Essay Example Native Son & Letter - A Manifesto of Performative Utterance & Purpose

Introduction

The books, Notes of a Native Son" and "Letter from a Region in My Mind” key manifesto features is its performative utterance. The authors first begin with an introduction that gives context and justification. In the books, the author states that the issues in America a Europe can be addressed by the people themselves if they are given purpose. He uses performative utterances and innovation. The second manifesting feature is the purpose statements in which the author gives a clear contact of the principles along which the manifesto are aligned

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Overarching Principle of Operation

The overreaching principle of the author is that America should not accuse its children (African Americans) because the children belong to the society. If the child fails, it is the parent’s failure. Therefore, the failures of the Negroes are not the Negroes problem, but a demonstration of the failure of the American government. If the Negroes are criminals, it means that the American government failed to take care of its children. In the book, the authors use characters and objects with qualities, which the audiences can identify. The authors use a harsh or tense tone to point out the failures of the government, the parent and the community as a whole. He notes that if the son fails, then everyone with whom the son has relationships has also failed (Janku, Allkja and Aliaj 320-331). Bigger Thomas is the antagonists and the native son of America, his birth as a black man in the United States makes him a bonafide member of the American society who has equal rights as those other people in the United States (Bryant). Being a product of the United States, any of his shortcomings can be blamed on the government or the American society as a whole. Baldwin, therefore, affirms the following:

First: The Negroes were not cleansed by praying to white God but by understanding their worth and fighting for their freedoms. The black man should not be stigmatized but evaluated by their worth. Big Thomas was wrongly labelled as an angry black man, yet he was not.

Second: To fight for the freedom of the speech, by giving the black Americans, a platform where they can spell out any form of black injustice.

Third: Black America does not have a country onto which they can hold on. African Americans’ history lies in the US. This history is still in the making, which means that they have a chance to change the narrative

Fourth: in his writings, the primary task is to correct the American society on their attitudes and perception towards the Negroes.

Fifth: the membership lists include African Americans and other ethnic groups in America. The other stakeholders include the criminal justice system that has promoted racial profiling to incarcerate African Americans and in some cases, extra-judicially killing the Negroes.

So stand the propositions of Baldwin’s manifesto. Though Baldwin considers the political and historical form and ideas of the ancestors, he argues that the time for African Americans to push for their rights, to end the inequalities and discrimination because this is the central task of the African Americans (MacCabe 1-5). The African Americans are increasingly becoming aware that they alone are the ones responsible for the good life and the realizing of the American of their dreams. The Americans must understand that they have within themselves the power to achieve their dreams. Therefore, they must set the right intelligence and the will to achieve the task.

The manifesto is mainly concerned with revealing the values that the American society upholds. It also reveals how the values have completely worked against African America. He expresses the will of the Negroes through rationally inspired utterances. In his public discourse, he acts as a public declaimer and in this case, the orator. His use of the “we” is likened to the manifested discourse (Breton 23). Baldwin’s argument is presented in the hortatory function and this is evidenced in his quote in the book, Letter From a Region in My Mind, James Baldwin stated that “Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.”

Like in the other manifestoes, his writing tends to b heightened in power retroactively. His manifesto emerged as a time of major social change and political turbulence. The books both share a social and political context of changes. Baldwin declares the will of the sovereign. His background gives him the authority to communicate with the African Americans, in this case, the subject to inform them of the sovereign laws (Matthews 1). He attempts to awaken the African American and educate the whites about the injustices committed against the African Americans. In his story, Baldwin exhorts the African American to seek what they can do to uplift each other instead of waiting for sympathizers. It is important to note that the exhortation is a common manifested discourse as well as a constitute feature of most of the revolutionary discourses. He speaks of awakening or consciousness (Hugo 13). He does not exhort African American to revolt against the whites but to be conscious of their surroundings.

In a higher structural label, Baldwin tends to demonstrate his understanding of the tensions between the performativity and theatrics that are common in then manifesto form. Like in his poem and stories, his satires the antics of the American whites. His use of devices demonstrates his mastery of the way the manifestoes create the authorizing context for itself. The story is an example, of revolutionary as he writes with authority based on his encounter with people both in America and in Italy. He focuses on future audiences and the potential future outcomes that he believes his writing will successfully secure.

Conclusion

James Baldwin’s clarion call is that Americans should live together and love one another as human beings and not as African Americans and whites. According to James Baldwin, here is no label or slogan, no religion or skin colour can be compared to the human being. The two books are endowed with a higher level of immediate absurdity in his claims. The peculiarity can be attributed to the capitulation of the African American’s to the white supremacy. It is inadmissible for African Americans to continue playing the second fiddle to the whites. His, main argument of racial equality can, therefore, be concluded to be manifested because it produces a revelation of some injustices and objective facts.

Works Cited

9 Sascha Bru and Gunter Martens. Rodopi, 2006. 65-90. Yanoshevsky, Galia. “Three Decades of Writing on Manifesto: The Making of a Genre.” Poetics Today 30:2 (Summer 2009)257-286. Web. JSTOR. 19 Feb 2011

Breton, André. Surrealist Manifestos. 1st ed. Éditions du Sagittaire,: Transl. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, 1924. Print.

Bryant, George. Manifesto. [Auckland, N.Z.]: N.Z. Democratic Party, 1987. Print.

Hugo, Ball. "DADA Manifesto." Tristan Tzara (1916): n. pag. Print.

Janku, Eranda, Ledio Allkja, and Besnik Aliaj. "Albania 2030 Manifesto, An Example For Adapting Advanced National Spatial Planning Instruments For Developing Countries." Universal Journal of Management 5.7 (2017): 320-331. Web.

MacCabe, Colin. "A Modernist Manifesto." Critical Quarterly 57.2 (2015): 1-5. Web.

Matthews, J. H. "Fifty Years Later: The Manifesto Of Surrealism." Twentieth-Century Literature 21.1 (1975): 1. Web. 23 June 2020.

Winkel, Laura. “The Rhetoric of Violence. Avant-Garde Manifestoes and the Myth of Racial Community.” The Invention of Politics in the European Avant-Garde (1906-1940) Eds.