Paul Beatty

This article focuses on American racism and its impact on writers and publishing processes in the literary world, dealing with Percival Everett's novel Erasure (2001). The novel reveals the thematic restrictions imposed on black writers as a consequence of racism. Of course, the issue of racism has been addressed in hundreds of literary works, but they mostly describe the wounds caused by racist attitudes on the social and individual level. The new and striking point in this work is that racism is openly and unhesitatingly adopted by individuals such as writers, editors, and publishers, who are considered part of an intellectual community. The protagonist/author of the novel is expected to write about the lives and problems of black people because he is also black. When he writes about other subjects, he is disapproved, excluded, and even subjected to pressure to write about the experiences of black people. What Everett wants to show to his readers in his novel is that racism is not unique to an anti-intellectual culture. Whereas in previous times, black people in American society have struggled with discrimination, poverty, and low life standards, they have to struggle with oppression in the intellectual and cultural spheres in the 21st century, additionally. Thus Everett proves in his novel that racism still persists even in the 21st century and even in the intellectual settings. These issues will be analyzed through Afro-American critical method. The contribution the article offers to the literature is that it deals with a novel which tells racism is also prevalent in intellectual environments.

In critiques of Slumberland until now, scholars have focused on Beatty’s use of satire and argued that Slumberland takes an ambiguous political stance toward blackness. In contrast, my article focuses on Beatty’s textual implementation of sonic strategies in what I call the novel’s DJ aesthetics. This article takes Slumberland as a case study for understanding how Paul Beatty thinks beyond the logic of racial/post-racial while insisting on an artistic freedom aligned with theorizations of the post-soul aesthetic. Slumberland enacts a hip black narrative in order to satirize the popular assumption that a post-racial era would also mean that blackness becomes a thing of the past. After imagining three competing visions of a post-racial society—each unsatisfactorily characterized by conformity, sterility, or an ahistoricity that negates identity and erases blackness—the novel conjures an alternative future for blackness through an audiotopia founded on new set of social and sonic relations that re-centers blackness. Slumberland offers this vision of the future through an act of “sonic black radicalism” enabled through the use of the novel’s DJ aesthetic, which is enacted in its style and structure. Pursuing this analysis of the novel’s textual implementation of sonic strategies entails a kind of listening to the text. The DJ aesthetic demands of readers a citational reading practice that works toward performatively effecting the social change that Beatty and his narrator want music to bring about: a new relationship to particularity and universality and an unconstructed form of blackness. This article defines the novel’s DJ aesthetic; uncovers the politics embedded within that aesthetic; and realigns the novel and the narrator with the ethos of a post-soul aesthetic that is “of indeterminate blackness” and also key to the novel’s discussion of the future of blackness.

Post-Soul Satire is a well-chosen assortment of essays that discusses African American issues in various media within the cultural context of the United States and in terms of the phenomenon of post-soul. From literature and art to films and television shows, everything discussed in this collection demonstrates a subversive nature, and traditional ideas about blackness are again and again confronted by a new black aesthetic. The antiquated aversion to irony and humor is sharply questioned by a new generation, with satire the crux of this cogent publication. The volume situates the origins of post-soul in the post-civil rights era when black identity became significantly more diverse and offbeat self-introspection became a popular trait of artistic productions. For some readers, the term post-soul may be confusing, but it is lucidly explained by Derek C. Maus in his introduction to the volume. For Maus, post-soul is a contemporary black aesthetic most prominently associated with the black entertainment industry. Satire is of utmost importance in these non-print and literary productions because it annuls existing ideas of black authenticity and sometimes even adds a grotesque twist to customary definitions of it. Several diagnostic accounts that focus on Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks are pivotal in understanding post-soul in this volume and so deserve first mention. These essays include Derek C. Maus's introduction, Terrence T. Tucker's "Blackness We Can Believe In: Authentic Blackness and the Evolution of Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks," and Cameron Leader-Picone's "Pilgrims in an Unholy Land: Satire and the Challenge of African American Leadership in The Boondocks and The White Boy Shuffle." Both McGruder's original comic strip of The Boondocks (1996-2006) and the popular animated television series based on it (The Boondocks, Cartoon Network, 2004-2014) draw on the concept of comic rage. As Maus describes these essays in his introduction, Tucker finds comic rage of The Boondocks

