What is seen through jazz aesthetics is what many see today: conflict, difference, failure, mistakes, suffering, meaning, beauty, striving for justice, pain, indignation at suffering and injustice. The jazz form can provide a mode of criticism, of social commitment that allows the realization of Foucault's dream, his dream of a criticism that "would seek not to judge but to give life to an idea... It would multiply not judgments, but the signs of existence.”(Welch, 88) Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In this context, jazz aesthetics are inherently based on duality: providing a platform where individual experience is privileged, while simultaneously attempting to encapsulate collective experience. experience. This “modal critique” concerns the explanation of individual meaning, that is, the way in which an individual should determine and access awareness of his own subjective reality. A distinctive brand of existentialism accompanies Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man, in the form of the nameless protagonist, an African-American man who assigns himself the ultimate existentialist task: to achieve the goal he must honor his individual complexity and remain genuine to his own identity without sacrificing its responsibility towards the community. Ellison, in his introduction, presents his mission statement: “So my task was to reveal the human universals hidden in the plight of someone who was both black and American.” (Ellison, xviii) His literary enterprise resonates directly with W. E. B. Du Bois's concept of “double consciousness,” a concept that was inaugurated in his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois dedicates his text to the reconciliation between the African heritage and European pedagogy; it is, in effect, a theoretical model for understanding the psychological and sociological divisions prevalent in American society. An examination of Du Bois's contribution to African critical theory and "black existentialism" in conjunction with 20th-century French existentialism provides a theoretical lens through which Ellison's narrative can be interpreted; the protagonist struggles to come up with a conception of his own identity in a predominantly racially oppressive American society. Meetings with different communities, from the Liberty Paints factory to the Brotherhood political group, dictate to the protagonist rigid behavioral standards for the black population. As the protagonist attempts to define himself through the expectations imposed on him, however, the prescribed role limits his complexity as an individual and pushes him into a state of perpetual inauthenticity. ” which the protagonist meticulously applies to his experience, and the modal criticism of jazz aesthetics, which are rigorously applied to African-American social commentary. Each is a way of giving shape and meaning to existence in the same way that narrative itself tends towards a similar "fictitious" ordering of experience. Ellison establishes himself as an artist and individual; he is the heir to a distinctive African-American literary culture and American heritage within the Western European philosophical tradition. Ellison thus alludes to a conceivable reality but at the same time contests the validity of the forms we use to give it shape. At the center of Du Bois's text is “double consciousness”, the collective mediation of the two cultures that make up the African American identity; the first African American populations considered Africa as a place of origin, while America was considered a place of involuntary slavery. Although thesepopulations intended to return to Africa, the results of slavery and Southern acculturation made their identity distorted. The intentional repression of vernacular language, the establishment of alternative names, and conversion to Christianity ensured a divergent African cultural heritage. Du Bois compensates for this distancing in the form of “double consciousness”: The Negro is a sort of seventh child, born with a veil and gifted with second sight in this American world, a world that does not offer him the true self. -consciousness, but allows him to see himself only through the revelation of the other world. It is a particular sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul with the yardstick of a world that looks with amused contempt and pity. One always feels his duplicity: an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled efforts; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose stubborn strength alone keeps it from being torn to pieces. (Du Bois, 32) Duality punctuates Du Bois' text: contained by the color line of Jim Crow America, within the “Veil of Race,” (Du Bois, 79) black individuals are judged by their skin and not from their soul. But “above the Veil,” in the “realm of culture,” souls persist “uncolored,” enjoying “freedom of expansion and self-development.” (Du Bois, 33, 98) Du Bois calms his confidence in this freedom and states that one day he will “rend the veil”; this constitutes the very substance of the mournful songs of the slaves. These ancestral voices, the highest expression of American art, Du Bois argues, declare “a truer world” in which “men will judge men by their souls and not by their skin” (Du Bois, 197). Essentially, Du Bois sets out to do a double feat: he works both within and beyond the Veil, celebrating the “Negro soul” in the former, while preparing black Americans for the opportunity to dominate “above the Veil,” where the dominant human soul multiplies. , protected by the “centres of culture”. (Du