Thursday, March 8, 2012
Blog post I saved and didn't publish because I didn't like it part 1: Finding a text
I have been thinking about this for a while now and it has bothered me quite a bit. As we have heard numerous times throughout Mumbo Jumbo, Jes Grew is looking for a text, but why does it need a text. To me a writing down of Jes Grew and the spirit of Jes Grew seems impossible as it has been described. To write down Jes Grew seems as if it would limit the evolution of Jes Grew. Could someone actually interpret Jes Grew without limiting it with words? So why is it that Jes Grew needs a text that will define it and restrict the freedom of it that seems to be so important to the movement? What could a text possibly do for it? PaPa LaBas says that "If it could not find its Text, it would be mistaken for entertainment." Maybe a new Text would be a history of the evolution of the black cultural movement instead of a biography of Osiris's life. Maybe the text is something else the old text was described as not so much a text,but a series of dance moves, maybe this is less restrictive and free to interpretation then what a text is more typically thought to be?
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In the novel,there's this sense that "finding the text" would mean permanence and stability--these subverted cultural influences would become equal parts of the culture by being written into the "official" history. Or, at least, this seems to be something like LaBas's understanding early on. But his view, as you note, changes by the end--the *one, decisive Text* becomes less important, and a kind of polyphonic freedom is embraced. Perhaps the newer manifestations too will be "mistaken for entertainment," and thus weakened or marginalized, but ultimately this doesn't seem to matter as much as LaBas originally thought.
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