henry louis gates jr the signifying monkey

Gates clarified the subject nicely for me. Gates’ analysis focuses on narrative structure, literary forms utilized, and rhetorical strategy, as well as the notion of blackness being a negative essence and a presence.įirst, I was happy to read more about signifying because it was the one point in the Parker text that I didn’t completely understand. His focus lies in the showing the “blackness” of a writer has been naturalized as absent in Western culture. In his analysis of Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, Gates appears to be working to create a case for African American literary theory. Gates states that an author’s text is an intertextual result of previous authors’ works, of which Mikhail Bakhtin referred to as “double-voiced” discourse where one author’s voice affects another author’s voice. Gates focuses the majority of his analysis on comparing the parodies of Ellison and Wright, as well as Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo. Gates then examines the use of signification in multiple authors’ works, including Hurston, Wright, Ellison, and Reed. The signifier then repeats what someone said about a third person in order to trick that person and reverse the current situation.

The Signifying Monkey is the signifier who “wreaks havoc” on the signified through double-talk, making fun of a person, or speaking through gestures and expressions. He states that the archetypal signifier is the Signifying Monkey, a trickster figure viewed as a mode for story narration. Gates introduces the African American discourse version of signifying as literary forms, including repetition and pastiche, based on cultural actions and traditions that produce blackness in literature.

Henry louis gates jr the signifying monkey