History is the Whack
We've had multiple discussions in class at this point about what exactly constitutes the difference between "history" and "fiction," and I'm pretty sure the answer that we've all come to is that it's complicated. Like, unfortunately complicated. All of the novels we're reading for this class claim to be historic, and to a certain degree, they are. Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo both incorporate very real historical events and figures. But of course they're not actual history they aren't that historical in their accounts.
This is what makes Mumbo Jumbo such a pain in the ass to deal with, and I'm positive that Ishmael Reed is laughing at us for having these discussions. Mumbo Jumbo provides us with an absolutely bizarre meta-narrative that seems so ridiculous, it's morbidly close to reality. For the past 3,000 years, a secret society has been working to uproot humanity from its traditional, non-Atonist roots and move away from nature. Through wars, media control, murder, Christianity, and all other means, the Atonists have systematically oppressed African and black culture, trying to build their skyscrapers and transcend the roots holding them down.
Now obviously, this pseudo-history never actually happened. Osiris and Set weren't real people, there is no secret text controlling the spread of an anti-plague called Jes Grew, loas aren't actually real, and there is no international organization controlling world culture and destroying what it deems unnecessary or based. None of that is real.
Or is it?
Whose to say none of this is actually real and that Reed isn't some Neo-style figure who's escaped the Matrix and realized the truth? We automatically brush it all off as fiction because the world we live in tells us that this is fake, it's just a fun challenge to the world and culture all of us have grown up in. It's that culture that's constantly spoon-fed to us by the stuff we read in school, the media, our friends, and so on. Do we really have any proof that a Wallflower Order-style entity doesn't exist, keeping track of people and what they know?
It digs at the question of what exactly we can trust as actual history. We say we have proof that none of this stuff would have happened or that events went down differently, but how can we trust that proof? Because there's a good chance it's just Atonist slander once again, making us think what they want us to think. How do we know what's actually real? It's an incredibly meta question that ultimately just seems to lead to frustration. Mumbo Jumbo isn't just challenging what it means for something to be "history," it forces you to think about the "history" that you thought you knew already. If you take it to the extreme, the novel completely invalidates the concept of history.
Of course, you could reply to this post being like "But Ethan that's dumb of course this stuff didn't happen" to which I could reply "ThAt'S sUcH aN aToNiSt ThInG tO sAy HnNnNnGgGgGgHhH" and the conversation would just go on endlessly from there. That's not my intention, I really just wanted to think about what the implications of Mumbo Jumbo are for our conception of history. If this novel has the apparently ability to make established facts untrue, where can we possibly go from here? How do we know what to trust?
This is what makes Mumbo Jumbo such a pain in the ass to deal with, and I'm positive that Ishmael Reed is laughing at us for having these discussions. Mumbo Jumbo provides us with an absolutely bizarre meta-narrative that seems so ridiculous, it's morbidly close to reality. For the past 3,000 years, a secret society has been working to uproot humanity from its traditional, non-Atonist roots and move away from nature. Through wars, media control, murder, Christianity, and all other means, the Atonists have systematically oppressed African and black culture, trying to build their skyscrapers and transcend the roots holding them down.
Now obviously, this pseudo-history never actually happened. Osiris and Set weren't real people, there is no secret text controlling the spread of an anti-plague called Jes Grew, loas aren't actually real, and there is no international organization controlling world culture and destroying what it deems unnecessary or based. None of that is real.
Or is it?
Whose to say none of this is actually real and that Reed isn't some Neo-style figure who's escaped the Matrix and realized the truth? We automatically brush it all off as fiction because the world we live in tells us that this is fake, it's just a fun challenge to the world and culture all of us have grown up in. It's that culture that's constantly spoon-fed to us by the stuff we read in school, the media, our friends, and so on. Do we really have any proof that a Wallflower Order-style entity doesn't exist, keeping track of people and what they know?
It digs at the question of what exactly we can trust as actual history. We say we have proof that none of this stuff would have happened or that events went down differently, but how can we trust that proof? Because there's a good chance it's just Atonist slander once again, making us think what they want us to think. How do we know what's actually real? It's an incredibly meta question that ultimately just seems to lead to frustration. Mumbo Jumbo isn't just challenging what it means for something to be "history," it forces you to think about the "history" that you thought you knew already. If you take it to the extreme, the novel completely invalidates the concept of history.
Of course, you could reply to this post being like "But Ethan that's dumb of course this stuff didn't happen" to which I could reply "ThAt'S sUcH aN aToNiSt ThInG tO sAy HnNnNnGgGgGgHhH" and the conversation would just go on endlessly from there. That's not my intention, I really just wanted to think about what the implications of Mumbo Jumbo are for our conception of history. If this novel has the apparently ability to make established facts untrue, where can we possibly go from here? How do we know what to trust?
I completely agree. Who ever records history is automatically going to be biased, even if they are not trying to be. I agree with the idea that we can't trust any of the history that we are taught. There is always going to be another side or point of view that we don't now about.
ReplyDeleteI agree. It is important to look for different ways to explain history, but several other blog posts have already pointed out date-time inconsistencies between actual, recorded events, and the same event in the book, namely the Titanic, which was shifted by a decade. Sure, you could argue that the actual date was hidden by an Atonist conspiracy, but my response then would be: "Why?" Why would a secret society care about moving the date of a catastrophic event (which people survived from that could fact-check them) one decade back? What would that accomplish? I think one misconception about government is that it has a reason to hide things from us, but to all of these ideas, my response will always be: "Why?"
ReplyDeleteThe Titanic example is a clear case of Reed just trying to slip in a historical reference in an anachronistic way because it's funny to him to have Musclewhite confidently planning to return from Europe on the Titanic (opens up all kinds of ideas about Atonist techno-hubris, works a bit like Doctorow having Father die on the Lusitania, although Doctorow is a lot more careful to make the dates work out).
DeleteBut Reed makes a similar move when he points out that the Atonists have effectively suppressed any mention of the US occupation of Haiti from 1915-35. At first, I was thinking this *had* to be fabricated or fictionalized, but indeed the US Marines were in Haiti for the duration of WWI and much longer (and we sent in troops again in 2004). *Why* would the Atonists suppress this information? That can get the old conspiracy mind going--but while we're at it, we can consider why/how US meddling in Latin American politics throughout the 20th century has been suppressed. It's one of the best pieces of evidence within the novel that Atonism is "real."