What is seen through a jazz aesthetic is what many see now: conflict, difference, failure, mistakes, suffering, meaning, beauty, commitment to justice. , sorrow, indignation in the face of suffering and injustice. The form of jazz can provide a modality of criticism, of social engagement which makes it possible to actualize Foucault's dream, his dream of a critique which "would attempt not to judge but to give life to an idea... It would not multiply judgments, but signs.” of existence. »(Welch, 88 years old)Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get an original essayIn this context, the aesthetic of jazz is inherently grounded in duality: it provides a platform in which individual experience is privileged, while simultaneously attempting to encapsulate the collective experience. experience. This “modal critique” aims to explain individual meaning, that is, the way in which an individual should both determine and access an awareness of their own subjective reality. A distinctive brand of existentialism accompanies Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man, in the form of the anonymous protagonist, an African-American man who sets himself the ultimate existentialist task: to realize existence, he must honor his individual complexity and remain authentic to one's own identity without sacrificing one's responsibility to the community. Ellison, in his introduction, presents his mission statement: “My task, then, was to reveal the human universals hidden in the plight of someone who was both black and American. » (Ellison, xviii) His literary enterprise resonates directly with WEB Du Bois's concept of "double consciousness", a concept that was inaugurated in his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois devotes his text to the reconciliation between an African heritage and a European pedagogy; it is in fact a theoretical model for understanding the psychological and sociological divisions that prevail in American society. An examination of Du Bois's contribution to African critical theory and "black existentialism", in conjunction with 20th-century French existentialism, provides a theoretical lens through which Ellison's narrative can be interpreted; the protagonist struggles to form a conception of his own identity in a predominantly racially oppressive American society. Encounters with various communities, from the Liberty Paints factory to the political group Brotherhood, dictate to the protagonist rigid standards of behavior for the black population. As the protagonist attempts to define himself through the expectations imposed on him, in each case the prescribed role limits his complexity as an individual and pushes him into a state of perpetual inauthenticity. The Invisible Man is essentially an analogy drawn between the "invisibility" that the protagonist meticulously applies to his experience, and the modal critique of jazz aesthetics, rigorously applied to African-American social chronicle. Each is a way of giving form and meaning to existence, in the same way that narrative itself tends toward a similar “fictitious” ordering of experience. Ellison asserts himself as an artist and individual; he is heir to a distinctive African-American literary culture and American heritage within the Western European philosophical tradition. Thus, Ellison hints at a conceivable reality but at the same time challenges the validity of the forms we use to give shape to it. At the heart of Du Bois's text is “double consciousness,” the collective mediation of the two cultures that make up Africa. American identity; THEEarly African American populations considered Africa their place of origin, while America was considered a place of involuntary slavery. Although these populations intended to return to Africa, the results of slavery and Southern acculturation rendered their identity distorted. The intentional repression of vernacular speech, the institution of alternative names, and conversion to Christianity ensured a divergent African cultural heritage. Du Bois compensates for this alienation in the form of a “double consciousness”: The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil and gifted with a second sight in this American world, a world which gives him no true self . -consciousness, but only allows him to see himself through the revelation of the other world. It's a special sensation, this double consciousness, this feeling of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul against the yardstick of a world that looks on with amused contempt and pity. We always feel his duality: an American, a Black; two souls, two thoughts, two irreconcilable efforts; two warring ideals in a single dark body, whose tenacious strength alone keeps it from being torn apart. (Du Bois, 32) Duality punctuates Du Bois's text: contained by the color line of Jim Crow America, within the "Veil of Race", (Du Bois, 79) black individuals are judged on their skin and not on their soul. But “above the Veil,” in the “realm of culture,” souls persist “colorless,” enjoying “the freedom of expansion and personal development.” (Du Bois, 33, 98) Du Bois reassures confidence in