Signifying and Placing Significance

Gloria Steele

12/01/06

The Making of Americans

Final Conference Paper

“That we may know our names:”

A study of history in the American Experimental novel

“The nursery rhyme and the book of science fiction might be more revolutionary than any number of tracts, pamphlets, manifestoes of the political realm.”

So says Ishmael Reed in his novel Mumbo Jumbo which Alan Friedman describes in his New York Times Book Review, “a satire on the unfinished race between the races in America and throughout history…an unholy cross between the craft of fiction and witchcraft.”^[1]

But what is the nursery rhyme, the science fiction? Things of fantasy-- that fantasy not necessarily “flights of fancy,” mystical and bright as unicorns, but that fantasy as something formerly inconceivable, out of the ordinary, transcendent; above or beneath conventional imaginations or communications. It is the odd. The thing that is not “normal” when normality is assumed to be something common or “mainstream.” And the revolution of the nursery rhyme or the science fiction lies in its revelation; its revelation lies in its negation and/or refutation of the normal. This negation is silence. Nonsense, fantasy, things that are outside normality-- silence. Gibberish? Mumbo Jumbo? All silence.

Ihab Hassan, in his study of postmodern literature, The Dismemberment of Orpheus, explains the role of “silence” in revealing the problems of the limitations of traditional languages, accepted languages, and historical master narratives, accepted history:

The negative, then, informs silence; and silence is my metaphor of a language that expresses, with harsh and subtle cadences, the stress in art, culture, and consciousness…the language of silence conjoins the need both of autodestruction and self-transcendence. (Hassan, 12)

Ishamael Reed in Mumbo Jumbo and Mark Z. Danielewski in Only Revolutions consciously use this nonsense language, this silence to defy conventional relationships of literary form and historical narrative.

Why is this nonsense of the negative considered silence? Because the so-called nonsensical syntax and form these authors employ as their method of communication is unlike accepted languages; their language is a language uncommon and seemingly sacrilegious and incomprehensible. These “anti-languages…that accuse common speech”^[2] used by Reed and Danielewski illustrate their own means of challenging inherited tradition, historical perspectives given and accepted by the masses blindly-- Reed by giving history back to the Black Man, satirizing and belittling the white man’s history that, twisted and corrupt, has been accepted by the world; Danielewski by forcing readers to question how much importance they give the personal, individual history as opposed to a collective history and vice versa.

Let’s imagine for a moment. Scenario: the African or Asian, speaking to an Englishman who will soon exploit him is not heard; he is “silent” in that his foreign language is not understood. Thus, not being understood is to some extent the same as not being heard. The Englishman will proceed, in this silence, to take advantage, to use his lack of comprehending their language as an excuse to force his own upon them-- the laws of the African or the Asian will not be heeded; the rules of their religions and societal constructs are not compatible with the Englishman’s but he will assume so. The Englishman, not hearing, imperceptive, will continue in his irreverence. Taking his victims, he will force his language upon them and his history.

This is what has been done. And this is what Ishmael Reed and his Mumbo Jumbo set out to correct. His aim is to return history to the black race, giving an alternative to the commonly implemented perspective that places the white man, the black and Asian man’s captor and plunderer, on top-- hailed as the originator, the supreme-- while anyone else is thought of as primitive and inferior, indeed, even the men who came before, who knew time and space and light before, the African, the Asian.

The group of “art-nappers” Reed names the Mu’tafikah consider it their duty to return stolen treasures of Africa, Asia, and Original America (before the Europeans landed) to their former homes, in the hands of their people and not in the white man’s art exhibits. The Mu’tafikah make it their duty to steal back what was stolen before, to restore what had been razed: Robin Hooding the original history of the nations before the Europeans’ plundering. As Berbelang puts it, “we would send their loot back to where it was stolen from and await the rise of Shango, Shiva, and Quetzacoatl, no longer a label on a cheap bottle of wine but strutting across the sacred cities…like a proud cock” (Reed, 89). These Mu’tafikah are in opposition to“The Wallflower Order,” the “army devoted to guarding the booty…because if these treasures got into the ‘wrong hands’ (the countries from which they were stolen) there would be renewed enthusiasm for the Ikons of the aesthetically victimized civilizations” (15). The Mu’tafikah seek to restore and liberate: to restore the culture stolen by whites (and contorted—as convenient-- to suit the unhearing, the irreverent, the blind who, without understanding the spirituality, distort and strip that culture through attempting to appropriate the mysteries of it within Western/Christian thought: impossible because Western/Christian thought is incompatible with what they’ve stolen and have tried to adopt in kitschy fads, having lost all meaning) and liberate the people who themselves, having been forced to accept the Christian thought have forgotten the old ways and lost the soul, the joy, the ecstasy and spontaneity that “plagues” 1920s America as the “Jes Grew” so-called epidemic.