Bois, 97) In philosophical terms, particularly in existential thought, the work of Jean-Paul Sartre is significant to consider. Existentialism and Human Emotions demonstrates Sartre's attempt to cultivate a unique brand of existentialism to replace traditional approaches to morality; the result is a fraction of ethics dependent on “authenticity”. His type of ontology concerns a combination of "existence precedes essence" and the concept of "bad faith": it states that an individual's existence predetermines his essence, that there is virtually nothing that can dictate the character and intentions of an individual except his own self. conduct and cultivation. Sartre states: The essential consequence... is that the man condemned to be free carries on his shoulders the weight of the whole world; he is responsible for the world and for himself as a way of being. (Sartre, 52) Du Bois holds a similar philosophical doctrine in The Souls of Black Folk, however, he extends “individual freedom” to the collective freedom of the African American race. While attesting to the African American's "desire" to overcome the social and psychic divisions imposed by American society, to "fuse his double self into a better and truer self," Du Bois imagined that truer self as one in which the doubleness of man The African and American elements would continue to coexist: in this fusion he does not wish for any of the older selves to be lost. It would not Africanize America, because America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not whiten his Negro soul in a wave of white Americanism, because he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world (Du Bois, 215). The message that "nigger blood" insists on sending is conveyed through the aesthetics of jazz; jazz music isthe embodiment of the existential terms outlined by Sartre and Du Bois, as it is a platform to showcase individual cultural experience and, by extension, the common African American narrative. Ellison's prologue delegates the need for musical expression, in which the narrator states: Maybe I like Louis Armstrong because he created poetry out of being invisible. I think it's because he doesn't know he's invisible. And my understanding of invisibility helps me understand his music. ” (Ellison, 8) Ellison addresses two major thematic concerns that characterize the novel: invisibility and jazz aesthetics. The narrator is aware of the jazz dynamic that occurs in Armstrong's music; unawareness of his own invisibility allows for the possibility of great artistic skill, but awareness of invisibility leads to understanding. This cyclical relationship also characterizes Ellison's novel more broadly, as it begins and ends in the same situation; it documents the protagonist's awareness of invisibility until eventual embracing a state of invisibility, allowing him access to a broader perspective. Louis Armstrong is often considered the most influential soloist in the history of jazz; he is credited with almost single-handedly transforming jazz, which originally evolved as a musical act collective, ensemble-based, into a means of individual expression in which the soloist occupied the front-line position within a larger band. The reference to Armstrong constitutes a "soundtrack" for the novel; Armstrong's vocation as a soloist reflects the "double consciousness" that saturates the novel's content, as he struggles with an individual and collective mode of expression, and Ellison's inclusion of "Black and Blue" represents an early attempt of jazz to create an open commentary on the topic of racism. Ellison's prologue places the novel squarely within broader literary and philosophical contexts; Existentialism, or the search for salvageable individual meaning in a seemingly meaningless world, reached the height of its popularity at the time of the publication of Invisible Man in 1952. Ellison proposes undertaking an existentialist examination of individual experience, but through the lens of race relations in post-war America. Sartre's ontology privileges the process of self-creation and artistic expression, as this recognition of responsibility is crucial to alleviating inauthentic behavior. Sartre supports “authenticity” when he states: he must assume the situation with the proud awareness of being its author, since the worst disadvantages or the worst threats that can endanger my person have meaning only in and through my project ; and it is on the basis of the commitment that I am that they appear. (Sartre, 53) Sartre's model expresses existentialist thinking through the act of “creating” one's situation and accumulating individual purpose “in and through one's project”; its claim to authenticity lies intrinsically in artistry and authorial intention. "Black and Blue", a 1929 jazz standard composition by Fats Waller and distinctly improvised by Louis Armstrong, is quoted directly in the prologue, which suggests that Ellison subscribed to notions of "black existentialism". Armstrong drawls the following lyrics: I'm white inside, but that don't help my case/This is life, I can't hide it, what's on my face/How would it end, I don't have a friend/My only sin It's in my skin/What have I done to be so black and blue. (Armstrong, “Black and Blue”)The song talks about the issue of black suffering as a philosophical problem. Black individuals often had toface double standards in their efforts to achieve equality in the wake of slavery, colonialism and racial apartheid. “Black and Blue” lyrically acknowledges the contradictory dichotomy of African American identity; points to “skin