POLITICS IN THE POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES

In 1920s the United States of America witnessed major alterations in its social , political , economic and cultural field. The country divided on the bases of race experienced the dynamic tensions, where the blacks tried to erase these inequalities and attempted to redefine themselves. These potential assertions gave rise to one of the pioneering movement of that time : The Harlem Renaissance, popularly known as the "New Negro Movement" One of the prominent contributor and propagator of this movement was Langston Hughes. His works operate as a landmark in the history of African-Americans struggle for equality. Harlem was maintained as an iconic Black landscape. His works encapsulated a wide range of issues that Blacks were suffering from. These were articulated and manifested in diverse modes of representation. In this paper, I attempt to locate the poems of Langston Hughes in their period tracing the various tensions that existed at that time, at the same time studying them through the prism of Marxist, Freudian, Postcolonial, Althusser, Psychological, Cultural and postmodern prospective.

Marxist reading of Langstons poems

The economic denial, the slave trade, the commercialization and the reduction of Blacks all became an epitome of the degrading exploitation. Economics played a fundamental role in defining the status and in determining the position of the Blacks in the American society. The subjugation and denial was deliberately maintained in order to consolidate the privileges that the Whites had in America. The exploitation at the microscopic structural level of economy was further transmitted into the macroscopic super structural level of culture, education, politics and social arena. The poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers, by Langston , a lot of reference has been made to geographical entities. These places have been approached through a sense of relatedness while investing certain degree of emotions into the places. Such representation can be a marker of the assets that have been denied to the African-Americans and the assertion of the sentiment of relatedness can be an attempt to claim or possess the land through the imagination. These lines also reflect the alienation of the Black people from many material aspects of reality. While on the other side, it can be a metaphor for the heritage and culture that has been treasured by the Poet and the Black people. It suggests an attempt to secure an elevated platform for their culture that has been underestimated through ages. The poet states Ive known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins ,

Therefore insisting on embodying a certain knowledge that is not acknowledged or estimated in right terms In the poem Negroes, the poet states Ive been a slave: Caesar told me to keep his door-steps clean........Ive been a worker.......Ive been a victim......I am a Negro This depicts the condition of Blacks as equal to that of proletariats, as one of the have-nots of the society . In the last line of the poem The Dreams Deferred the poet hints at the possibility of a revolution or the rebellious outburst of the Blacks, whose dreams have been trampled by the political policies. The lines Or does it explode? envisions the possibility of a Marxist revolution. The lines from the poem Cubes It's the old game of the boss and the bossed, boss and the bossed, amused and amusing, points out towards the similar Marxist tendencies and the attempt of the Whites to hegemonies the class hierarchies through ages. It depicts the relation between the expansions of capitalism and racially based European imperialism. Its the anti-capitalist and anti-imperial sensibility of the poet. The poet refers to Hegels famous master-slave dialect. Its an epitome of the global system of exploitation and migration that came into existence in the twentieth century as s result of European imperialism.

Freudian concept of recreation

The recreation of identity through language and been an effective instrument in redefining and relocating a sense of strong selfhood. Language and writing also becomes a materialization of certain aspirations that are not manifested in the real life. It gratifies the sub-conscious and suppressed desires. Such tendencies are fore grounded in Langstons poem Montage of a Dream Deferred, where the poet maintains Harlem as a literary site, though the place does not provides with much advancement, yet the poet alters and manipulates the facts, he shows the neighbourhood as a place of refuge, and Harlem as home. The projection in the poem recreates an imaginary, make belief, and self constructed geographical location through language and literary devices. These enable the Blacks in maximizing their vision, hopes and aspirations and moving towards equality. The lines from the poem Afro-American Fragmentation

Of songs sung again Of a history Being rewritten Emphasises on the need to redefine history through language, claim a stronger and a mainstream identity through language. The poets states that Not even memories alive Save those that history books create Similar attempts are depicted in the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers , which is an stress on recreating a sense association. The lines In strange un-Negro tongue points out towards the sense of lack that the Blacks face due to the denial of articulation and expression in the history books. The poet keeps emphasising this lack through the lines Subdued and time-lost Are the drums

