The great debate: W. E. B. du Bois vs. Alain Locke on the aesthetic

Philosophia Africana

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 15-39

  Harris, Leonard ^a  

^a PURDUE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 60950579474     PISSN: 15398250     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/philafricana20047111     Document Type: Review

References (78)

1. Versions of this paper have been presented at Plenary Session, "Beginnings," International Association of Philosophy and Literature," May 2001; and "Art or Propaganda?" W.E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, Harvard University, February 2001. I am indebted to Chielozonoa Eze, Lee McBride, and Rosamaria Pontoriero for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper
2. For an excellent discussion of the sublime in Du Bois, see Robert Gooding-Williams, "Du Bois's Counter-Sublime," The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 35, No. 2 (1995), pp. 207-224
3. Dale E. Peterson, "Notes from the Underground: Dostoevsky, Du Bois, and the Discovery of the Ethnic Soul," The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 35, No. 2 (1995), pp. 225-248
4. Ronald A.T. Judy, "The New Black Aesthetic and W. E. B. Du Bois, or Hephaestus, Limping," The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 35, No. 2 (1995), pp. 249-277
5. For excellent discussions regarding the role of the sublime and the important ethical role the arts were to play for Locke, especially music, see Paul Burgett, "Vindication as a Thematic Principle in the Writings of Alain Locke on the Music of Black Americans," in Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Samuel A. Floyd Jr. (White Plains, N.Y: Kraus International Publications, 1987), pp. 37-40
6. For its role in theatre, see Samuel A. Hay, African American Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
7. For a recent extensive review of Du Bois on propaganda, see Alessandra Lorini, "'The Spell is Upon Me': W. E. B. DuBois's Notion of Art as Propaganda," Temples for Tomorrow, eds. G. Fabre and M. Feith (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 159-176
8. I explore an implicit debate Locke had about the nature of race and community with a founder of the African National Congress in South Africa, Pixley Kalsaka Seme, in "Universal Human Liberation and Community: Pixley Kalsaka Seme and Alain L. Locke," Perspectives in African Philosophy: An Anthology on 'Problematics of an African Philosophy: Twenty Years After (1976-1996), eds. Claude Sumner and Samuel W. Yohannes (Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University Printing Press, 2002), pp. 150-159
9. Du Bois may certainly have ideas similar to those of Herder, Hegel, or Marx. However, when he is interpreted in terms of his affinity to these authors and his view on race, Du Bois holds that there is some fact to the matter. This is the important feature of his views: that there are objective and discoverable facts of the matter. See, for example, Bernard W. Bell, "W. E. B. Du Bois's Struggle to Reconcile Folk and High Art," Critical Essays on W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. William L. Andrews (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1992), p. 106
10. Anthony Appiah, "The Uncompleted Argument," Race, Writing, Difference, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 12 (Autumn 1985), pp. 21-37
11. W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn (New York: Literary Classics, 1986 [1940]), p. 39
12. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: International Publishers, 1968), p. 148
13. George Hutchinson, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White (Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 30. Henceforth cited as Hutchinson
14. Alan H. Goldman, "Realism abut Aesthetic Properties," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Winter 1993), p. 31
15. John W. Bender, "Realism, Supervenience, and Irresolvable Aesthetic Disputes," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 54 No. 4 (Fall 1996), p. 371
16. See also Jaegwon Kim, "Supervenience and Nomological Incommensurables," American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 15 (1978), pp. 149-156
17. W. E. B. Du Bois, "Negro Art," The Crisis, Vol. 22 (1921), pp. 55-56. Henceforth cited as Art
18. See Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press), 1989
19. W. E. B. Du Bois, Darkwater (New York: Humanity Books, 2003), p. 244