Jes Grew is the spirit of the Diaspora, unable to be contained, to be restricted, to be killed or even described or explained, mass-produced and adopted and worn by the uncomprehending like today’s Che Guevera t-shirts, having lost significance by irreverent reproduction and dilution, filtering through Western ideology that is its direct opposition. Poet Nathan Brown embodies this lost soul, this repression of heritage, the attempt at the duality or coexistence of Christianity with the older Diasporic faiths that fails, the compromise that is a denial. Brown “was serious about his Black Christ, however absurd that may sound, for Christ is so unlike African loas and Orishas, in so many essential ways, that this alien becomes a dangerous intruder to the Afro-American mind, an unwelcome gatecrasher into Ife, home of spirits” (97) When this Nathan Brown asks a Hoodoo priest, Benoit Battraville, how to catch Jes Grew, he is faced with the impossibility of trying to restrict-- and disrespect-- the power of it by turning it into something able to spring forth on demand, when convenient, for show or fun:

The Americans do not know the names of the long and tedious list of dieties and rites as we know them. Shorthand is what they know so well. They know this process for they have synthesized the HooDoo of VooDoo. Its bleeblop essence; they’ve isolated the unknown factor which gives the loas their rise. Ragtime. Jazz. Blues. The new thang. That talk you drum from your lips. Your style. What you have here is an experimental art for that all of us believe bears watching. So don’t ask me how to catch Jes Grew. Ask Louis Armstrong. Bessie Smith, your poets, your painters, your musicians, ask them how to catch it. Ask those people who be shaking their tambourines impervious of the ridicule they receive from Black and White Atonists, Europe the ghost rattling its chains down the deserted halls of their brains. Ask those little colored urchins who “make up” those new dance steps and the loa of the Black cook who wrote the last lines of the “Ballad of Jesse James.” Ask the man who, deprived of an electronic guitar, picked up a washboard and started to play it. The Rhyming Fool who…talks “crazy” for hours…(152)

Critic Lorenzo Thomas echoes this in his review for The Village Voice though speaking of Ishmael Reed’s experimental approach to literature instead of Jes Grew:

Mumbo Jumbo…goes beyond assault to re-definition…really about the crisis of a culture that refuses to acknowledge itself. Narcissus fleeing from the riverside…[it is] in the African and Afro-American tradition without compromise to Europeanism. [Reed] practices sound science… If the Black (ie, African anywhere) literary tradition is really an “oral tradition,” what we mean by that phrase is the Thought is simultaneous with Sound. Just like Jazz… Did you ever hear Booker Little?…Did you ever sit in a cell down Catwalk Alley and shout stories to brothers on down the line. It’s magic. The opposite thing is the European mode of plotting, “characterization,” “exposition.” A system of exploitative development. In other words, the synchronization of several untruths which they call Fiction and teach in their schools. (Dick, 40)

For the Mu’tafikah, Jew Grew is about liberation through restoration of culture through art (the music, the dances, and their spontaneity being part of art); for Papa Lebas, VooDoo priest, it is about the return to the Black Man’s original spirituality, unadulterated by Christianity:

The African race has quite a sense of humor. In North America, under Christianity, many of them has been reduced to glumness, depression, surliness, cynicism, malice without artfulness…They’d really fallen in love with tragedy…For Labas, anyone who couldn’t titter a bit was not Afro but most likely a Christian connoting blood, death, and impaled emaciated Jew in excruciation. Nowhere is there an account of portrait of Christ laughing. (Reed, 97)