color” as a determinant of accessible agency in American society. Ellison's narrative mimics that of improvisational jazz both thematically and stylistically; the protagonist connects Armstrong's music to his own desires and conceptions. Regarding the message of “Negro blood,” Ellison directly associates invisibility with jazz aesthetics: Invisibility… gives a slightly different sense of time; you're never quite up to speed. Sometimes you're ahead and sometimes you're behind. Instead of the rapid and imperceptible passage of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stops or from which it leaps forward. And you slip into pauses and look around. This is what you vaguely hear in Louis' music. (Ellison,8) Ellison's seemingly foundational metaphor of "invisibility" adopts an aural dimension when considering Armstrong's lyricism and rhythmic dexterity in creating a "slightly different sense of time." The literary translation and reciprocity of Armstrong's artistry in swing rhythm allows access to the intellectual context in which Ellison weaves his musical and social thought. Wilfried Raussert, in his article “Jazz, Time, and Narrativity,” explains the tensions and correlations that arise in jazz composition and African-American social narrative. In reference to Armstrong's "swing" time signatures, Raussert states: While the jazz band usually plays a slow tempo on the way to the cemetery, a sudden change to an intensified tempo, due to playing double time, characterizes the music performed as the band accompanies the grieving community on their journey home. Double time leads to an intensification of the rhythm. (Raussert, 523) This “doubleness” recalls the “doubleness” theorized in Du Bois's text; swing intonation adopts double time to provide the individual and communal dichotomy of auditory experience. By applying musical characteristics to his own narrative, such as the shifting and improvisational style, Ellison achieves a literary mode for jazz aesthetics. multiply not judgments, but signs of existence”, jazz aesthetics, in the particular case of Ellison's novel, undertakes to make the existence of the narrator proactive. Ellison's narrator is constantly subjugated by the limitations of ideology in the forms of Dr. Bledsoe and the university institution, the Liberty Paints plant, and affiliation with the Brotherhood. During his encounters with these ideological systems, the narrator realizes that the racial prejudice of others causes them to perceive him only as they want to perceive him, and their limitations of vision consequently impose limitations on his ability to act. Sartre's entire philosophical doctrine is fundamentally concerned with the individual and his perception of himself; he asserts, “man is nothing other than what he makes of himself. This is the first principle of existentialism.” accompanies him. During the protagonist's trial with Mr. Norton, they are hit with severe racial segregation at Golden Day; this is one of several ideological systems that the protagonist encounters and is unable to procure agency within. He engages in an argument with a clinically insane veteran, who claims the following: he records with his senses but short-circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. It absorbs it but does not digest it. It already is... well, God bless me! Here you are! A walking zombie! He has already learned to repress not only his emotions but also his humanity. He is invisible, a walking embodiment of the Negative,the most perfect realization of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man! (Ellison, 94) Since the veteran is considered mentally insufficient, he cannot participate in the social discourse he speaks about. His complaint concerns the protagonist's unyielding servitude and dedication to Mr. Norton, however, the passage addresses a distinct philosophical situation, of which Sartre can explain: There can be no other truth from which to start but this: I think; therefore I exist. There we have the absolute truth of consciousness becoming aware of itself... Secondly, this theory is the only one, which gives dignity to man, the only one, which does not reduce him to an object. (Sartre, 36-7) Since the protagonist “represses his humanity” in a space that “has no meaning”, existentialist thought can prescribe a solution for him; Sartre inherits the model formulated by Descartes: “I think, therefore I am” or “I think; therefore I exist”, which makes the invisible man visible, in existentialist terms. Consciousness equals existence; in these terms, the protagonist prevails intellectually, since his mental processes include his "dignity" and his humanism. As the novel progresses and the narrator enters the Brotherhood, he appears to show progress in the ideological systems that have consistently oppressed him in his home community. This progress, however, is an illusion; rather, the protagonist remains incapable of acting according to his own existential conduct, and literally becomes incapable of being himself. The Brotherhood advertises opportunities to fight for racial equality by working within the organization's ideology; however, the system abuses the narrator as a “token” black man in its abstract project: to become aware that there were two of me: the old self who slept a few hours a night and sometimes dreamed of my grandfather, Bledsoe, Brockway, and Mary. ; the self that flew without wings and dived from great heights; and the new public self that spoke for the Brotherhood and was becoming so much more important than the other that I felt like I was