for Kierkegaard, a deception cannot be removed directly, for if one
attempts to confront the one who is deceived, the one deceived will retreat
deeper i nto the deception . Kierkegaard dealt with this problem through
the use of pseudonyms. Rather than communicate directly with a group of
people whom he saw as deceived, he appl ied the principle of "armed neu­
tral ity," and never claimed to be a Christian himself. His concern was that
if people saw him, they would focus too m uch on the messenger rather than
on the message. But this woul d not do. So instead, he i nserted a fictional
character-a pseudonym-between him and his deceived audience (Chris­
tendom in ni neteenth century Denmark), strategizing that the pseudonym
would run i nterference for his i deas and cause the people to reflect on two
level s: the deceived Chri stians would fi rst hear message, and second, they
would subjectively appropriate it in such a way as to bring about a change i n
their perspective that would l ead to a more authentic expression o f Christian
practice. I n this regard, Kierkegaard drew upon his Judeo-Christian tradi­
tion, as his m ethod i s sim ilar to that of Nathan the prophet, and Jesus i n the
Gospels.36
14 Chapter One

Double reflection not only impacts Douglass, but Douglass uses the
method to advance the abol itionist cause. As for double reflection ' s impact
on Douglass, as he reads the dialogue in the Columbian Orator between the
master and the slave, he is able to see himself as a human being. The slave
in the dialogue is patently human; he is rational . he makes arguments agai nst
slavery, and he is courageous and persi stent. Dougl ass ' s commitment to
moral suasion stems from this experience, for he writes that "the dialogue
showed me the power of truth over even a slaveholder."37 And thi s is signifi­
cant because it shows that through this sort of indirect communi cation, both
black slave and white slaveholder were humanized. Th is was the point of
moral suasion : it was an appeal to the humanity of both blacks and whites by
showing that both were human i n that moral reasoning had an appeal toward
both groups. According to Douglass. it was his experience reading this fic­
tional dialogue in the Columbian Orator that � nab led him to appropriate that
message in a way that changed his behavior and committed him to abolition
through moral suasion.
Douglass would then us&the tactic that infl uenced him to infl uence others
agai nst sl avery in his nov ella, The Heroic Slave. Earl ier in the chapter, we
spoke of this novella as an expression of Douglass' s comm itment to subjec­
tivity over objectivity as it relates to Christian practice. Here, however, the
emphasis is on Douglass' s ficti onal portrayal of a slave and a slave culture
that is a form of an indirect communication i ntended to induce subjective ap­
propriation through double reflection, humanizi ng not only blacks, but also
whites, and thus leading to abol ition. In the story, which is based upon the
mutiny on a slave ship,38 Douglass portrays Madison Washington, the slave
and protagonist of the story, as a human being with emotions and rational
capacities. Lamenting his condition as a slave, he del ivers an impassioned
monologue that a white man named Li stwell overhears. Upon hearing Madi­
son Washi ngton's lament, Listwell commits himself to abol ition when he
claims that: "I have seen and heard enough, and I shal l go to my home i n Ohio
prepared to atone for my past indifference to this i l l-starred race, by maki ng
such exertions as I shal l be able to do, for the speedy emancipation of every
slave in the land."39 As Listwel l ' s name indicates, he has "listened wel l ." The
pl ight of the slave thus moves a white man to abol ition . Now, given the John
Browns of the nineteenth century. th is is nothi ng unusual . But Douglass was
aiming to make the zeal of John Brown the rule rather than the exception . He
wanted to garner more support for abolition from white men, and through this
sort of indirect communic ation, he ai med to do j ust that. B i l l Lawson poi nts
out that "Dougl ass understands the power of l iterary works to change the
moral ity of the people."40 And this is precisely what Dougl ass hoped that The
Heroic Slave would do: as a sort of indirect communication. he hoped that
 Morality, Art, and the Self 15

it would remove the deception of black inferiority and white moral indiffer­
ence, thus humanizing blacks by elevating them to the status of human, and
elevating whites by engendering a moral outrage agai nst slavery .

IV.

A third affi nity between Douglass and Kierkegaard is found in Douglass' s

experi ence o f becomi ng l iterate when read with Kierkegaard' s pseudonym,
Anti-Cl imacus ' s notion of despair from The Sickness Unto Death. Kierkeg­
aard articulates despair as a "sickness unto death" as compared with the
Chri stian notion of l i fe after death . Using Jesus' s resurrection of Lazarus
from the dead as his point of departure, Anti-Cl imacus points out that for
the Christian, there is hope in the resurrection. Therefore although death can
destroy the body, it cannot harm the soul. Anti-Cl imacus writes : "Christianly
understood, death is a passi ng unto life. Thus from a Christi an poi nt of view,
no earthly, physical sickness is the sickness unto death, for death is indeed
the end of the sickness, but death is not the end."41 So as it relates to physical
sickness, there is no harm that it can do to the soul, because it merely bri ngs
the body to physical death. But despair is different. It is a sickness, not of the
body, but rather of the soul , and unl ike a physical i l l ness, it does not bring
death. To the contrary, despair, as a sickness of the soul is the inabi l ity to die.
Anti-Climacus continues : "But i n another sense despai r is more definitely the
sickness unto death. Literal ly speaking, there is not the slightest possibil ity
that anyone wi l l die from this sickness or that it will end in physical death .
On the contrary, the torment of despair is precisely this i nabi l ity to die. Thus
it has more in common with the situation of a mortal ly i l l person when he l ies
struggl ing with death and yet cannot die."42 One despairs because the self is
a bundle of contraries: it is fi nite and infinite, it is temporal and eternal, and
it is free and determi ned. One thus wants to rid oneself of the self. But, for
Anti -Cl imacus, thi s is impossible: "A person cannot rid himself of the rela­
tion to himself anymore than he can rid hi mself of his self, which, after al l, i s
one and the same thi ng, since the self is the relation t o oneself."43 Accord i ng
to Anti-Climacus, the difficulties of being human demand that we confront
a real ity of the sel f that is, by nature, riddled with confl ict. With such an un­
pleasant task of becoming a self in the face of such confl ict, Anti-Climacus
points out that we would often rather do anything else except be ourselves.
Hence his example about a person who demands to be "Caesar or nothi ng."44
When this person real izes that he cannot be Caesar, he is in despair, but not
because he could not be Caesar, but rather because he now must be himself.
Thi s is one of the ways in which people try to avoid themselves.
16 Chapter One