This is the syllabus for a course I taught at McGill University in the Winter 2019 semester within the interdisciplinary Canadian Studies Program. It focuses on comparative analysis of depictions of black identity in contemporary works of fiction by African American and Afro-Canadian  writers.

In "The Sellout" (2015) Paul Beatty evidences the interrelatedness of black identity and control over urban spaces. By using auto-segregation to bring back to life the fictional town of Dickens, “erased” from the maps to support the interests of realtors, the protagonist Me becomes functional in pointing out the dramatic urban transformations that affected Los Angeles and Compton in recent years, and in denouncing the multiple forms of segregation that have been carried on for decades in these areas. Beatty’s novel is not a “surreal fable about a black neighborhood being wiped off the map”,  as it has been defined, but a biting satire about a reality that is threatening to displace unprivileged Southern Los Angelenos, erasing their sense of community and the cultural history that is attached to the territories they inhabit. If Southern Los Angeles has undergone, in the words of urbanist Edward Soja, a “crisis-generated restructuring” in the urban uprisings of the 1960s, fictional Dickens shows that a “restructuring-generated crises” is the foreseeable future.

In this course we will examine the way in which contemporary (defined for our purposes as the last twenty-five years) artists in numerous media—including print literature, stage drama, television, film, and the visual arts—incorporate satire into their works in an effort to question, to resist, to undermine, or otherwise just “mess with” various aspects of general American culture and African American culture specifically. We will look specifically at the ways in which contemporary African American satirists have tended to incorporate a dual focus into their work, simultaneously targeting external forces that continue to impede full racial equality in the United States, but also turning their satirical gaze inwards to question some of the prevailing values within the African American community. We will begin with a classic text of African American satire—Wallace Thurman’s Harlem Renaissance novel, _The Blacker the Berry_, and use it as a lens through which to analyze more recent developments in the techniques and messages conveyed using this particular mode of artistic expression.

From "30 Americans" to "Angry White Boy," from "Bamboozled" to "The Boondocks," from "Chappelle's Show" to "The Colored Museum," this collection of twenty-one essays takes an interdisciplinary look at the flowering of satire and its influence in defining new roles in black identity. As a mode of expression for a generation of writers, comedians, cartoonists, musicians, filmmakers, and visual/conceptual artists, satire enables collective questioning of many of the fundamental presumptions about black identity in the wake of the civil rights movement. Whether taking place in popular and controversial television shows, in a provocative series of short internet films, in prize-winning novels and plays, in comic strips, or in conceptual hip hop albums, this satirical impulse has found a receptive audience both within and outside the black community.

Such works have been variously called "post-black," "post-soul," and examples of a "New Black Aesthetic." Whatever the label, this collection bears witness to a noteworthy shift regarding the ways in which African American satirists feel constrained by conventional obligations when treating issues of racial identity, historical memory, and material representation of blackness.

Among the artists examined in this collection are Paul Beatty, Dave Chappelle, Trey Ellis, Percival Everett, Donald Glover (a.k.a. Childish Gambino), Spike Lee, Aaron McGruder, Lynn Nottage, ZZ Packer, Suzan Lori-Parks, Mickalene Thomas, Toure, Kara Walker, and George C. Wolfe. The essays intentionally seek out interconnections among various forms of artistic expression. Contributors look at the ways in which contemporary African American satire engages in a broad ranging critique that exposes fraudulent, outdated, absurd, or otherwise damaging mindsets and behaviors both within and outside the African American community.

