My Problem With LaBas' Metanarrative

Throughout Mumbo Jumbo we forced to reevaluate our thoughts about our understandings of black and African cultures. We all grew up with the Atonist mindset having a lot of control over how we think and perceive things. And for the most part, I think the book does a really good job of pointing out that bias. This, of course, culminates in Papa LaBas' speech in Chapters 52 about the origins of the Atonists and Jes Grew. I think it's an incredibly compelling narrative about how the Atonists were created to fight Jes Grew, and that the west adopted it and continued to destroy and oppress Jes Grew. However, one thing stuck out to me: the usage of Moses in the metanarrative, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt frustrated that Ishmael Reed's analysis isn't more complex. 

I understand that part of the point of this narrative is to paint western history with the same 2-dimensional brush that has been used on non-western history. However, that does not mean it is unfair to criticize the narrative. My problem is that LaBas's story feels much more complex and thought out and complicated then the Atonist's version of history would be. The character's in LaBas' story are 2-D but the story is much more complex, so it doesn't feel incorrect to expect a more complicated analysis--especially when I feel like that analysis could make the Atonists even clearer as a threat. 

The first thing that stuck out to me was the lumping of Moses and Judaism in with Atonism and Christianity. It has been fairly well established that Christianity is a product of Atonist interference, at least it's spreading throughout the world. However, the book, for the most part, neglects to discuss how Judaism and Islam fit into this narrative. Only at the end do we get the lumping of Moses with the Atonists. We have his adoptive mother as an Atonist, believing in the brilliance of all things Greek and Western.  This doesn't make sense to me, because the Jews were slaves, to the Atonists in power--namely Moses' adoptive family--they were not the people in power, and it doesn't make sense that the Atonists can be both Moses' parents (in power) and the people that Moses freed from those people. Not to mention, that the Atonists are hinted at being the causes of the World Wars, the second of which involved Hitler (perhaps the most extreme Atonist of the 20th Century) trying to kill all the Jews even though they are apparently also Atonist. And if you want to take the argument that Judaism leads to Christianity and that's the link, then one must realize that Islam also stems from the monotheistic traditions that start up in Judaism. However, Islam is definitely not Atonists, because the Crusades were waged by Christian Atonists. 

The problem for me is that the lack of clarity about those two groups weakens what is an otherwise very powerful understanding of the meta-war between Western and African culture. The Atonists are always in the background erasing and destroying and undermining Jes Grew, but if we can't understand who the Atonists really are and what to think about the other monotheistic religions linked to Christianity, then we can't understand our own Atonist biases with as much complexity. 

DISCLAIMER: I thought the section was fascinating, and I really enjoyed reading all the stuff about Moses and the rewriting of that history. It just struck me as something that, on the one hand, was 2-dimensional and therefore poignant in that way, but on the other hand it's 2-dimensionality undermined a different point Reed was trying to make. I wish the book had taken the time to figure out where they fit in, and to discuss them. (For all the mentions of the crusades and Mutafikah, Islam is not talked about much, and definitely not much in terms of this metanarrative). 

Apologies if that was unclear. I wanted to get the thoughts out there. 

A Postmodern History

Hayden White discusses the constructed nature of history. While he respects that history is concerned with "real events", he says that the methods of construction are very similar in history and in fiction. Both construct narrative around events in an attempt to provide logical or meaningful cause and effect. However, he also goes into the idea that even the idea of narrativity in history is constructed, by culture. He points to examples of history that did not attempt to provide cause and effect, but just lists of events--called Annals. White isn't trying to discredit history though, as shown by the disclaimer at the beginning that he realizes that history is based in events from actual space-time.

With those ideas in mind, it begs the question: What would a history with awareness of this construction look like?

Let us for the moment assume that White's ideas are correct (I hold that these ideas are true but I am aware of controversy). What seems to be the problem is that narrative will always have bias, and White even claims that beyond that, the nature of language is going to provide bias. So how does one undo that bias? My proposal is to first write history from as many perspectives as you can. Start with the annals, try to not narrativize, but just give the things that happened, without any cause and effect. Obviously, there will be cultural bias going on when you decide which events to leave in, but it would provide the reader with a stronger "factual basis" before reading the "stories". One could then explain the point of the annals, as a way of immediately getting the reader to confront their own cultural understanding as non-objective. Tell one story, then provide another, then another. Take the narrative and explain the other perspectives. This allows the reader to have more agency in understanding history. One of these histories could even be that authoritative, "objective" textbook history. However, when you put them all on equal playing fields, you remove the ability of history to argue effectively, so you can then add another thing to this history.

At the end of each perspective, or even claims within the different perspectives, one can provide their complete view, completely lacking in the supposition of objectivity, their personal thoughts. Which still allows one to put forward an argument. Because one of the problems of postmodernism is that it renders the--for example--story of the civil war when told from Confederate sympathizers, and the story from members of the union, on equal footing. This, I would argue, is a problematic thing because I think it is completely fair to undermine the narrative of the Confederacy. So the personal thoughts is where a historian can do that and make a claim for social justice, or whatever topics they wish to address.

This doesn't fix all the problems that postmodernist discourse reveals about history. However, it does help with what I feel are the most important ones. It helps with arguing with supposition of objectivity. It helps with cultural bias and understanding the construction of culture. However, it does fall into the trap of postmodernism--that it asks you to not hold any beliefs as higher than others, but we are incapable of not doing that, and in fact probably should. I have a personal "truth", or "moral code" by which I live, and while I try to take into account cultural relativism, and construction of narrative and ideas, I don't pretend to be able to fully commit to postmodernism. And neither does my proposed history.