For Anti-Climacus, one may be in despair not to wi l l to be oneself, and one

may also be in despair to wi l l to be oneself. The former is a despair of weakness
where one despairs because of some event external to the self. This person is
"psychical ly qualified" in "immediacy," which implies that governing this per­
son is a dialectic of "the pleasant and the unpleasant," and "good luck, bad l uck,
and fate."45 One who is psychical ly qual ified in immediacy thus experiences
despair because of some difficulties that amount to what is happening in that
person's l ife. One may experience the loss of employment, the loss of a loved
one, the end of a marriage, and be in despair because of such losses. But this i s
not a sense o f despair related to the self. Anti-Climacus points out that "[t]he
man of immediacy does not know himself, he quite l iterally identifies himself
by the clothes he wears, he identifies having a self by external ities . . . There
is hardly a more ludicrous m istake, for a sel f is indeed infinitely distinct from
an external ity."46 Since there is trauma and loss external to the self, the person
psychical ly qualified in immediacy wants to be someone other than herself.
Being in despair to will to be oneself is what Anti-Climacus cal l s "defi­
ance." This is a sense of desiring to be oneself that comes from within. Unlike
the man of i mmediacy, wh o se concern for the sel f is external and passive, one
who is in despair to be oneself has a concern for the sel f that is i nternal and
active: "In this form of despair, there is a rise in the consciousness of the self,
and therefore a greater consciousness of what despai r is and that one's state
is despair here the despair is conscious of itself as an act; it does not come
from the outside as a suffering under the pressure of external ities but comes
directly from the self."47 Douglass experiences this sort of despair as defiance
whi l e he is learnirrg to read. As an act of self-determ ination, his pursuit of
literacy represents a desire from within himself to be free as opposed to be­
ing chattel . Douglass thus becomes conscious of his sel f, and the possibil ities
of freedom once he learned to read and understood the difference between
slavery and freedom drove him to action: "The si lver trump of freedom had
roused my soul to eternal wakeful ness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear
no more forever."48 Dougl ass thus connects freedom with the possibi l ities
of his self and real izes that he is more than a slave; he understands himself
to be a human being. I n defiance of his external circumstances-rather than
because of them-Douglass was in despair to w i l l to be a self. But Douglass
experiences a despai r as the man of immediacy too; albeit only briefly, as it
is transformed into the defiance that propels him forward i n his quest for free­
dom . As he became l iterate, he understood the horrors of slavery and what
it meant to be a slave as op posed to bei ng free. On this real ization, Douglass
writes that he wants to return to a subhuman state; he does not want to be
himself: "In moments of agony, I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity.
I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest
 Morality, Art, and the Self 17

reptile to my own. Anythi ng, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! "49 This
lament over his external condition as a slave i s then channeled i nto his i nner
desire for defiance of that same condition : " I often found myself regretting
my own exi stence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being
free, I have no doubt that I should have ki l l ed myself, or done somethi ng for
which I should have been ki l led."50 Thus it is that Douglass wants to get rid of
thi nki ng, and not w i l l to be a self on his road to defiance of the slave system,
where his desire for selfhood drives his desire to be free.

v.

Both Kierkegaard and Douglass faced corrupt Christian communiti es,

employed artistic methodologies, and provided insights i nto the nature of
despair. Their moral demands on corrupt, nomi nal ly "Christian" communi­
ties provide critiques of abstraction that require authentic Christian practice
through a preference for existential subjectivity over theoretical objectivity
and abstraction; both prefer the inner over the outer. Confronting worlds
without any real meaning mandated that they create meaning on thei r own
through artistic l iterary strategies designed to bring nomi nal Christians back
to leading meani ngful moral l i ves. And what Kierkegaard discusses in theory,
Douglass l ives in practice; a practice in which, through his defiant despair,
he becomes a self. As I stated in the introduction, the extant l iterature on
Douglass as an existential i st is predom inantly phenomenological , and con­
cerns the affin ities of Douglass with twentieth-century thinkers l i ke Fanon,
Sartre, and de Beauvoir. I n contributing this chapter, I have hopefully laid
the groundwork for further phi l osophi cal discussions of Douglass and theism
through reading him with Kierkegaard, a pre- 1 945 existential ist Chri stian
phi losopher. The Douglass that emerges from such a reading is a Douglass
whose moral, artistic, and psychological sensibil ities are thoroughly engaged
with the hypocri sy of slaveholding Christianity. It is this added di mension of
Douglass' s thought that distinguishes it from and provides greater insight i nto
the extant l iterature on Douglass as an existential i st.

