A Relation of Difference: The Politics of Black “Signification”

Louis Gates, Jrs examination of the the tropes of tropes in Afro-American literature is a pi peerlessering account of the vicissitudes of a movement of discrimination. As a critical repartee to The Signifying Monkey, the essay would seek to reveal the idiosyncrasies of Gates literary criticism with relations to the idiosyncrasies of black literary tradition of difference.The Discreteness of Black DifferenceThe second chapter of Louis Gates, Jr.s famous book The Signifying Monkey has a wondrous analysis of the rhetoric system and Afro-American signification traditions.The black concept of signifying, quite differently from the normalplace English, is inherently difficult to comprehend as it (re)doubles itself at every attempt of closer examination. Gates (1988) forcefully argues that mate to the classic confrontation between Afro-American culture and American culture, there is a policy-making and metaphysical, relationship that black substance bears to the English significati on is, paradoxically, a relation of difference inscribed deep down a relation of identity (p.45).It is important to note the organic relations black literary traditions establish with the identity of blacks, which are again (re)constructed through these traditions themselves. The discreteness of Black difference emerges from its status of being parallel to the white American literary universe.Intertextuality is also a discrete feature of the Afro-American literature as each poem refers to other poems of the selfsame(prenominal) genre (Gates, 1988, p.60). Here, the repetition and revision of structural elements are something common and shared out.It must bee seen as a narrative technique for emphasizing the common signifier which is a de facto precedence for the community. Therefore, Gates asserts that value, in this art of poeisis, lies in foregrounding rather than in the invention of a legend signified (p.61). Needless to say, the common signified in black literature as a sha red meaning is diametrically opposite to the white American idea of bran-new signified as authentic.Moreover, it is workable to argue that the Black English itself is a different language and the blacks do not speak the same language of the whites. For Gates, the language of blackness encodes and names its sense of independence through a rhetorical work at that we might think of as the Signfyin(g) black difference. For Blacks, language and its discreetness is a question of (re)inventing themselves as creative, as opposed to the white imposed idea of being imitative.In addition, for blacks, a new language with their own jargons is a tool for ultimately defining themselves. The black demeanor is more about the living poetry in the streets than the taught poetry in the class rooms. The question of black Signifying is a question of another way of life that is not centered on the literary paradigms of white male Europeans.The assertion of the politics black difference by Gates is not an attempt at molding a difference for a new zone of engagement. But, it is the simple assertion of what really exist as the difference of both living and creating since slavery as black people have been Signifyin(g), without explicitly calling it that (Gate, 1988, p.67).As it is in the white language, black Signification is not merely a form of indirect signification on the contrary, it is a way of identifying with ones true identity. Most importantly, Black Signification is a complex rhetorical device that is entangled and multiple.ConclusionThe Signification in black literature is almost related to the discreteness of their way of life. The Black Signifyin(g) is closely linked to the identity and collective belongingness of the blacks. The Significations stands not with its meaning, but with its utterance itself.ReferenceGates, H. L, Jr. (1988). The Signifying Monkey a possibility of Afro-AmericanLiterary Criticism. Oxford Oxford University Press. pp. 44-89