running a race against myself. (Ellison, 380) The narrator becomes aware of his own sense of “double consciousness” as he refers to the duality of his character; the “old self” represents the African origins of Du Bois' model, while the “new public self” indicates forced integration into American society. Du Bois explains the “illusion” of human equality: Human equality does not even imply, as is sometimes said, absolute equality of opportunity; for certainly the natural inequalities of inherent genius and variable talent render this phrase doubtful. But a minimum of possibility and a maximum of freedom to be, to move and to think are increasingly clearly recognized, which the modern world does not deny to any being that it recognizes as true man. (Du Bois, 144) The character of the protagonist corresponds to Du Bois' theoretical framework; the old depreciation of the narrator's intellectual abilities and the “invisibility” that distorts him throughout the progression of the plot coincide in manifesting a character who lacks the recognition of being “a man”. It is only by accepting and embracing invisibility that the narrator can provide himself with a viable identity with the ability to act within the ideological systems that dictate it. Absurdity and meaninglessness are imperative characteristics in existentialist thought, as they help to conceive of human purpose in a world that shows no purpose. Ellison's narrative style is at times erratic and improvisational, mimicking the unpredictable nature of the "solo" in the swing and bebop jazz genres. In some cases the mode of transportation borders on the absurd, as in the case of the protagonist's confrontation with Ras: I looked at Ras on horseback and their handful of rifles and recognized the absurdity of the whole night andof the simple yet complex arrangement of hope and desire, fear and hate, that had brought me here still running, and knowing now who I was and where I was and also knowing that I no longer had to run for or from the Jacks, from the Emersons, from the Bledsoe and the Nortons, but only by their confusion, impatience, and refusal to recognize the wonderful absurdity of their and my American identity. . . . And I knew that it was better to live one's own absurdity than to die for that of others, whether for that of Ras or that of Jack. (Ellison, 418) This excerpt documents the epiphany undergone by the narrator; represents a crucial moment in the narrator's existential turning point, when he realizes that his own identity is the source of meaning in his life and that acting to meet the expectations of external forces can only prove destructive. Ras's threat to kill the narrator causes the narrator to perceive the world as meaningless and absurd and the complexity of American life as equally absurd. Ellison borrows the word "absurd" directly from the work of French existentialists, such as Sartre, who characterized the universe as such and argued that the only meaning found in existence is that with which the individual invests his own life. The only motivation the narrator can cling to is the assertion that his own absurdity is more important to him than that of Jack or Ras. The action of throwing the spear of Ras at him demonstrates the narrator's refusal to be any longer subject to the visions and demands of others: he ultimately commits himself completely to the attempt to assert his true identity. The novel ends in the same state in which it began: the narrator is located in the underground living unit, intricately decorated with thousands of bright lights. Light can be a mechanism to highlight the narrator's humanity, as his skin and soul are made visible “beyond the veil” of human existence. The epilogue determines the narrator's existential status:And my problem was that I was always trying to go in everyone's direction but my own. I was also called one thing and then another while no one really wanted to hear my name. So, after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others, I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man. (Ellison, 417)This is the protagonist's final revelation; encapsulates the “existence precedes essence” ideal that is intrinsic to Sartre's doctrine and the “double consciousness” of Du Bois's argument. The invisible man adopts a self-perceptive attitude that privileges individual existence and realizes the double structure of his imposed identity, which he ultimately rebels against. The prevalence of existential influence in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is no coincidence; rather, in contributing to a discourse that is philosophically, sociologically, and psychologically established by figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Jean-Paul Sartre, Ellison's brand of “black existentialism” becomes conceivable. Existentialism, in the three figures considered, tends to focus on the investigation of human existence and the conditions that formulate this existence. Individualism is prevalent in determining human purpose; Although this concrete individual existence should be the primary source of information in the study of man, some conditions, such as those involving racial segregation in Du Bois's text and the ideological systems that saturate Ellison's narrative, are commonly believed to be endemic to human existence. . . These conditions are often linked to the inherent meaninglessness or absurdity of the experience and its apparent contrast with predetermined progressions, which are largely presented as meaningful. Ellison, intentionally or unintentionally, shrouds theories.