NOTES

1 . Paul T i l l ich, Systematic Theology (Chicago : University of Chicago Press,

1 95 7), 27.
2. See Lewis R. Gordon, "Frederick Douglass as an Existentialist," in Existen­
tia Africana: Understanding A.fricana Existential Thought (New York: Routledge,
18 Chapter One

2000), 4 1 -6 1 , and George Yancy, "The Existential Dimensions of Frederick Dou­

glass 's Autobiographical Narrative: A Beauvoirian Exam ination," Philosophy and
Social Criticism, vol . 28, no. 3 (2002): 297.
3. For Lawson 's, Kirkland' s, and M i l l s ' s essays on Douglass' s social and pol iti­
cal phi losophy, see Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, ed. Bill E. Lawson and
Frank M. Kirkland (Malden, MA. Blackwell, 1 999).
4. See my essay "From Epistemology to Ethics: Theoretical and Practical Reason
in Kant and Douglass," Journal of Religious Ethics 40, no. 4 (20 1 2) : 603 .
5 . Tillich, Systematic Theology, 2:27.
6 . S0ren K ierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical
Fragments, trans. Howard V. and Edna H . Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1 992), 5 0 .
7. Ibid.
8 . For an extensive discussion of this issue see, Myn;ter 's "Rationalism, Super­
naturalism " and the Debate about Mediation, ed. and trans. by Jon Stewart (Copen­
hagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009).
9. Kierkegaard, Philos ophical Fragments, 40-4 1 .
1 0. Ibid., 4 1 .
1 1 . Ronald M. Green, " D eveloping Fear and Trembling," in The Cambridge
Companion to Kierkegaard, eds. Alistair H annay and Gordon Marino (Cambridge :
Cambridge University Press, 1 998), 2 5 8 .
1 2. Ibid.
1 3 . Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 202-3 .
1 4. Ibid., 1 94-95 .
1 5 . Frederick Douglass, "The Church and Prej udice," Frederick Douglass: Se-
lected Speeches and Writings, ed. Phi lip S. Foner (Ch icago: Lawrence H i l l , 1 999), 3 .
1 6 . Ibid.
1 7 . Ibid.
1 8 . Ibid., 4.
1 9. Frederick Douglass, "Bibles for the Slaves," Frederick Douglass: Selected
Speeches and Writings, ed. Phi l i p S. Foner (Chicago : Lawrence H i l l , 1 999), 86.
20. Ibid.
2 1 . Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23 . Ibid., 87.
24. Ibid.
25 . This is a critique of rational theology that is an affinity that Douglass shares
with Kant. See my essay, "From Epistemology to Ethics,": 620-23 .
26. Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (New York: Penguin,
1 996), 23 1 .
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., 23 1 -32.
29. Ibid.
30. Frederick Douglass, life and Times of Frederick Douglass (New York: Pen­
guin, 1 996), 5 3 8 .
 Morality, Art, and the Self 19

3 1 . Ibid., 539.
3 2 . Frederick Douglass, "The Heroic Slave," Frederick Douglass: Selected
Speeches and Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner (Chicago: Lawrence H i l l , 1 999), 230.
33. Ibid.
34. Frederick Douglass, "Why I s the Negro Lynched?" Frederick Douglass: Se­
lected Speeches and Writings, 774-75.
35. For a more detailed discussion of indirect communication see K ierkegaard' s
essay The Point of View, ed . and trans. Howard V . and Edna H . H ong (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton U niversity Press, 1 998), especially pages 53-54.
36. See Nathan ' s confrontation of David through the indirect communication of
storytelling found in 2 Samuel 1 2 : 1 - 1 3 , and Jesus 's use of the parable of the Good
Samaritan i n Luke 1 0 :25-3 7 . H ere, Jesus could have easily given the l awyer an ab­
stract conceptual definition of "neighbor," but in doing so, he would have provided
an opportunity for the lawyer to exempt h imself from that definition, as the l awyer
was attempting to ''justify h imself' (Luke 1 0 :29). B ut this would not do. Christian
moral ity demands more of us than this. Jesus thus answered the question of who i s
one ' s neighbor with the fictional story of the Good Samaritan, which tel ls us that our
"neighbor" is anyone in need. So rather than j ustify the l awyer, his moral obligation
is heightened to an astonishing degree.
3 7 . Frederick Douglass, Narrative ofthe Life of Frederick Douglass, an A merican
Slave: Written by Himself(New York: Penguin, 1 997), 5 3 .
3 8 . George H endrick and W i l l ene H endrick, The Creole Mutiny: A Tale of Revolt
A board a Slave Ship (Chicago: I van R. Dee, 2003).
39. Douglass, The Heroic Slave.
40. B i l l E . Lawson, "Douglass among the Romantics," The Cambridge Com­
panion to Frederick Douglass, ed. M aurice Lee (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009), 1 24.
4 1 . Smen K ierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, trans. H oward V . and Edna H.
Hong, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1 980), 1 7.
42. Ibid., 1 7-1 8 .
4 3 . Ibid.
44. Ibid., 1 9.
45 . Ibid., 5 1 .
46. I bid, 5 3 .
4 7 . Ibid., 6 7
4 8 . Douglass, Narrative of the L ife of Frederick Douglass, 5 3 .
49. I bid.
50. I bid., 54.

REFERENCES

Douglass, Frederick. 1 996. My Bondage and My Freedom (New York: Penguin).

-- . 1 996 . Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (New York: Penguin).
20 Chapter One