Althussers state apparatuses

The poems of Langston voice the functioning of both the ideological and repressive state apparatus in deterring the selfhood of Blacks. With the operating ideological state apparatus the Blacks had internalized and imbibed the status of the underdog In the poem I Am a Negro, the poet asserts that They lynch me still in Mississippi, indicate the role of state in legitimizing the discrimination and dehumanising of the Black people. The punishments and inhuman conduct towards Blacks was validated and rationalized by the people in power. Repressive agencies such as police, prisons, judiciary, army, legislature and executive assemblies were all hands in gloves in promoting and strengthening this oppression. The Lines: Caesar told me to keep his door-steps clean indicate the lack of agency that the Black people suffered from. They were always acted upon, always told, commanded and ordered. Blacks blindly executed the work without processing it rationally. They were divorced and alienated from the process of production, thereby psychologically disrupting their sense of selfhood and ideologically making them a subordinate. The Lines: I am a Negro: Black as the night is black indicate a distorted image that the poet sees of himself through the gaze of the Whites Eurocentric prospective. He sees a very weak and disempowered imagery, he attempts to redefine it by coloring it as an assertive identity.

The poem Cubes indicates the operating ideology in the lines Behind the cubes of black and white Cubes represent an ideological control that is constantly projected in order to show class relations as natural and a better setup. The lines For fun They give him the three old prostitutes of France Liberty, Equality, Fraternity Indicate the continuation of inequality through the ideals of enlightenment. In order to justify the imperial exploitation and the whole enterprise of capitalist expansion, the ideology of enlightenment serves as a compensation. They become the instruments of the unjust ruling class. The lines From light to darkness disease From the boss to the bossed disease From the game of black and white Disease Indicate the deformation of the self due to exploitation. The Blacks formed a lower self esteem for themselves and started viewing all relations in terms of deformity. The legacy of injury is caused by such exploitation. Old prostitutes represent the exploited worker, victims of an institutionalized system of exploitation, that has been legitimized through the RSA. The poem Afro-American Fragment depicts a similar picture, The lines Save those that history books create points out toward the documentation of only the official records and history as stated by the people in authority. The unofficial version and the history of the Blacks is erased and denied, they are merely treated as the objects in the history books, without a voice and without any representation. Their presence is only articulated through the projection by the Whites, therefore the Blacks see a distorted image of themselves in the history books.

Post modern and post colonial reading

This prospective transforms the margins into the mainstream and it demands the erasal of the subalterns, while simultaneously viewing the evolution of the Black people into the modern era and its impact on them. The fusion of modernist approach and the struggle for equality has been captured by Langston in his poem Cubes. it depicts a commitment to revolutionary socialist movement. Written from a Black diasporic prospective, its a critique of modernism. It highlights the exclusion of the Afro-American writers from the emerging cano of modernism. Hughes develops a vision of modernism in this poem. The poem hints at the fact that the expanding capitalist economic system and the intensifying imperialism act as a determining forces in the artistic movements. This made imperialism more global. The oppression of African Diaspora and enforced migration were a result of the fusion of capitalism and empire. It has also lead to the avantgarde aesthetic practices. In the poem , modernist art is depicted as a disease, as it promotes a global system of exploitation and at the same time deforming the lives of the people. For Black people, modernisation comes across as traumatic experience as they receive exploitation in fragments. On one hand modernism proves as a gift since it provides free expressions and free assertions but it also comes as a disease for Blacks as they suffer from the identity crisis due to their distorted history and denied expression in the past. There is sense of disjunction produced when the poet views the relationship of the Afro-American, the African from Senegal and the African in Paris, unable to bring them in a common thread as they suffer from geographical dislocation. At the same time these people were suffering from the expressive crisis of the metropolitan imperial subject. Hughes here confounds the modern experience of Black Diaspora. Reference to Picasso and his revolutionary representational technique enables the poet to articulate his own limitations. In the poem Harlem the poets expresses the same sentiment of uncertainty and the fact that he is unsure of his own acts symbolizing a lack of link of the poet from his own roots at the same time attempting to establish a space for himself in the modern era. Unfortunately the modern era also does not promises much identity development, infact it is further fractured. In the poem Afro-American Fragment , the poet tries to document the unofficial version of his history. He becomes a mouthpiece for his entire race. The lines Of bitter yearning lost Without a place he articulates his sense of double loss. Yet the poet attempts to recollect, when he states in the poem: Yet the drums still Beat long and low Of a people Taken from their native land Of songs sung again

