Postmodern Elements In Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo

Ishmael Reed is one of the most prominent postmodernist African American writers. Reed is one of the most talented and controversial postmodern writers, arid he is the African American male writer that has called most attention of literary critics since Ralph Ellison. Fredric Jameson, famous contemporary literary theory critic, has put Ishmael Reed and Thomas Pynchon among the most important American postmodern writers. Some critics say he is a master of satire since Mark Twain, while others consider him as a impudent, showy, and women-hating crazy man. Reed's works focus on the life style and thinking of the marginalized African American people, challenging the mainstream traditional Western white culture, advocating cultural pluralism. His works also mock the ''democratic" American politics, Western cultural hegemony, as well as the internal conflicts within African Americans, He deconstructs traditional forms of novel through parodies and pastiche of various artistic forms. He blends history and fiction in the novel, improvising while writing, and his novels have typical characteristics of postmodern literature.Of all of Reed's novels, Mumbo Jumho is widely acknowledged as his. masterpiece, representing the unique features of his works. Harold Bloom, famous literary critic, has included it on his list of the "500 Most Significant Books in the Western Canon." In 1973, Mumbo Jumbo got the nomination of American National Book Awards. The background of this novel is the 1920s America, and the main plot is that the Atonists try every means to destroy "Jes Grew," a ""cultural plague" that can cause the downfall of the Western civilization. Jes Grew makes people forget their unhappy things and begin to dance merrily. This scares the upper class of the society, who start to destroy the "plague"' and resume former social order. Papa LaBas, the detective, knows with the inspiration of the voodoo spirits that Jes Grew is looking for its own Text, which is destroyed by its enemies at the end of the novel, then Jes Grew disappears mysteriously, and the novel stops without a clear ending.By far, most researches done by foreign literary critics focus on the ethnical features and ethnical relationships of his works, and few scholars have researched comprehensively on the postmoderness of his novels. Articles researching on Reed and his works by Chinese foreign literature scholars have been very few, focusing on Reed's multiculturalism and the controversial "gender discrimination" issue of Reed. The systematic analysis of the postmodern elements in Reed's novels from the angels of themes, structure, and writing skills helps readers to understand the similarity and difference between Reed and other postmodern writers in the focusing area and writing styles. It also helps to understand the uniqueness of African American postmodern works. Therefore, this thesis researches on Mumbo Jumbo, Reed's masterpiece of postmodern literature, analyzing comprehensively the postmodern elements in this novel, in order to show the unique characteristics of Reed's works, and to appreciate Reed's literary art blending African American literary traditions and postmodern literary writing styles,Apart from Introduction and Conclusion, the main body of this thesis is divided into three chapters, analyzing the postmodern elements reflected in the themes, stru(?)ture, and writing skills of Mumbo Jumbo respectively.Chapter One analyzes the cultural pluralism thought reflected in Mumbo Jumbo, Reed challenges the traditional Western Judeo-Christian totalitarian theory in this novel, reveals the oppression of the mainstream Western culture on other weaker cultures of ethnic groups, and advocates a society of plural cultures which respect, tolerate, and supplement each other. Reed borrows from the voodoo religion of the African Americans, the adaptation and theory of voodoo after it was brought to America by the African slaves, showing that American culture is not composed of an only Western culture of the white people, and that the African Americans also have their own way of life and world view. They should declare their own political, cultural, and literary views. Reed advocates his own "Neo-Hoodooism" ("hoodoo" is the African American variant for "voodoo"), which is a way of thinking and living that is plural, tolerant, life-loving, optimistic, flexible, and adaptable to the changes of environments. Reed challenges the mainstream traditional Western culture with marginalized African American culture, and advocates that African Americans should have their own aesthetics, and that a postmodern society asks for multiple cultures in it.Chapter Two analyzes the structure and form of the novel. Reed adopts the form of a detective story in the novel, but the way the protagonist detective Papa LaBas works is not like a detective from a classic traditional detective story. Rather, LaBas relies more on the voodoo loas (spirits) and his intuition to solve the problems. The untraditional detective story is actually a deconstruction of the detective fiction, a way of parody that is often seen in postmodern literature. The text of the novel is indeterminate and open-ended, allowing the readers to have their own understanding of the novel with the help of their own life experience. For example, in the eyes of the Atonists, Jes Grew is a plague that will cause the destruction of the Western civilization, so they must destroy it. However, in the eyes of most of the African Americans and other believers of it, Jes Grew is the source of life and happiness. Reed does not give a clear answer to it, so that the readers can get their own interpretation after reading the open-ended text.Chapter Three analyzes the postmoderness reflected from the writing skills of. Mumbo Jumbo. Reed uses various artistic forms in the novel, such as letters, news clips, photographs, drawings, American history, detective story, Egyptian mythology, jazz music, and Knights stories of the Middle Ages. He makes a pastiche of various literary forms in Mumbo Jumbo, and the forms are not so related in meaning to each other. Reed mixes real historical figures and events together with myths and his fictitious stories, making it difficult for the readers to separate the real from the unreal. Influenced by jazz music, Reed improvises on the words he uses in the creation of the novel, making the reading quite fluent and enjoyable, totally without seriousness in meaning. Reed even satirizes seriousness in the Western mainstream culture. The parodies and satires used in the book also shows the difference between postmodern and modernist literatures in their treatment of educational purpose and seriousness in meaning.The Conclusion of the thesis points out that through the analysis of the postmodern elements of Mumbo Jumbo, readers can identify in the novel the anti-traditional thoughts, cultural pluralism thinking, indeterminacy of the text, and improvisations used to make the writing and reading easy and enjoyable. Mumbo Jumbo deconstructs the form of detective story, mixing many artistic and literary elements together, blending real historical figures and events together with those plots that are pure his imagination, blurring the borderline between the real and the unreal. Reed advocates his own "Neo-Hoodooism" theory and cultural pluralism in this novel in order to critique the totalitarian traditional Western mainstream culture which has been oppressing and peripherizing the other weaker cultures and subcultures for hundreds of years time. Influenced by jazz music. Reed improvises in the creation of this novel, in a non-linear way of narration, blending various artistic forms, making the structure of the novel a little loose. This shows the postmodern literary view that the creation and reading of literature is just for the joy experienced in the process, so any pedagogical seriousness is objected by postmodern writers. Reed's works break the borderline between the "central" and the "periphery," righting against the mainstream culture on behalf of the long-oppressed cultural groups. The indeterminacy of the text, parody, pastiche, and improvisation in the book enlarges the writing range of postmodern novel, and it brings inspiration to later writers and researchers. At the same time, the research of Mumbo Jumbo will also shed some new light on the understanding of African Americans' life and thoughts as well as the American ethnical relationship and communications.