1 999. "Bi bles for the Slaves" Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and
Writings. Edited by Phi lip S. Foner (Chicago : Lawrence H i l l).
-- . "The Church and Prejudice." Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and
Writings. Edited by Phi l i p S. Foner (Chicago : Lawrence H i l l).
-- . 1 999. "The Heroic Slave" Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writ­
ings. Edited by Phi lip S . Foner (Chicago : Lawrence H i l l ) .
-- . 1 999. "The Un ited States Cannot Remain Half Slave and Half Free." Freder­
ick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings. Edited by Phi l i p S . Foner (Chicago:
Lawrence H i l l).
-- . 1 999. "Why Is the Negro Lynched?" Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches
and Writings. Edited by Philip S. Foner (Chicago: Lawrence H i l l).
Golden, Timothy, J . 20 1 2. "From Epistemology to Ethics: Theoretical and Practical
Reason in Kant and Douglass." Journal of Religious Ethics 40 '(4): 603-28.
Gordon, Lewis, R. 1 999. "Douglass as an Existential ist." I n Frederick Douglass: A
Critical Reader. Edited by Bill E. Lawson and Frank M . Kirkland (Malden, M A :
Blackwell).
-- . Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: A n Essay on Philosophy and the Hu­
man Sciences ( Routledge, N �w York, 1 995).
Green, Ronald M . 1 998. "Developing Fear and Trembling": The Cambridge Com­
panion to Kierkegaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
--. 1 993 . "Enough I s Enough ! Fear and Trembling I s Not about Eth ics." Journal
of Religious Ethics 2 1 (2): 1 9 1 -209.
Kierkegaard, Seren . 1 992. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical
Fragments. Translated by H oward V . and Edna H . Hong ( Princeton: Princeton
University Press).
-- . Fear and Trembling. T-ranslated by Howard V. and Edna H. Hong ( Princeton,
NJ: Princeton Un iversity Press, 1 983).
-- . Philosophical Fragments. 1 98 5 . Translated by Howard V . and Edna H . Hong
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) .
-- . The Point of View . 1 998. Edited and translated b y Howard V. and Edna H .
Hong (Princeton, N J : Princeton University Press).
--. Works of love. 1 998. Translated by Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press).
Stewart, Jon (editor and translator). 2009. Mynster 's "Rationalism, Supernaturalism "
and the Debate about Mediation (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press).
Yancy, George. 2002. "The Existential Dimensions of Frederick Douglass 's Auto­
biographical Narrative : A Beauvoirian Examination." Philosophy and Social Criti­
cism 28 (3): 297-320.
 Ch a p ter Tw o

I'm Not Here: Existential Acts in

Nineteenth-Century African
American Women's Narrative
Jeannine King

The black stands as an existential enigma. Eyed, almost with suspicion, the
subtext is best exemplified by the question: Why do they go on?

- Lewis R. Gordon, Existence in Black: A n A nthology of

Black Existential Philosophy '

African Americans were the first exi stential i sts. Generations before the rise
of modern existential ism, they considered the nature of existence. Their con­
sciousness grew from the constant threat of physical and social death. Shaped
by moral di sorder, the slave environment engendered unconventional modes
of existence and survival . As Toni Morrison writes, "Modern l i fe begins
with slavery . . . These thi ngs had to be addressed by black people a long
time ago: certain kinds of dissol ution, the loss of and the need to reconstruct
certain kinds of stab i l ity. Certai n kinds of madness, del iberately goi ng mad in
order not to lose your m i nd."2 European exi stential ism would, later, observe
the absurdity of a universe without moral order. It would struggle with an
indifferent or absent God and resist external defi nitions of truth . Rather than
the death of God, slavery ' s anni h i l ating soci al and legal structures aroused
existential consciousness. The system of slavery threatened to blot out their
essence. Whi le existence might be determ ined by circumstances, essence is
an "eternal, universal conditi on" not di rectly determ ined by external forces.
"Existences are particular, conti ngent, temporal occurrences, whi le essences
are universal, necessary, eternal conditions."3 The confl ict between existence
and essence gave rise to a complex worldview, one that would give bi rth
to such phenomena as double consciousness, passi ng, and dissem blance.
It would also shape African American phi losophical thought. It created a
22 Chapter Two

necessary ingenuity, a fam i l iarity with the absurd, and a hyperawareness of

the external world and its agents. This chapter expl ores existential i st ideas of
perception as they intersect with theories of negation and social death. More
specifically, it argues that existential acts in the narratives of former slaves
Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs prove that early African American phi­
losophy grew from antagonism and opposition. Through a specular relation­
ship with negation, African Americans created alternative modes of being to
define their essence in a context of social death.
Early black phi losophy explored identity in a uniquely antago nistic envi­
ronment. For example, American slavery was the only example of slavery
to natural ize dehumanization and inferiority. Orlando Patterson 's theory of
social death explores this negation. He writes, "This process of social negation
constitutes the first, essential ly external, phase of enslavement. The next phase
involves the introduction of the slave into the community of his master, but it
involves the paradox of introducing him as a nonbeing."4 The slave is "pol­
luted" and "wi ll remain forever an unborn being (non-ne)."5 Within this system
of social death, the female body is an embattled site. The female slave's living
body could be used without ethical or moral regard. As Harriet Jacobs writes,
"Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to
the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications
pecul iarly their own."6 Slavery compounded woman's negation. She was not
white, man, or woman. This negation sharply contrasted her utility in slavery :
the black female body was a source of labor, reproducer of the slave product,
wet nurse, repository of sexual degradation and violence, and surrogate white
mother. This reduction of l iving flesh to uti lity rendered it captive.
Simone de Beauvoi r, in The Second Sex, analyzes the female captive body.
She questions the overdeterm ined connection between woman ' s biology and
her destiny. As the absol ute Other, woman serves a functional role: her shift­
ing symbol ic meaning is used to define what man is not. Simi larly, black
women were viewed as "the counter woman, the false woman."7 They were
used to define what white women were not. Their position at the crossroads
of myth complicated their captivity. Beauvoir's theories of immanence and
transcendence i l luminate the human response to imposed uti l ity, negation
and captivity. "Immanence is associated with sinking back i nto the material
side of existence, passivity, confinement to the present. Transcendence is
conscious activity, a reach ing beyond the situation one fi nds oneself in at any
moment."8 This desire for transcendence, or authentic freedom, is the impetus
for existential acts. Even s ocial death- cannot thwart the w i l l to seek freedom .

