As they lay dying, the artificiality of faulknerism in black American literature

The sense of art was an important subject of art itself with the high estheticism of the XIX century; marking the end of the Illustration's, expanded from the XVII century, as a peak of Modernity itself. That mark then the declining of that cultural period as the postmodernity, in a functional ending; in which arts recreates in itself, trying to understand a functionality it doesn’t recognize in its own being.

This is important, as the moment American blackness is forming in its social and political alienation, by its economic precariousness; thus incorporating all the contradictions of this period in the western culture as its own, along the XX century. Here then the theoretic conflagration of Western culture is dramatically political among the black people, even regarding arts; because it’s always referred to political functionality in real life, in the middle of the existential of segregation and class war.

Here comes the paradox, when arts function as an existencial reflection in its dramatic expression of reality; but as an artificial drama in romantic fiction, it’s a pure and immediate reality for the political marginality of blacks. The paradox consists in that singularity of black culture, that reverses the scope of aesthetic reflection of reality; since the black social struggles provides that pathetic of white fiction, in the specific context of western culture.

This is the difference between Morúa and Villaverde in Cuba —for example— not the snobbish of the first; as between the black authors and faulknerism in American literature, even with black faulknerism authenticity. The problem here is not moral as the ethics of historical transcendentalism, but of existential effectiveness; worsened in that case of black literature, for its use as legitimation of social war by white liberalism, in its transcendentalism.

This contradiction is created by the western political contradictions in itself, since the apotheosis of modernity; born in the utopic socialism of French aristocracy in their —falsely popular— revolution, with German transcendentalism. This creates the modern political —masked as social dialectic— struggles, with the push of artificial transcendentalism; as the sole parameter for the whole western society, in contradiction with its natural development in new societies.

The result is a kind of schizoid duplicity among black intellectuals, as the ones struggling with this difficulty; solved at popular level with spiritual and religious practices, which always set the existential references for people. Te problem of black intellectuals in America is the retorting to rational legitimacy, in that parameter of dialectic and class war; ideologically organized as a moral, in that transcendentalism that twisted the western ontology, as historical in its idealism.

The duplicity consists in this effort of legitimacy itself, at the same time of practicing magic and religious traditions; which could actually solve their contradictions as artificials, understanding their same practices in nature. That would means retorting to popular pragmatism though, instead of forcing it in ideal transcendentalism; to feed white liberal politics with transcendental justifications, living then in that schizoid duplicity.

This would be what makes black arts so inefficient in America, although realistic in their reflection of reality; because this reflection is subordinated to that dysfunctional western ontology, not bringing its own determination. Curiously, this is not the case on black conservatism, tat differs even from white conservatism in its functionality; since this conservationism is not historical transcendentalist but functional, in their political precariousness; but even because its practicality, this black conservatism doesn’t have the political pretentions of their intellectual elite as liberal.

Then, this contradiction comes from the distinction of existential priorities between white liberalism and blacks; the first as political and the second economic in its existentialism, because their lack of path to stability. Still, the blacks maintain their existential efficiency at the popular level, because it comes from their spiritual practices; but it can’t be recognized in the conventionalism of their intellectual elite, which only can agonize in their contradictions.