The poet even envisions the re-emergence of his own culture and heritage. Literature becomes instrumental and a catalyst in redefining these boundaries that were earlier blurred, though the poet has to deal with the tensions of modernism at the same time. Here the poet asserts himself as the subject of the narrative and voices the history in his own voice Similarly in the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers the poet asserts, I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers , thereby asserting the knowledge and the importance of his past. In the poem "Negro" the poet at the end, deconstructs the two binaries and sets the identity of the Black as an autonomous, independent and a powerful one. He takes pride in his race and sets his culture on an entire different platform. He erases the Eurocentric prospective entirely and does not see his race in relation to any other. He elevates this race to elemental level, where he states Black as the night is black, being very near to the concept of eco-feminism.

Psychological conflict in Hughes

The poet seems to struggle with the crisis of identity, and at the same time the deficiency in a proper categorization and allocation of his selfhood. This strain can be seen in his poem "I, Too" , where various themes of slavery, African-American culture and a diasporan panAfricanism and a divided nationality, intermingle and torn the poet . Adam Lively: "The 1920s," he observes, "saw the birth of the idea of blacks as the inside outsiders of modern life" Hughes feels a sense of alienation from both the lands, as being a victim of slavery he is unable to connect to the past. Politics and commerce blur the geographical and cultural lines for the poet. The history as constructed by the dominating class does not rescue the poet, instead it complicates the things for him. He is unable to detach himself from the citizenship of America while aspiring for space and identity in this country, a consant feeling of alienation haunts him with the recollection of the dehumanisation of his own identity in this land creeps in, making allocation of his identity difficult. At the same time his origins and legacy that are embodied in Africa, seem erased, as he is totally divorced from them while he was chained by the colonial enterprises. There is the problem of acceptance in the African society which views AfricanAmericans as outsiders and the other. The history documented by the dominant class does not represents the history of the suppressed, it has been manipulated and distorted, therefore

there is no trace of Poets own identity left, hence he laments for the loss of heritage and culture. They suffer from the phenomenon Du Bois called double consciousness. However this period provided a symbolic and a real alteration of the Blacks sensibility, where they gained a consciousness of self-determination, at the same time imbibed the concepts of modernity and implied them in re asserting their identities. Art became an important medium in the realization of the self, and in freeing them from the shackles of the past. They were awakened to the cocept of united racial identity. Though many critics found this moment limited as it did not overcome the presence of White American values, there was a constant imitation of the Whites even in the art forms, this was highly resented by Hughes who insisted in maintaining the autonomous identity. The concept of the New Negro sparked off American progressivism in true light. West was no longer viewed as the centre of civilization. The exclusion of Blacks from the modernist moment enlarged their scope through the harlem renaissance moment.

Works cited:

Goodman Paul & Gatell Frank. The American Colonial Experience : Los Angels, California 1969 Roberts Andrew. The Colonial Moment in Africa : Cambridge University Press 1986.
Moglen, S. (n.d.). Langston Hughes and the Broken Cubes of Picasso. Modernism in the Black Diaspora , Vol. 25.jstor Westover, J. (n.d.). Fragmentation and Diaspora in the Work of Langston Hughes. Africa/America: , Vol. 25.jstor

TERM PAPER:

POLITICS IN LANGSTON HUGHES POEMS

Submitted by : Kirti Sachdeva IA Incharge : Dr. Tapan Basu Group : SC 3 MA previous