Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 8 Number 3, December 2007
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Bell, Kevin, Ashes Taken for Fire. Aesthetic Modernism and the Critique of Identity, Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press, 2007. 252 pages, ISBN 0-8166-4901-4, Hardback $67.50, Paperback $22.50
Reviewed by
University of Granada
Identity constituting a pivotal issue within Modernist concerns, Kevin Bell’s Ashes Taken for Fire carves into the question of selfhood and the void represented by existential emptiness. Thus, focusing on the phenomenon of blackness, both in relation to the experience of racialism in the earlier decades of the twentieth century and as synonymous of abjectedness and the blankness of being, Bell provides an accurate, in-depth analysis of this issue. Through a brilliantly developed revision of some bedrock samples of Modernist fiction, including works by Conrad, Woolf, Faulkner, West, Ellison, or Himes, the author offers a prismatic insight into that complex phenomenon of blankness, insofar as it provided Modernist fiction writers with an efficient vehicle to verbalize the perils of categorization and the confinement to a definite identity.
As Bell argues, it is precisely blackness that enables the visualization of a historically and culturally imposed Otherness. Hence, following an illustrative Introduction where the various implications of the dialectics necessarily involved by the phenomenon of blackness as traditionally subordinate to a tyrannical subject, Bell explores Conrad’s portrayal of niggerness in The Nigger of the Narcissus, as the mirror and locus where whiteness can find its own reflection and self-definition as starkly opposed to a despicable Other. Through a clear and illuminating exposition, the scholar demonstrates it is precisely the abjected position of the nigger that allows the emergence of a polished, perfectly-demarcated white identity which rejoices in its difference.
A dethroning of the absolute notions of selfhood and immutability comes to the surface in Bell’s analysis of Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, where the essential void that replaces the concepts of character, language, and narrative speaks out the panorama of banality in the socio-cultural scenario that frames the novel. On the other hand, whereas the author had presented blackness as accomplishing a mirror-like function in Conrad’s story, a different view emerges from his exploration of Faulkner’s Light in August, where the re-enactment of cultural prejudices on the objectified Negro bounce back on his executors to render any attempt for defining identification as impossible.
A further means of problematization of the question of Modernist identity comes to light through Bell’s study of Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts. On this occasion, the scholar leads us towards a vision of consumerism and the mass-oriented development of society, along with a hollow experience of Christianity, as the sources for the attainment of an identity apparently more authentic than the already sufficiently degraded self. In Bell’s prismatic exploration of Modernist fiction, the idea of selfhood comes to the fore as well in his analysis of Ellison’s Invisible Man, where the critic points out to the subversive purpose underlying the enactment of categorization through identity in Ellison’s novel. Hence, on the basis that closure and definition aim only at illusorily concealing the multiplicity and uncertainty beneath the fallacy of naming, Bell concludes on the paradoxical artificiality of the categorized self the protagonist eventually becomes.
Finally, by taking readers before the reality of the social and literary panorama of Chester Himes’ days, Bell discusses the visual and aural orientation Modernist writing acquires in his novels. Through his analysis of Himes’ fiction, the scholar sheds light on the relevance of this new direction, which results in the relocation of narrative to a subordinate position, subservient of the experiential progression of literary works. For Bell, this represents a new means of voicing out the disruption of formal categories and pre-established canons which lies at the core of Modernist vindications.
In sum, Ashes Taken for Fire constitutes an engaging and accessible exploration of blackness, both as a racialist experience around the turn of the century and as representative of the blankness left by absolutizing attempts for closure and definition. Provided with abundant explanatory notes and relevant, clearly illustrative quotations, Bell’s book offers a clear and illuminating overview of certain landmark aspects in Modernist literature. No doubt, throughout its six chapters, skilfully interwoven by this common thread, Bell brilliantly contributes to substantialize the scholarly void of Modernist blackness.