Social death, unlike its physical counterpart, is not absol ute: it is dynam ic,
fluid, and contested, above al l because slaves refused to accept their condition
as permanent. Instead, like Aurora and A pol los, who resisted the lash and as-
 I 'm Not Here 23

serted their rights of kinship, slaves struggled against social death, "sometimes
noisily, more often quietly ; sometimes violently, more often surreptitiously;
infrequently with arms, always with the weapons of the mind and the soul ."9

In response to negation, slaves practiced existential acts. These acts, modes

of transcendence and transgression, signal a refusal to accept captivity. They
represent the human response to dehumanization and invisibi l ity.
I nvisibi l ity is a marker of social death and perception one of its active
modes. Within this system, the white gaze immobi l izes and anni hilates. It im­
pedes seeing. Wesley Barnes writes, "We do not see the individual Negro, but
we see that image we cal l Negroness and the image is not the Negro, but the
Negro in the context of what we have determ ined him to be. We have given
him the qual ities of myth and symbol."1 0 Barnes' analysis points to the para­
doxical nature of perception in American slave society . The agents of social
death could deny that blacks existed when they were standing right in front of
them . To subvert the white gaze, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs practiced
a vol untary form of invisi bil ity : dissemblance. Historian Darlene Clark Hine
describes this widespread strategy, developed during slavery and practiced
through the middle of the twentieth century, as a defense against negative
images and the more immediate threat of sexual violation: "The dynam ics
of dissemblance involved creating the appearance of disclosure, or openness
about themselves and their feel i ngs, while actual ly remaining an enigma . . . .
Only with secrecy, thus achieving a sel f-imposed invisibil ity, could ordinary
black women accrue the psychic space and harness the resources needed to
hold their own." 1 1 The practice of di ssemblance offered A frican American
women a way to live unmolested and to el ude threatening external agents. It
protected the inner life. With few resources and under threat of violence and
physical death, African American women found inventive paths to freedom .
Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs' existential acts rely on this invention
and ingenuity. Specifical ly, Sojourner Truth creates an "embodied rhetoric"
that plays out on the embattled site of her own body. She, in her own words,
"sel ls the shadow to support the substance." Jacobs dissembles through lan­
guage, through overt and hidden discourse. She presents her narrative using the
devices of sentimental l iterature whi le integrating a dark, ironic subtext. I n this
way, they both manipulate perception to occupy alternative modes of existence.

SOJ OURNER TRUTH:

INVISIBILITY AND EMBODIED RHETORIC

Truth ' s first existenti al act was transgressive: escape from slavery . Born into
slavery in 1 797 in Swarteki l l . Ulster County, New York, Sojourner Truth
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
would have had to cross the swollen stream at the very start. They
would go north, to Tacarigua. She was sure of that. And, taking off
her alpargatas, she walked in a great semicircle, looking for fresh
footprints.
Across ditch after ditch she went, through black water and blacker
ooze. Sometimes her steps were sure, more often she sank to the
knees, or fell, her hands flattening against a ditch side.
She found fresh footprints in countless numbers, and leading toward
every point of the compass. Some had been made by naked feet,
some by alpargatas. Some were long and wide, some were short
and more narrow. She was bewildered by them.
“Ah! Madre de Dios!” she faltered.
Presently, pointing northward, she found two sets, the one plainly a
man’s, the other smaller. They were new, too, for the ooze still stood
in them. Instantly her attention fixed upon these. She floundered
after them, rod upon rod, as certain that she was upon the right trail
as if she could see Ricardo and the woman ahead of her. Here the
footprints were close together—she ground her teeth. Here they
were farther apart. And here someone had stumbled, for there was
the mark of a naked palm on the soft earth. She laughed, and
stroked the handle of the lanza.
When the tracks left the hacienda of San Jacinto they entered that of
its northern neighbour—Guevara. Here they made a detour to avoid
the cacao court and huts of the plantation’s workers. Then on again,
through mud and mire, keeping always straight toward Tacarigua.
Farther still, when this hacienda was crossed, they entered the rough
path leading northward through the forest, and were lost.
At midday Manuelita stopped at a deep-shadowed spot on the road
to eat a meal of baked plantain and arepa. The monkeys jabbered
down at her. Now and then she heard strange movements close by
in the jungle. But she felt no fear. A few moments for food, a pull at a
water-filled gourd flask, a few crumbs to a lizard, blinking—head
downward—from a tree trunk at her elbow, and she trotted on.
It was the hour before sunset when, through a tangle, she peered
out from the forest’s edge. Before her was a shallow stream, muddy
though it was flowing over a bed of pebbles. Beyond, a cluster of
red, tiled roofs, was Tacarigua. Tacarigua! And they were there!
She opened her bundle for the comb; bathed quickly face, arms, and
from foot to knee, and carefully rubbed away the caked dirt marring
the bright figures of her skirt. Then, with the sun looking back from
the ragged range of La Silla de Caracas, and a breeze beginning to
stir the leaves that fringed the water, she slipped on her alpargatas,
took the path again, and entered the village.