Includes essays by Bertram D. Ashe, Thomas R. Britt, Darryl Dickson-Carr, James J. Donahue, Michael B. Gillespie, Gillian Johns, Luvena Kopp, Jennifer Larson, Cameron Leader-Picone, Brandon Manning, Marvin McAllister, Danielle Fuentes Morgan, Derek Conrad Murray, Kinohi Nishikawa, Keenan Norris, Christian Schmidt, Linda Furgerson Selzer, Terrence T. Tucker, Sam Vásquez, and Aimee Zygmonski; with a critical introduction by Derek C. Maus.

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Reviews:

"The twenty-one essays that follow coeditor Derek C. Maus’s fine introduction to this tome demonstrate that, while post-soul may be a contentious epithet, the book _Post-Soul Satire_ is a scholarly treasure trove for those interested in the outcropping of satirical African American writing, visual art, music, film, and television that appeared in the twenty-five years following the publication of novelist Trey Ellis’s much discussed article “The New Black Aesthetic” in the Winter 1989 issue of _Callaloo_.[...]

_Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights_ maps the courageous (to some), unsettling (to others) trajectory African American print, dramatic, and visual artists have pursued in the recent past. And given the present-day socioeconomic and political circumstances in America and abroad, it seems clear that African American satirists will have no need to dull, much less put away, their barbed weapons any time soon. Though the task is daunting, our satirists, with Juvenalian scorn and Horatian mockery, will continue to expose societal warts and cancers with the goal of ameliorating broken aspects of America’s social contract, and _Post-Soul Satire_ will provide the rest of us with a powerful framework for better understanding the complex challenges these artists do and will face. This is not merely a good book but an important one."

          -- Joe Weixlmann, _African American Review_ 48.1-2 (Spring-Summer 2015)

"In this dexterous, cogent collection, Maus and Donahue (both, SUNY Potsdam) gather 21 scholarly essays that examine the use, effectiveness, and embrace of satire within African American art of the last two decades.  Taken together, the essays propose that satirical postures in contemporary black art communicate an imperative among a new generation of black artists to broaden and redefine African American identity in the post–civil rights/Obama (read “post-black”) era.  Though complex at times, the critical work accomplished here sustains engagement.  The contributors exhibit an admirable command of history, theory, lexicon, and cultural aesthetics.  Moreover, the depth and range of analyses encourage exploration of the many primary texts examined in these pages.  Particular attention is paid to the works of Kara Walker, Percival Everett, Aaron McGruder, and Touré.  Though these offerings—replete with challenging academic language and lofty theorizations—do not lend themselves to readers outside the academy, those interested in thoughtful critiques of popular culture, literature, media studies, and African American studies will find abundant rewards here. Summing Up: Highly recommended."

          -- Jarret Neal, _Choice_ 52.8 (April 2015)

"While there are a number of books on the concepts of post-soul and post-racial (many referenced in the book’s nineteen essays), this collection could be an excellent place to begin one’s education on the topic, even given the focus on satire. The range of material and depth of investigation into satiric representations of black subjectivity in a variety of media is impressive. In his introduction to the collection, Derek Maus makes a persuasive case for the strength of an African American brand of satire significant for understanding current comic art in the United States."

        -- James E. Caron, _Studies in American Humor_ 2.1 (Jan. 2016)

"Ultimately, this text will be useful to anyone who is particularly interested in satire, its inner workings, and its social and political impact. It is also going to be useful to anyone researching Black humor as well as those working with the complex methods by which some Black Americans negotiate complicated positions in contemporary society. Furthermore, given recent discussions in the public sphere regarding what does and does not count as satire and who should or should not be the targets of satire, the text seems especially relevant."

        -- Jacinta Yanders, _Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature_ 45.1 (2017)

"Post-Soul Satire is a well-chosen assortment of essays that discusses African American issues in various media within the cultural context of the United States and in terms of the phenomenon of post-soul[...]. It is an important contribution to American humor studies, given its sustained focus on satire, humor, and irony."

        -- Debarati Byabartta, _Studies in American Humor_ 3.2 (2017)