By no accident, Reed has given this character-- this old man, walking along with his cane and cape, the secrets of Osiris and the origination of Jes Grew locked in his head, lamenting the loss of the old ways, the loss of magic through the modern man‘s skepticism and scrutiny-- the name of an Orisha*. Papa Lebas is also known as Legba in Haitian voodoo, Eleggua/Elegba in Spanish-speaking Central and South America, Eshu in Yoruba, Exu in Brazil…Despite the many names, he is known as the “Opener of the Ways,” standing between the divine and the corporeal, the deity always invoked first and last in ritual to gain access to the spiritual world-- as is Yinepu-Wepawet (Greek name Anubis), the jackal-headed god of the Kemetic (Ancient Egyptian) pantheon who leads the souls into the Underworld to be judged. Lebas/Legbas, standing between the two words, is also the god of prophecy, however, as Papa Lebas expected Jes Grew’s rise, it is Muslim Abul who challenges Labas and predicts its end, its failure to survive lying in its lack of tangibility and structure which makes it easy to forget:

Are [the people] going to eat incense, candles? Maybe what you say is true about the nature of religions which occurred 1000s of years ago, but how are we going to survive if they have no discipline?…this country is eclectic. The architecture the people the music the writing. The thing that works here will have a little bit of jive talk and a little bit of North Africa, a fez-wearing mulatto in a pinstriped suit. A man who can say give me some skin and Asalamikalkum…authorities are already talking about outlawing VooDoo in Harlem…A new generation is on the scene. They will use terms like “nitty gritty,” “for real,” “where it’s at,” and use words like “basic” and “really” with telling emphasis. They will extend the letter and the meaning of the word “bad.” They won’t use your knowledge and they will call you “sick” and “way out” and that will be a sad day, but we must prepare for it. For on that day they will have abandoned the other world they came here with and will have become mundanists and pragmatists and concretizes. They will shout loudly about soul because they will have lost it…you will be a[n]…eccentric character obsolete…Me and my Griffin politics will survive, my chimeral art…Someone is coming…He might even have the red hair of a conjure man but he won‘t be 1. No, he will get it across. And he will be known as the man who “got it across” and people like you will live in seclusion and your circle will be limited and the people who read you will pride themselves on their culture and their selectiveness and their identification with the avant-garde. (37-39)

Reed, too, in writing this novel spoke on the disillusionment and loss of faith of the Black people, frustrated with lack of history and identity in America, mourning the loss of original language and religion, mourning the loss of laughter and dissension amongst each other. He, too, also “gets it across,” challenging conventional (white standard) language and literary form, using nonsense, silence, mumbo jumbo to “get it across,” to attempt to return the (hi)story back to the people, to free the people from the limits of Western confinement of language, spirituality, and emotion. Robert Elliot Fox writes in his article “Blacking the Zero: Toward a Semiotics of Neo-Hoodoo,” about the mysterious circles that are placed between passages and chapters of Mumbo Jumbo, the blackened circle next to the white one, resembling the symbols on modern calendars for Full and New moons. Fox gives these symbols alphabetical correspondences and geometric figures used in voodoo ritual to invoke, not surprisingly, Atibon-Legba, “lord of the crossroads, the initiator…he who leads the way before-- the perfect deity for guiding us into the text. The Dual symbolism of black and white (the rooster sacrificed to Papa Legba must be a speckled black-and-white one) is apt, for Legba is an intermediary between two different realities, just as a text is, among other things, an interface between imagination and action, creativity and (re)interpretation” (Dick, 41) Fox continues brilliantly:

[French philosopher] Derrida’s project to shake the totality of philosophic totalinarianism which he views structuralism as constituting provide parallels to Reed’s effort to deconstruct the cultural totalitarianism of Western civilization, which has not only equated itself with “universality,” but also within its own context, drastically defined the parameters of what it takes to be its authentic tradition by structures of exclusion that have historically kept out much that is valuable, the very “despise” elements Reed wishes to reinstate. Reed wants to reassert the “questions” which the text of history has sidestepped. He is dealing not only with the phenomenon of possession (consciousness ridden by forces or concepts) and the act of possession (appropriation of ideas or artifacts) but also with re-possession-- the reclamation of lost, scattered, or denied areas of experience and tradition(s). Reed, through a deliberate energy of anachronism, multi-media devices, footnotes, bibliographies, and the like, opens up his texts, allowing disposed history to enter…You cannot discuss American history and culture without these signifiers: black, which substitutes the other shades (brown, red, yellow) of minority spectrum, and white…in textual terms, the signifiers…serve to remind us of the necessary interplay between black ink and white space…Because there is always another side to the coin, there is always an alternative, a different story-- e.g.,