General Blanco Alcantara, in command of the Revolutionary force at

Tacarigua, sat upon his horse before the green-walled Jefatura Civil.
He looked quite imposing. A broad hat, wound in the blue of his
cause, was set rakishly upon his black hair. A wide sash of webbed
stuff in the same blue ran over his right shoulder and was wrinkled
into the loop of his sabre scabbard, from which, knotted, it fell, ends
free, to a silver spur.
Near him, lounging upon the steps of the building, were several
officers, smoking, talking, and evidently waiting. To one side, also
occupied with their tabacos and gossip, were as many asistentes,
waiting, too, and looking as important as the discarded apparel of
their superiors would permit.
When Manuelita approached the general, he was looking down his
straight nose at the cigarette he was rolling in his fingers. But at the
sound of her voice close to his stirrup, he turned his deep-set black
eyes upon her.
“Señor general,” she began, quaveringly.
He saw eyes as dark as his own, a pale face scarce younger. And
his short upper lip, under its wiry moustache, lifted a little, in what
was meant to be a smile.
“At your order, señorita,” he replied.
And now he saw the girl’s eyes widen and flash, saw the red of
anger run into lip and cheek.
“Señor general,” she continued huskily, “there is a man—one
Ricardo Villegas—who last night left the hacienda San Jacinto to
come to Tacarigua and join La Revolución. Leaving, he took with him
our cubierta, a new machete, and—a woman.”
The general laughed.
“That man of yours was equipped for fighting,” he said.
She was clasping and unclasping her hands with nervous intensity.
“He had best be so,” she answered, “when next he meets me.”
“You will not meet him here.”
“No? no?”—quickly. Suspicion darkened her face. She drew back.
The general was lying, doubtless, to save a much-needed soldier
from his deserts.
“No,” went on Alcantara, lighting his cigarette, “you will not find him
here. I have one hundred men, but each has been with me since
before the beginning of the wet season. No one has joined me of
late.”
She turned about, half murmuring to herself, and made as if to go.
“He went the other way, perhaps,” suggested the general; “to Rio
Chico, where is another force of Los Salvadores.”
She came round upon him, arms raised, set teeth showing between
lips that were pale again.
“I go to Rio Chico,” she said.
“And he will be gone—wait, wait! General Pablo Montilla leaves Rio
Chico to-night with his column.”
“I shall follow.”
“I join him with my men at dawn.”
He saw the light of a terrible hope illuminate her countenance. She
came to his stirrup again.
“Señor general,” she pleaded, “let me go with your soldiers. I am
young and strong—I can cook—I can carry a load——”
Alcantara puckered his lips teasingly, looking down at her. He
marked the plump, well rounded figure, the clear, copper-coloured
skin with its scarlet touches on mouth and cheek, the long braid, the
full, girlish throat.
“You go,” he said.
Child as she was, she knew the men of Venezuela, and she saw and
understood his look.
“I go for revenge, Señor general,” she declared meaningly. “If you
are so good as to allow me to follow you, I—I will be safe? Else I
walk far in the rear—alone.”
“As you like,” answered Alcantara. “There will be two other women
along—Maria, who goes with one of my coroneles, and La Negrita,
the woman of the black general, Pedro Tovar. You may march with
them.”
“And when will you start?” she asked eagerly. “When?”
“We thirst for the blood of Ricardo Villegas,” laughed Alcantara. “Well
——”
A squad was approaching, led by a determined-looking officer. Two
of his men carried large-calibre German Mausers, the third had a
Mauser and a canvas money bag, and the fourth a Mauser and a
rope.
“Comisario,” said the general, as the latter shuffled near and saluted,
“what raciones have you collected?”
An expression of defeat spread upon the commissary’s
countenance. He shook his head dejectedly, and, reaching round,
seized and brought forward the money bag.
“These unreasonable, these unpatriotic people!” he began with heat.
“Actually they decline to give up their miserable savings. Observe!”
Alcantara peeked into the bag. “Oh, not so bad,” he said. “But
perhaps a better display of the rope——”
The other nodded. “I promise you they will be loyal.” Then, his face
more determined than before, the commissary departed. Behind
came the squad, the Mausers, the bag, and the noose.
The general addressed Manuelita. “We shall start at sunset,” he
said. “But you? You have walked all day, you say.”
“It does not matter. I will walk all night, gladly, gladly!”
He bent to arrange the knot of his sash. When he turned back again
she was gone.
At sunset the soldiers of Alcantara left the huts where they had been
quartered and gathered in the Plaza. Ragged and dirty they were,
and unshaven. Some of them were part Indian, with straight black
hair and copper-coloured skins. Others were negroes or half-castes,
with flat noses and kinky heads. But all were without uniforms. Their
drill trousers were of different colours, and held up by lengths of
string or rope. Their tight-fitting, collarless shirts, made of a cheap
woven material, were as vari-coloured. Even their little jackets, that
buttoned up to the neck and were brought in at the waist under a
cartridge belt, were not of the same shade or kind. Here and there
among them, stripped of its red trimmings, showed the khaki uniform
of the government—spoil of a battlefield. All wore alpargatas; and
those fortunate enough possessed straw hats of generous
circumference or brown, furry pelo de guamas, which displayed, on a
narrow divisa sewed around the crown, the corps and division of the
fighter beneath. Over the left shoulder of some of the men, and
passed under the belt, was a rolled, double-wool poncho, the blue
side out, if it so happened, but quite as often, in unconscious
treason, the other, which was dyed the red of the enemy.
Despite the commissary’s promise of loyalty, when the soldiers came
together there were no cheers from the townspeople, who, gathering
to see the departure, chattered in undertones among themselves,
and eyed the motley force in illy concealed dislike.
And now, obeying the call of a battered bugle, the start was made.
First down the street came General Blanco Alcantara, in fine style;
then the black general, Tovar, astride a lanky horse; after these, a
bevy of mounted officers—three coroneles, two commandantes, and
two capitanes; the privates—on foot and in no formation; the
asistentes, loaded down with the personal effects of their superiors;
and several burros and mules carrying pack saddles heavy with
ammunition; next, each with a bundle balanced on her head, a hat
hung to her arm, a gourd and a smoky pail swinging and clinking
together at her side, and a long tabaco in her mouth, two women;
last of all, a padre, in cassock and shovel hat, riding a gaited mule.
The third woman to accompany the expedition was on the edge of
the town, where the road to Higuerote opens into the forest. She was
watching as she rested, eating an arepa and the remaining plantain.
As Alcantara rode into sight, she stood up, her eyes shining, her lips
parted, her head erect. The command by, she walked forward
sturdily and fell in behind.
Night was falling then, but she was soon spied by those in the rear.
Presently, these had told others, and the soldiers stretched their
necks to look back to where she trudged. There was some
whispering among those nearest her, and presently the padre reined
a little to speak.
“You were not with us when we left the town,” he said. “How come
you to be here?”
“I wish to go to Higuerote,” she answered, but would explain no
further.
Seeing her questioned, one of the asistentes, a kindly old man, fell
back to offer her a cigarette. She took it gratefully.
“And do you ignore the Church?” demanded the padre reprovingly.
The asistente handed over a cigarette, and soon the three were
journeying forward together.
The night breeze swept over them as they went, making the way
cool, and bringing with it the fragrance of growing things. But their
travelling was difficult. The road was only a cart’s width, hard and
stony, rising and falling, too, on broken ground. There was no moon
over the first third of the journey, and every little while a jaguar,
scenting their passing, howled out at them from the dark, vine-hung
forest lining the march.
Bit by bit Manuelita told her companions the story of Ricardo’s flight.
As the padre listened, his round, florid face grew solemn, and he
poked out his under lip dubiously. The asistente, on the other hand,
swore often and pityingly, so that the good priest was kept busy
crossing himself.
“And have you come all the way from the hacienda San Jacinto to-
day?” asked the soldier.
“Since morning,” Manuelita answered.
“In that case,” interposed the padre, settling himself in the saddle, “to
make your walking more easy, you may hold to the tail of my mule
on the up grades.”
Not long after, they were forced to cover their faces and cease
talking. For before the night was half gone, the moon topped the
trees, showing its great, burnished shield upon the starlit sky. And
with the rising of the moon the forest thinned, the way became more
level, but sandy, the walking extremely heavy, and legions of hungry
mosquitoes came swarming upon them. The padre’s mule,
tormented by the pests, made the middle of the track dangerous for
Manuelita. She fell back, and walked in silence beside the old
orderly. Once she uncovered to ask him how far they had got.
“Half-way,” he answered, when she murmured a thanksgiving.
Later she again spoke: “And how long before Higuerote is near?”
“Three hours,” he replied.
Her hands stole to her belt.
“Only one day and one night,” she said, “and yet I am almost upon
them!”
But she was miserably tired by now, and many times would have
stumbled to her knees had not the asistente supported her. He gave
her frequent draughts from his aguardiente flask, and little lumps of
