MDDM Gershom's hip to the jive: more from that book re African Diaspora

[Doug Millison]

_African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas_
Sheila S. Walker, ed., Rowman and Littlefield, 2001

Walker writes, re the US Constitution definition of enslaved African
Americans as "three-fifths of a person for purposes of federal
apportionment of taxation and congressional representation" -- this passage
which I offer as a perspective that may help illuminate some of what
Washington and Gershom are doing in M&D, how Gershom does manage to retain
some dignity despite being held in bondage by Washington:

"Whereas Euro-Americans endeavored to define the total reality of the
Africans they purchased to do with as they pleased, enslaved Africans and
their descendants, who considered themselves full, not partial,  human
beings, insisted upon defining themselves by and for themselves _in_ their
own terms, some of which still maintain explanatory power. That enslaved
Africans also succeeded in defining themselves _on_ their own terms, in
spite of all the powerful, colonial and national government-enforced
efforts to make it impossible for them to do so, is evident in their
creation of the many original cultures and cultural forms of the African
Diaspora, as well as in their important recognized and unrecognized
contributions to the cultures of all of the Americas and to global society.

"To survive and even create in unimaginably adverse circumstances, Africans
and their descendents had no choice but to practice artful dissimulation,
subtle subertfuge, and serious jive in their interactions with whites whose
inerests were, by definition, antithetical to those of the people they
considered their chattel, whom they included not on human census rolls but
rather on property inventories along with their tables and chairs, with
their cows and pigs.  How else might a thinking person account for the
"happy smiling darky" Euro-American sterotype for the human beings they
kept imprisoned in generations of lifetimes of perpetual bondage?

"An African American saying states that "I've got one mind for my master,
and one mind for myself." I've got a jive version of what I
think/believe/lknow fo the person who tries to control me, and I keep my
real truth for myself and my people. What was perceived as glib and foolish
talk by hose who were intended to be deceived often protected the
pfrofoundtruths of those who were consciously, carefully, and selectively
deceiving.

"The concept of jive as deception and dissimulation must, however, be
applied in both directions. The first concerns the ways in which African
Americans jived their white enslavers in order to resist their efforts at
total control and joked among themselves about doing so. The other is the
way in which white enslavers invented and presented jive versions,
deceptive misrepresentative versions, of African, African Diaspora, and
consequently Pan-American history to the world, and pretended that it was
the truth, perhaps joking among themselves about "getting over" on their
victims -- both materially and intellectually. The dissimulative way in
which the story of the Americas has been told, such that it denies,
minimizes, and distorts African and African Diasporan roles in it, has been
succesfully jive in that it has deceived everyone, even convincing of its
validity many of the very people whose experiences it has misrepresented."

I think it's pretty clear that Pynchon is aware of this perspective as he
presents  Washington and Gershom  in M&D, creating a character, Gershom,
who ,despite being enslaved by the Father of Our Country, manages to turn
the tables (not because of some special grant of "liberty" by Washington,
but because of Gershom's own resourcefulness and talent) on his "nominal
Master"  -- a phrase that I expect Pynchon chooses, not because he wants to
point out that Washington is not his master, because we know very well that
Washington's slaves were his property, but instead because Pynchon wants to
honor the experience of the enslaved Africans in America who managed to
make the best of a very bad situation -- the irrepressible Preterite.
Gershom stands at the beginning of a long line of African Americans who, as
Walker notes, "succeeded in defining themselves _on_ their own terms, in
spite of all the powerful, colonial and national government-enforced
efforts to make it impossible for them to do so".  Pynchon's Washington may
in some ways be seen as situated  on the "nice" end of the enslaver
spectrum, permitting (for reasons Pynchon does not explain) Gershom some
privileges that most enslaved Africans didn't enjoy -- but Pynchon's
Washington remains a white enslaver, Pynchon hasn't altered that fact in
his historical fiction, a fictionalized version of the historical
Washington who was  indeed  one  of "those of the people they considered
their chattel, whom they included not on human census rolls but rather on
property inventories along with their tables and chairs, with their cows
and pigs."

Flame-free,
Doug