Nonsense=MUMBO JUMBO=Neo-Hoodoo (positive magic)

…from the black point of view, the transition from “nonsense” to a positive interpretation is one in which the slave becomes the master. Although the English language has basically equated the expression “mumbo jumbo” with “gibberish,” the etymology Reed provides…relat[es] to a process which calms the troubled spirits of the ancestors. Ironically, at the same time that the words lost their original meaning, they took on a meaning which troubled the spirits of whites, invoking the fearful, atavistic vision of the “dark continent.” (48-51)

Danielewski, too, takes a deliberate stab at what has been given as truth in the totalizing of history, the perspective the nation’s been told to inherit as a common cultural acceptance of a certain knowledge. Reed, as illustrated above, undermines traditional meta-narrative in order to upset, as a Black author, the white Euro-American monopoly on accepted history and changing the perspective that for ages has been twisted and slanted, with bias, to glorify only the white man. Danielewski on the other hand, in Only Revolutions, purposefully plays with history by re-ordering or “mistaking” dates of crucial events, omitting events, including more personal, microcosmic events to give them as much importance. By muddling and obscuring facts or otherwise not mentioning them at all, he forces the audience to see just how out of touch they/we are with the history and things around us, just as Sam and Hailey are and illuminating exactly how much we don’t know that we thought we did. In faulting Sam and Hailey for disregarding the events around them, we fault ourselves.

Take, for instance, Danielewski’s misdating of the death of Jimi Hendrix on H88. He dates Hendrix’s death as August 24, 1970. Hendrix, in fact, died September 18, 1970. One would think that for a historical figure as well-known, admired, or at the very least so mass-marketed, readers would immediately stop and say “wait, that’s not the day he died.” Or, perhaps the opposite—perhaps readers are so aware of Hendrix, or think they are, that they’ll simply assume that is the right date because, a reader could presume, no one could possibly mistake the day he died, right? Either way, Danielewski is proving his point. What has been shoved down our throats so much and so long we take it for granted? We’ve all heard Martin Luther King’s name hundreds of times by even the end of elementary school but how many of us can actually tell the exact date he was assassinated? What knowledge do we just “brush off,” having assumed its constant availability? How many of us, especially now, don’t bother to commit to memory a certain date or event in history because we assume we can always Google or Wikipedia it? Or, just the opposite, how many of us remember exactly what we were doing when the planes hit the World Trade Center buildings (an event Danielewski deliberately misdated, which will be explained later) or what we were doing when JFK died but don’t know the exact time we were born or the day of our first kiss? Why are we accepting someone else’s experience, someone else’s history before our own? Why do we hold onto a history a certain group (the “Powers That Be,” if you will) has a monopoly on and disregard small but vital parts of our own? Why do we trust that history given to us and give it so much power and reverence? This is what Danielewski does, what he forces us to ask ourselves, in Only Revolutions, within Sam and Hailey and the text itself.

Another question Danielewski makes us ask ourselves is why is one day-- September 11, 2001, for example-- considered more significant than the days leading up to it, or the days in its own aftermath; why is that a day considered to have happened rather than a day that was always happening, is still happening? This is why, in the historical sidebar on H277, there is no listing for September 11^th, though the falling of the World Trade Center is listed on August 2, 2001: placing it here, the author makes us understand that this is not and never could have been a single event, a single day-- it was happening as much on August 2^nd as it was September 11^th.

The structure of Sam and Hailey’s narratives reflects the various points where personal life and grand history collide-- and how each is as vital to the existence of the other, how humans synthesize the collective and individual, how we “feel” some external event in relation to an intimate experience in our own lives and, likewise, how such major external events are only extensions of, or continuations of, consequence: consequence of the infinite smaller events. Hand in hand with this, he also illuminates the way humans can also put themselves above history and the greater scope of the rest of the world: ego-centric, narcissistic, one can, like Sam and Hailey at the beginning of their tales, claim to be able to “destroy” or “devastate” (respectively) the world themselves, “killing Dreams” and making Mountain Tops shout their names.