20. See W. E. B. Du Bois, "Criteria of Negro Art," W. E. B. Du Bois Reader (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), p. 510
21. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, letter to Herbert Aptheker, January 10, 1956 (Mass.: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1997), Vol. 3, pp. 394-395
22. W. E. B. Du Bois, "Our Book Shelf," The Crisis, Vol. 32 (January 1926), pp. 140-141. Henceforth cited as Book Shelf
23. W. E. B. Du Bois, "Mencken," The Crisis, Vol. 34 (October 1927)
24. W. E. B. Du Bois, "Home to Harlem and Quicksand," The Crisis (June 1928)
25. Claude McKay, Home to Harlem (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987 [1928]), p. 267
26. W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Browsing Reader," The Crisis, Vol. 34, No. 6 (1928), p. 202
27. Marcus Garvey, "Home to Harlem: An Insult to the Race," Negro World, September 29, 1928
28. W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Negro College," The Crisis, Vol. 40 (August 1933), pp. 175-177
29. The New Negro, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Maxwell Macmillan, 1992 [1925]), p. 3. Henceforth cited as New Negro
30. To Color America, ed. Jeffrey C. Stewart (Washington City: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Portrait Gallery, 1989), p. 54
31. See also Alain Locke, "To Certain of Our Philistines," Opportunity, Vol. 3 (1925), pp. 155-156
32. James W. Johnson to Locke, March 9, 1925 (Howard University: Moorland-Spingarn Collection)
33. John Dewey, Art as Experience in The Later Works: 1925-1953, ed. Jo Ann Boylston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), pp. 12, 63. See also pp. 15-23
34. John Dewey, Experience and Nature in The Later Works: 1925-1953, ed. Jo Ann Boylston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), p. 269. In addition, for both Dewey and Locke, the natural sciences were actually a form of art; culminating in art forms. They do so, not because the natural sciences point to facts of the matter, but because they help see things differently
35. See Alain Locke, "Who and What Is 'Negro,'" Opportunity, Vol. 20 (1942), pp. 36-41, 83-87
36. Locke, "Who and What is 'Negro,'" "Frontiers of Culture," The Crescent, Vol. 33 (Spring 1950), pp. 37-39
37. Audrey Thompson, "Anti-Racist Pedagogy-Art or Propaganda?" Philosophy of Education, 1995, pp. 130-141
38. Henceforth cited as Thompson. See also Barbara Houston, "Artful Anti-Racist Pedagogy," Philosophy of Education, 1995, pp. 142-145
39. Nathan I. Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 202
40. Alain Locke, "Art or Propaganda?" Harlem, Vol. 1 (November 1928), pp. 12-13
41. See also "Freedom Through Art: Review of Negro Art, 1870-1938," The Crisis, Vol. 45 (July 1938), pp. 227-229. Henceforth cited as Propaganda
42. Meg Armstrong, "The Effects of Blackness: Gender, Race, and the Sublime in Aesthetic Theories of Burke and Kant," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Summer 1996), p. 220
43. Yvonne Ochillo, "The Race-Consciousness of Alain Locke," Phylon, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Fall 1986), p. 180
44. Claude McKay, A Long Way From Home (New York: Harvest Books, 1970), p. 330
45. and Wallace Thurman, Infants of the Spring (Boston: Northeastern University Press-New York, 1997 [1972]), pp. 226-245
46. See Locke, "Freedom Through Art,"
47. and W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Passing of A. L. Locke," Phylon, Vol. 15 (September 1954), pp. 243-252
48. Alain Locke, "Spiritual Truancy," New Challenge (Fall 1937), pp. 81-85. Henceforth cited as Truancy
49. Alain Locke, "Propaganda Or Poetry?" Race, Vol. 1 (Summer 1936), pp. 70-72
50. Alain Locke, "Values and Imperatives," The Philosophy of Alain Locke, ed. Leonard Harris (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), p. 37
51. Henceforth cited as Values. See also Richard Shusterman, "Pragmatist Aesthetics: Roots and Radicalism," The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke, ed. Leonard Harris (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999), pp. 97-110
52. Ernest D. Mason, "Alain Locke's Philosophy of Value," Alain Locke, ed. Russell J. Linnemann (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1982), p. 14
53. and Hutchinson, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White, pp. 1-16
54. See, for example, Alain Locke, Race Contacts and Interracial Relations, ed. Jeffery C. Stewart, (Washington D.C.: Howard University Press, 1992)