damp brown sugar out of a canvas bag at his thigh. The padre, riding
just in advance, looked back often to speak encouragement, and as
often called the asistente forward to levy upon him for a cigarette.
Bravely Manuelita persevered. Toward morning her brain seemed to
wander, for she talked meaningless things to the old man lagging
beside her. But a moment’s rest, a swallow of drink, a whispered
reminder, and she struggled forward.
“Santa María!” was her petition, “only give me strength!”
The yellow moon had gone and the dawn was near when, having
arrived at three great sand hummocks thrown up close to the road,
General Alcantara drew rein. Noiselessly the soldiers laid down their
ponchos, partook of cold coffee and a little food, and stretched
themselves for a brief rest. The horses of the officers and the
ammunition animals were led to one side, where they might crop the
grass growing about in clumps. Alcantara and Pedro Tovar walked
apart, conversing. The padre guided his mule to one side and, out of
his saddle, was soon drowsing as comfortably as the mosquitoes
would permit; while Manuelita sought the women, who were
smoking, and squatted on the sand beside them, her face to the
east, her lips moving with soundless words.
Swiftly the day came. A moment of little light, another that was
brighter, and the stars dimmed. Then the unkempt force got to their
feet and moved on—cartridge belts filled and machetes slipped
under them. Above, floating on white-tipped wings, followed a score
of the bald black samuro, their curved beaks lowered in horrid
watchfulness.
When the sun rose, the company made a second halt, behind a line
of scrub growth. From here General Alcantara, dismounting, went
forward alone on hands and knees. He stopped while yet in the
shelter of the dense underbrush and stood up. To his left lay a town
—tile-roofed, low houses, three rows of them, two rows having their
back yards to the sea. Beyond these was a gently shelving beach
strewn with the unpainted, dugout canoes of fishermen. Still farther,
dotted here and there with a dingy sail, was the blue of the
Caribbean, its outermost edge moving up and down upon the paler
blue of the sky. To his right, some two hundred yards away, was the
curving line of a railroad, then beach and boats, then sea again. And
in the very foreground, seated on the sand, under a sagging
telegraph wire, was a man in khaki, fast asleep, with his gun, muzzle
end down, in a land-crab hole.
Alcantara now lowered himself again to creep on, and a moment
later the sentry awoke and found himself a prisoner.
Presently, from the south, there sounded a faint rumble. And soon,
far down the rusty rails, appeared a train. Alcantara gave a signal to
those who had come up from behind, and at once the Revolutionists
in khaki gathered the officers’ mounts and, taking the captured
sentry with them, went back along the road to the shelter of the sand
hummocks. The padre turned his gaited mule and single-footed after
them, concern written large on his round, florid face. The rest of the
company displayed their agitation. The soldiers craned and
gestured, or examined their arms. La Negrita and the other woman
chattered under their breath. The two capitanes ran to and fro
between Alcantara and the black general, taking and bringing
messages. The men with the pack animals proceeded slowly toward
the road gap in the shielding shrub. Only one of them all was giving
the hour a solemn beginning. This was Manuelita, kneeling,
bareheaded, in the sand, her hands clasped, her eyes closed, her
face upturned.
“Santa María!” she whispered, for once more she was praying.
When the train was less than half a mile away Alcantara drew a
small blue flag from his breast. It was of flimsy muslin, and showed
at its centre a cross of yellow, blue, and red. The general, having
unfolded it, held it in his right hand, so low that it could not be seen
from the town. Instantly similar colours were waved from the engine
cab. Again Alcantara signalled those behind, and the black general
led them forward. At their front was borne a large flag of the cause,
fastened to a bamboo pole.
When the train had crawled abreast of the Tacarigua force, its
antique, ramshackle coaches came to a stop. Out of them tumbled
some sixty soldiers, the heavy-set Pablo Montilla commanding.
Alcantara saluted silently and made off with two-thirds of his own
men straight along the track toward a railroad bridge in the town. As
quietly, Tovar took the remaining third, joined Montilla, and started
toward a second bridge, which crossed the Rio Curiepe at the main
street. The train backed. The ammunition-mules and -burros were
held close to the track, where stayed Maria and the other woman.
But Manuelita, marking which way the men of Rio Chico had gone,
ran after, and fell in behind them.
That advance was made in two lines, the soldiers trotting single file.
Those on the track were heard from first. A shot rang out—then
another. Then the battered bugle sounded a few clear notes, which
the Mausers obeyed with a spatter of shots.
Now Tovar turned to his men with a cry: “Adelante, muchachos!”
The soldiers broke into a run, firing willy-nilly, and bunching together
at the bridge end.
“Viva Montilla!” they shouted. “Viva Tovar!”
Then came answering cries from across the bridge, where khaki
uniforms were swarming in a hasty rally, where shots were plentiful
now, and a drum was keeping up a steady thump! thump!
Behind the cluster of men on that bridge was Manuelita. She had no
thought of danger for herself, though the bullets were flying about
her. She did not even watch the khaki figures hurrying to oppose, or
those others spreading out between the bridges, lining the Curiepe
to prevent a crossing. Her gaze was upon the men of Rio Chico. Her
dust-rimmed eyes searched for one figure.
But now Tovar was leading Los Salvadores across the stone-flagged
bridge. Officered by red-sashed men in blue, the front ranks of the
government received them with bayonets. Those in the background
sent upon them a hail of lead.
“Ah!”
The piercing cry that broke from Manuelita was heard above the
clashing of steel, the singing of bullets, the curses and vivas, the
shrieks of agony. There he was, there—in the very front of the fight,
laying about him with his machete. Her whole body trembled, her
heart fluttered, her breath came in gasps, she choked.
“Madre de Dios!” She clutched the spear-shaped knife. “Let me but
get at him first!”
But now she was rudely driven back. The government was gaining—
it was machete to bayonet, and the latter’s deal was the more
deadly. Los Salvadores retreated, one against another, clubbing their
Mausers, filling the air with their yells. Maria’s coronel raced up,
bringing a futile order. For Pedro Tovar was out of earshot, in the
front of them all, still facing the enemy, but backing from the fierce
onslaught of the men in yellow.
But where was Ricardo? Manuelita could not see. Forgetful of
personal safety, she sprang upon the nearer iron rail of the bridge.
And from there, looking beyond the line of hand-to-hand combat,
beyond the van of the government, she saw him—lying flat upon the
flags, arms stretched out, face downward. At his curly head was a
growing pool.
Like a flash, she was down and standing on the bridge. She flattened
herself against the hand rail to keep from being knocked off her feet.
Men of the Revolution struggled by her, bravely contesting each step
of the way. And now Pedro Tovar was beside her—losing his ground.
And now the khaki of the government was on every side.
“Viva el Gobierno! Viva Domingo Morales!”
Los Salvadores were losing!
She saw more khaki-clad men running up from the tumbled-down
church in the Plaza—running straight toward the bridge, toward
Ricardo, helpless, but moving feebly now, turning his head from side
to side as if in pain. They would cut at him as they passed!
Another cry, and she made her way back along the hand rail to
where Tovar was swinging his black arms. Then on, beyond him, to
where showed the top of the Revolution’s colours. A moment, and
she had seized the bamboo pole, had unfurled the blue flag with its
tricoloured cross. Then, facing about, with cries again, she pushed
her way toward the black general.
“Viva la Revolución!” she cried.
Spent with their night march and with fighting, disheartened by
retreat, the motley forces of Montilla and Tovar now beheld a girl at
their front, waving aloft the flag of their cause. They hesitated; then,
spurred by the sight, stood fast.
And now, with cheers from Alcantara’s men to announce a victory at
the railroad bridge, there came the change of balance in that fight at
the other. A moment and the government was retreating, not foot by
foot, but quickly, up the gentle slope.
“Viva la Revolución!” was the whole shout now. And with a fearful
grin on his black face, Pedro Tovar cried on the men, cursed them
into fiercer fighting, struck them with the flat of his sabre.
And now the wavering blue flag was at the middle of the bridge, was
on the farther slope, was almost to the man lying face downward on
the approach—then, beside him.
Another hand caught the bamboo pole there, saving the riddled
colours from fluttering to the ground. Still the government fell
backward, still the Revolution pressed on. The bridge was cleared,
except where wounded or dead lay stretched upon the stone; the
clash of weapons grew less and less. The retreat of the government
was a rout.
But back at the bridge, unmindful of victory, exhausted, yet not
realising that, sat Manuelita, a soldier’s head pillowed against her
breast, a wet cheek rested against a paler one.
“Santa María!” she sobbed, “he is alive—alive! Madre de Dios, I
thank thee!”
THE END
 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been
standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
New original cover art included with this eBook is
granted to the public domain.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JUSTICE
OF GIDEON ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions

will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright
in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and without
paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General
Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and
distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if
you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the
trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the
Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such
as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and
printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in
the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright
law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially
commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
 PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the

free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this
work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase
“Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of
the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or
online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and

Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand,
agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual
property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to
abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using
and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for
obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™
electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms
of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only

be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by
people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.
There are a few things that you can do with most Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the
full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There
are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™
electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and
help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the
collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the
individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the
United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright
law in the United States and you are located in the United
States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying,
distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project
Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will
support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free
access to electronic works by freely sharing Project
Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this
agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name
associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms
of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with
its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it
without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also
govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most
countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside
the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to
the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying,
displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works
based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The
Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright
status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project

Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other

immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must
appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project
Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed,
viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United

States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it
away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg
License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United
States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to
anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges.
If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of
paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use
of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth
in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and
distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through
1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder.
Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™
License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright
holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project

Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files
containing a part of this work or any other work associated with
Project Gutenberg™.
 1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute
this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1
with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the
Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if
you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project
Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or
other format used in the official version posted on the official
Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at
no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a
means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project
Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™
works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or

providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
 about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that
s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and
discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project
Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project

Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different
terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain
permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™
trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on,
transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright
law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite
these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the
medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,”
such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt
data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other