I leap free this spring./ On fire. How my curls./ I’ll destroy the world./ That’s all. Big ruin all/ around. With a wiggle./ With a waggle. A spin./ Allmighty sixteen and freeeeee./ Rebounding on bare feet. (Danielewski, H1)

Here Sam and Hailey, before having met each other, are glorifying themselves and, placed ever in the outside without regarding the events outside themselves, they’ve made themselves the beginning and end of history. Sam’s narrative starts on the eve of the third Battle of Chattanooga, the turning point of the Civil War, and the birth of a new nation, though through what is considered a loss of some kind of innocence, the loss of the nation’s unity and the revelation to many about the hidden hypocrisy and evil that polarized the people. It was the start of hope for the freed slaves, the end of hope for the decimated South, never to be restored to its former pre-war glory. Hailey’s narrative starts November 22, 1963, at the Texas School Depository where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. This, too, a loss of innocence in America, also simultaneously the beginning and the end of New Hope.

Here they are, Sam and Hailey, two eternal teenagers, teetering on the edge of innocence, and not caring which way they fell-- towards the loss of it, the destruction of the idealization, the romaticization of Hope and Youth; or the birth of that New Hope only they could try to bring forth in letting go of everything.

Only Revolutions is essentially about letting go-- letting go of relationships, a need for “home” and interior self and identity; letting go of ties and confines, limits of identification with a particular common history or heritage; letting go of ego as they do once they meet and love each other, now glorifying each other, making each other their whole world, changing the whole world as with Hailey’s “snorts spilling cyclones. Smiles bringing harvests” (S316)…They also, by never stopping, rushing through time and history at top speeds, let go of history. By speeding through, reckless and hopeful as they are, they can afford to just let things happen around them, disregarding them though external events still seep their way in subconsciously. They are always going going going, never stopping, never slowing in their fast cars with their fast, rough love and arrogance. They even let go of language. Their language changes with every page, years of dialect and slang changing in a matter of a few pages, a few paragraphs, sometimes mid-sentence. Danielewski speaks of the “materialism” of writers, holding onto words, language. But Sam and Hailey write their own story, their own histories subjectively, not caring to slow down enough to adopt the words, the history, the feel of the times changing around them. They just pass through, everything a blur as it always is from any car window.

But Sam and Hailey also let go of each other. As Danielewski revealed at a public bookstore reading^[3], love is not freedom because it is essentially about binding oneself to another. Letting go of each other, Sam and Hailey’s’ narratives stop mirroring each other so closely and they begin to incorporate external forces more, as on H280, Hailey claims she and Sam are “every exception. Exceptionally stoked/ how we ricochet away by Iraqi forces, UN forces/ and rainbow ravers floating civilly below,” in the middle of the war the sidebar tells us is in January 26, 2003.

Alas, Sam and Hailey never really let each other go, as they both go to their deaths for the other, whispering in their last breaths “I could never walk away from you” (H380, S380) and find freedom only in death, truly releasing (and being released from) the limitations of the world and the rules of man and gravity.

---

^[1] Included in the collection of reviews and analyses in Bruce Allen Dick’s The Critical Response to Ishmael Reed…from here on out, all secondary criticism on Ishmael Reed will have been taken from this collection and cited, attributed to Bruce Allen Dick, the editor.

^[2] attributed to Ihab Hassan in The Dismemberment of Orpheus, page 13

* Orishas are considered the multiple aspects of one God.

^[3] Strand Bookstore, October 22, 2006

Doin' the Legba STOMP**

[CREDIT TO: much admired Brother Awo Dino Soto, formerly of Destee.com forums and fellow atendee of Egbe Orisha Aiye]

**phrase originally coined by beloved Brother Baba DarksideMagick, also of the Destee.com forums

I would respectfully disagree ... regarding there being many Esus. Although in the Diaspora, for instance in Lucumi, there are different roads or "caminos" for different Orisa, most people understand that really there is only one Esu. So there is only one Esu “Spirit,” but hundreds of possible manifestations or aspects of this spirit or energy. (perhaps we are only dealing with semantics). Whether you call him Elegua, Elegba, Esu, etc., Orisa have many attributes and many praise names, which can cause confusion. Elegba, (this is what the Fon call him) for instance, refers to him as "the owner of power." When we call him Esu (Yoruba), we are saying "divine messenger." Esu Odara, a praise name, means "divine messenger of transformation," (some awo say Odara means “Spirit that brings division is the source of fertility in the universe”)