55. Alain Locke, The Critical Temper of Alain Locke, ed. Jeffrey C. Stewart (New York: Garland Publishing, 1983), p. 427
56. Alain Locke, "New Negro: 'New' or Newer," Opportunity, Vol. 17 (January-February 1939), pp. 4-10, 36-42
57. Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, p. 398
58. David L. Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: Random House, 1982), p. 304
59. See also W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 2 vols. (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1993)
60. Houston A. Baker Jr., Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 13
61. See Alain Locke, "Cultural Relativism and Ideal Peace," The Philosophy of Alain Locke, pp. 67-78
62. "Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy," The Philosophy of Alain Locke, pp. 51-66
63. When Peoples Meet, eds. Alain Locke and Bernard J. Stein (New York: Committee on Workshops, Progressive Education Association, 1942)
64. and Alain Locke, p. 41
65. See Ernest D. Mason, "Deconstruction in the Philosophy of Alain Locke," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 24 (1988), pp. 85-106
66. Leonard Harris, "Rendering the Subtext: Subterranean Deconstructive Project," The Philosophy of Alain Locke, pp. 279-289
67. Jean F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1988), p. 79
68. Mark Helbling, "Feeling Universality and Thinking Particularistically: Alain Locke, Franz Boas, and Melville Hereskovits," The Harlem Renaissance: The One and the Many (Greenwood: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 57. Henceforth cited as Helbling
69. There is a huge range of possible links between base properties and the properties that supervene. Thus, whatever the beauty-making forms and structures actually disclose as essential are not pre-given by a necessary connection to Truth. There is, on this reading of Locke, the possibility of irreconcilable differences in judgment about a given literary text such that there are, and can be no, objectively True principles capable of settling the case. The following are examples of his comments that help support this reading: "Instead therefore of regarding culture as expression of race, race this interpretation is regarded as itself a culture product." "The Concept of Race Applied to Social Culture," 1924, p. 193
70. "Culture goods, once evolved, are no longer the exclusive property of the race or people that originated them. They belong to all who can use them.......But for all the limitless exchange and transplanting of culture, it cannot be artificially manufactured; it grows. And as far as I can understand history, it is always a folk product, with the form and flavor of a particular people and place, that is to say, for all its subsequent universality." "The Contribution of Race to Culture," 1930, p. 204
71. "[F]acts of concrete experience are the source of our general notions, and not, as Platonism has always held, pale reflections of the later." "Value," 1935, p. 113
72. "Realty in its fullness contains and exhibits values, and they are ejected from it only by an effort of abstraction.... Values therefore are not to be regarded as gratuitous additions to reality, made out of the superfluity of human perversity, but as its highest qualities and the culminating points of its significance for us." "Value," 1935, p. 126
73. "[T]hese common-denominator values would stand out as pragmatically confirmed by common human experiences. ...confirmable invariability in concrete human experience." "Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy," 1942, p. 56
74. I have argued for this view in "Honor and Insurrection" Frederick Douglass, ed. Bill E. Lawson (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1999), pp. 227-242
75. "Honor, Eunuchs, and the Postcolonial Subject," Postcolonial African Philosophy, ed. Emmanuel C. Eze, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1997), pp. 252-259
76. "Honor: Empowerment and Emasculation," Rethinking Masculinity, eds. Larry May and Robert A. Strinkwerda (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1992), pp. 191-208
77. "Alain Locke: Community and Citizenship," The Modern Schoolman, Vol. 74 (May 1997), pp. 337-346
78. "The Horror of Tradition or How to Burn Babylon and Build Benin While Reading A Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note," Philosophical Forum, Vol. 24, Nos. 1-3 (Fall-Spring 1992-93), pp. 94-119