Oriki Esu

Esu, Esu Odara, Esu lanlu ogirioko. Okunrin ori ita, a jo langa langa lalu
Divine Messenger, Divine Messenger of Transformation, Divine Messenger speak with power. Man of the crossroads, dance to the drum.
A rin lanja lanja lalu. Ode ibi ija de mole. Ija ni otaru ba d’ele ife.
Tickle the toe of the drum. Move beyond strife. Strife is contrary to the Spirits of the Invisible Realm.
To fi de omo won. Oro Esu, to to to akoni. Ao fi ida re lale.
Unite the unsteady feet of weaning children. The word of the Divine Messenger is always respected. We shall use your sword to touch the earth.
Esu ma se mi o. Esu ma se mi o. Esu ma se mi o.
Divine Messenger, do not confuse me. Divine Messenger, do not confuse me. Divine Messenger, do not confuse me.
Omo elomiran ni ko lo se. Pa ado asubi da. No ado asure si wa.
Let someone else be confused. Turn my suffering around. Give me the blessing of the calabash.
Mo dupe Esu, mo dupe. Babami, ase o.

In the Diaspora, many believe Esu and Elegba are two different Orisa. They are wrong. Some say Elegba comes from elegbara, which is actually Alagbara (the strong one, or owner of strength – a praise name) others say elegbara comes form ela egbe ara, meaning, “the body of those who possess the light.” Either way, it is a praise name or manifestation of Esu that invokes strength and courage.
Esu, as everyone knows, is "the trickster" in that he represents chance. But I would question whether this is really Esu's most important role, or if it’s even appropriate. He is the karmic enforcer who simply provides the effect of your actions, good or bad. He is the principle of chaos, change and transformation. But more importantly, he is also the imparter of Ase; the holder of Ase. Esu is "born" in Odu Ose Otura. All awo, etc, should chant from this Odu daily for the acquisition of ase.

Ose Otura
(from Chief Fama 2004).

Bi mo duro, bi mo wure
Ire ti emi, ko ni se aigba
Bi mo bere, bi mo wure
Ire ti emi, ko ni se aigba
Bi mo joko, bi mo wure
Ire ti emi, ko ni se aigba.

If I pray while standing
My prayers will manifest
If I stoop or kneel while praying
My prayers will manifest
If I sit while praying
My prayers will manifest
ase
This chant, while incomplete, is still powerful.

Esu Odara is considered the “father” of all Esus and represents fertility as well as transformation. Esu Odara is born in Odu Ose Otura. This Odu is actually 17th in order of seniority. It is the first Odu after the mejis. In Tefa (ifa initiation), Ose Otura is invoked on the head of the iyawo after the mejis. This invocation causes the meji odu to copulate in the head of the iyawo, at which time the initiate becomes awo (hence Esu as the source of fertility). The process unlocks all 256 Odu in the Ori of the iyawo giving awo the ofo ase (power of the word) to invoke and make all the Orisa, unlocking the ability for an awo to become “possessed” by all the Orisa. This is where Esu as “divine messenger of transformation” comes from. So to reduce Esu to the status of mischief-maker or trickster is to be completely ignorant of what Esu is.
Much of the confusion comes from the fact that every Odu and every Orisa have their own Esu. The Esus for the different Orisa are born in Odu Owonrin plus the Odu of the Orisa. For example, the Odu for making the Esu for Sango (esu ananaki) is Owonrin Iwori; for Obatala (esu oke) it’s Owonrin Ogbe. Esu IS confusion. He is contradiction.

Esu-Elegbara, Asoju (the observer)

The short and tall one
Whose head is barely visible when he walks through a peanut farm
Thanks to the fact that he is very tall
But Esu must climb the hearthstone in order to put salt
in the soup pot…
Labolarinde, if you reach the frontier
And do not encounter him at the citygate working in the field
You will find him in the vicinity and he is always accessible
To everyone, including the infirm
A le kuru a le ga
O nlo ninu epa Atari re nhan firifiri
Opelope giga ti o ga
Esu ni o gun ori aro ni o fi bu iyo si obe…
Labolarinde ti o ba de bode ti o ko ba ba ni enu odi ni nro oko
On na ni da oko nibiti arugbo le de
ASE

Another important part of understanding Esu is his relationship with Orunmila. Divination cannot take place without Esu's participation. There is a story about how Orunmila and Esu became such good buddies (remember, itan – stories – are used to explain metaphysical principals as well as teach morals and illuminate culture). Orunmila one day wanted to see how his friends would react to the news of his death, so he instructed his wife (Apetebi) to spread the news of his death, and then hid in the attic. Several Orisa came by the house to pay their respects, but all of them told his wife that Orunmila had owed them money, etc., which she paid them (these were lies). But when Esu came by, he was crying profusely, and told her if there was anything she needed to just call him, etc. In addition, he told her that he owed Orunmila some money and promptly paid. Orunmila then came down from the attic and told Esu that he was a true friend. From then on, the brothas were tight.
Esu is the messenger of Ifa, the oracle. He also watches over the divination session, to make sure it’s done right (all divination trays have an Esu carved on the edge). Olodumare made him the most powerful Orisa and he exists on heaven and earth simultaneously. Like Hermes, he has the power to bind and release. He can limit the actions of the negative forces (knowledge he shared with Orunmila) as well as bring the blessings of the white (positive) deities to humans.
The energy of Esu is instinctual, masculine, and autonomous. Like all Orisa, and energy itself, Esu is both positive and negative. Many focus on the negative aspects of Esu. Those of a higher consciousness will focus on the positive. Esu Odara, the divine messenger of transformation, will transform you. He has a special relationship with the Creator. He is the messenger of Olodumare. He has knowledge of good and evil as well as the wisdom and power to cope with these forces.

Osa Meji
(Abimbola 1970)

…exchange, exchange,
the Ifa priest of the house of Elepe
He was told to exchange an animal
For his life on account of Iku (death)

As a partner with Orunmila in divination, Esu is the enforcer and the “effector” of an action. Offerings, dictated by Orunmila as the communicator of the oracle (Ifa), are usually offered to Esu’s shrine. All ritual begin and end with Esu. He has the power to translate human language to the language of Spirit, and vice versa. Esu brings order from chaos. He might decide to no longer restrain the ajoogun (evil spirits) from affecting the arrogant person in order to teach them a lesson. He informs (as messenger again) Olodumare or Orisa or Aje when an offering has been made. He sees to the proper use of ritual sacrifice.

“Though the offering is difficult, it is not worse than death.”

Ire is life – health, money, children and long life. The conversion of death into life, or ibi into ire, is Esu’s special power. When we finish ritual or prayer, we say,
“Ose Otura (a-wu-ire-la) agbe wa, ala wa, ase.”
“Ose Otura (the Odu that makes prayers manifest) will support and bless us, ase.”
(But let us not forget, that no Orisa, not even Esu, can bless one without the consent of one’s Ori. What does this mean? Your head and your heart must be in alignment for blessings to flow from above)

So Orunmila provides the knowledge needed by the person who came for the reading, which includes time tested solutions to problems as well as the ritual offering or sacrifice to bring things back in order, or to bring the blessings to the client ( to turn ibi into ire). Order is brought by ritual sacrifice, which is overseen by Esu. The role of the diviner is to turn ibi (negative energy, or chaos, or resistance) into ire (positive energy, or order, or openness to change).

Ose Meji
(from Abimbola 1970)

The world is broken into pieces
The world is split wide open
The world is broken without anyone to mend it
The world is split open without anybody to sew it
Cast Ifa for the six elders
Who were coming down from Ile Ife
They were asked to take care of Mole
They were told that they would do well
If they made sacrifice
If the sacrifice to Esu is not made, it will not be acceptable in Orun
ase

Esu is different than the other Orisa. For one, he is never referred to as the patron of a lineage. He is closely associated with the marketplace, where fortunes can change in an instant. He also punishes those who don't do ebo when recommended (again, karmic justice). There is a story (itan) about Esu (all itan come from the oral history of the Yoruba, called Odu) that illustrates not only his connection to the market, but also how he will make you pay for your transgressions. There was a woman at the market, who didn't do her prescribed ebo. While at the market, Esu started a fire at her house. She arrives too late; her house is burned down. While she ran home to put out the fire, a thief (Esu) stole all her goods.

“Esu favors only those who have made the prescribed ebo.”

And will punish those who don’t.
Esu occupies these marginal worlds like the marketplace, crossroads and compound entrances. Esu provokes us to do stupid things. This is why Christians translate him to "devil." This is an indefensible corruption. Esu can and will bless you. Most people propitiate Esu a lot, and part of one of his most popular oriki ask, "Esu do not confuse me." However, the elevated soul, the wise person, has no need to propitiate Esu, because they aren't going to do anything stupid. The awo who has achieved iwa pele (good character), who always maintains ori tutu (a cool head) does not need to worry about Esu teaching him or her a lesson. Elders, who have lived the life of iwa pele, ori tutu, and ritual obligation, and so have prospered, are revered in Yorubaland. They do not know Esu as the trickster, but as “the gift giver.” They no longer have to make offerings to Esu.

Esu pele, Opin, Ajibike, Okaramaho, Oyinsese, Olofin- Apeka’lu, Amonisegun-mapo
(Divine Messenger, I call you by your names of praise)
Esu, I honor you because of your power
Esu, you are the road maker
Come with kindness to me and to my family,
Who serve you with gifts
Esu, you are the present giver
Make me rich and the “mother” of good children
Never allow your children misfortune
Come with your gorgeous appearance,
You, son of cowries
Ase

The Signifying Monkey

[This was an assignment submitted for this semester's internet technology class; I myself consider it a work in progress, as due to page limits I did not explore the issue as much as I would have liked. I plan to expand greatly on this in the future]

As a Black artist who must transverse a euro-centric world, defined inaccurately by a people whose tastes and ideals completely oppose his own heritage, Jean-Michel Basquiat faces the difficult task of being accepted for his art's portrayal of life as the unaccepted. Thus, his Body/Image and art becomes a paradox. Thus, he becomes the fence-straddler, the man at the crossroads, the man between worlds-- Papa Legba, or the Yoruban trickster diety Eshu-Elegbara.

In 1975 blaxploitation film Dolemite, Rudy Ray Moore famously delivered the signifying monkey monologue, the humorous tale of a clever monkey who avoids attack of his enemy the lion by accusing the elephant of secret slander. Henry Luis Gates 1983 wrote exploring the paradox of Black writers' acceptance or non-acceptance in the white literary world; the issues of the fate of Black writers' critical reception is one faced also by Black visual artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat.

As Gates reveals: “the monkey is able to signify upon the lion only because the lion does not understand the monkey's discourse.... the monkey speaks figuratively, in a symbolic code; the lion interprets or reads literally and suffers the consequence of his folly, which is a reversal of his status as king of the jungle" (Gates, 1983, 691). Thus, because the white critic interprets Basquiat through the white man's lens, the white world does not understand the obsessive paintings of heads (the Yoruban concept of consciousness as ori) and crowns (in Yoruban spirituality, one’s spirit guides or orisha are “crowned”, or embedded into the consciousness) are not a case of Basquiat's lamenting the inability to attain the crown of acclaim in the white world or of Basquiat's "loss of identity" (head/ori). Instead, it is the affirmation that his head/ori brought him the blessing of his art, and, though his art may often express the Negro's plight and suffering in the oppositional white world. His art, as it reflects his inner soul and understanding of ancestral royalty, makes him king which he already was and always is....indeed, most young kings do get their heads cut off [a reference—signifying—to Basquiat’s painting], but Basquiat never does.

Bell Hooks wrote of Basquiat: “...Fame, symbolized by the crown, is offered as the only possible path to subjectivity for the black male artist. To be un-famous is to be rendered invisible. Therefore, one is without choice. You either enter the phallocentric battlefield of representation and play the game or you are doomed to exist outside history. Basquiat wanted a place in history, and he played the game. In trying to make a place for himself--for blackness--in the established art world, he assumed the role of explorer/colonizer. Wanting to make an intervention with his life and work, he inverted the image of the white colonizer….Basquiat journeyed into the heart of whiteness. White territory he named as a savage and brutal place. The journey is embarked upon with no certainty of return. Nor is there any way to know what you will find or who you will be at journey's end. … Recognizing art-world fame to be a male game, one that he could play, working the stereotypical darky image, playing the trickster, Basquiat understood that he was risking his life--that this journey was all about sacrifice.” (Hooks, 1993, p.5)

References

Awo Fa'lokun Fatunmbi, “Esu-Elegba: Ifa and the Spirit of the Divine Messenger”, retrieved from http://www.awostudycenter.com/Articles/art_esu.htm

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. , The "Blackness of Blackness": A Critique of the Sign and the Signifying Monkey, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Jun, 1983), pp. 685-723

Phoebe Haban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing In Art, 1998, Penguin Books, Penguin Putnam Inc., New York, New York

Bell Hooks, “Alters of sacrifice: re-membering Basquiat”, Art in America, June, 1993