this freedom, and that it “will one day break the veil”; this is the very substance of the slaves' songs of pain. These ancestral voices, the greatest expression of American art, Du Bois asserts, declare “a truer world” where “men will judge men by their souls and not by their skin” (Du Bois, 197). In essence, Du Bois embarks on a dual adventure: he operates both within and beyond the Veil, celebrating the "black soul" in the former, while preparing black Americans for the opportunity to dominate “above the Veil”, where the dominant human soul multiplies. , protected by “culture centers”. (Du Bois, 97)In philosophical terms, particularly existential thought, the work of Jean-Paul Sartre is significant to consider. Existentialism and Human Emotions demonstrates Sartre's attempt to cultivate a unique form of existentialism to replace traditional approaches to morality; the result is a faction of ethics dependent on “authenticity.” His type of ontology is interested in a combination of "existence precedes essence" and the concept of "bad faith": he asserts that the existence of an individual predetermines his essence, that there is no has virtually nothing to dictate an individual's character and intentions except for one's own self. conduct and cultivation. Sartre states: The essential consequence… is that man, being condemned to be free, carries the weight of the whole world on his shoulders; he is responsible for the world and for himself as a way of being. (Sartre, 52) Du Bois endorses a similar philosophical doctrine in The Souls of Black Folk, but he extends “individual liberty” to the collective liberty of the African-American race. While attesting to the "desire" of the African-American to overcome the social and psychological divisions imposed by American society, to "merge his double self into a better and truer self", Du Bois envisaged this truer self as a me in which the doubleness of African and American elements would continue to coexist: in this fusion, he wishes that neither of the older selves would be lost. He would not want to Africanize America, because America has too much to learnworld and Africa. He would not whiten his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, because he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world (Du Bois, 215). The message that “Negro blood” insists on sending is conveyed through the aesthetic of jazz; Jazz music is the embodiment of the existential terms described by Sartre and Du Bois, as it provides a platform for showcasing individual cultural experience and, by extension, the African American community narrative. Ellison's prologue delegates the necessity of musical expression, in which the narrator states: Maybe I like Louis Armstrong because he made the poetry of being invisible. I think it must be because he doesn't know he's invisible. And my own understanding of invisibility helps me understand his music. » (Ellison, 8 years old) Ellison addresses two major thematic concerns that characterize the novel: invisibility and the aesthetics of jazz. The narrator is aware of the jazz dynamics occurring in Armstrong's music; ignorance of one's invisibility allows for the possibility of great artistic talent, but awareness of invisibility leads to understanding. This cyclical relationship also characterizes Ellison's novel more broadly, as it begins and ends in the same situation; it documents the protagonist's awareness of invisibility up to the eventual adoption of a state of invisibility, allowing him to access a broader perspective. Louis Armstrong is often considered the most influential soloist in jazz history; he is credited with almost single-handedly transforming jazz, which originally evolved as an ensemble-based collective musical act, into a means of individual expression in which the soloist occupied the leading position within a larger group. The reference to Armstrong constitutes a “soundtrack” for the novel; Armstrong's vocation as a soloist reflects the "double consciousness" that saturates the content of the novel, as he struggles with an individual and collective mode of expression, and Ellison's inclusion of "Black and Blue" represents one of jazz's first attempts to create an open commentary on the theme of racism. Ellison's prologue situates the novel squarely within broader literary and philosophical contexts; Existentialism, or the search for recoverable individual meaning in a seemingly meaningless world, reached the height of its popularity at the time of the publication of Invisible Man in 1952. Ellison proposes to undertake an existentialist examination of the individual experience, but through the prism of race relations in post-war America. Sartre's ontology privileges the process of self-creation and artistic expression, as this recognition of responsibility is crucial to mitigating inauthentic behavior. Sartre endorses “authenticity” when he states: “He must assume the situation with the proud conscience of being its author, because the worst inconveniences or the worst threats that can endanger my person have no meaning. that in and through my project; and it is on the ground of commitment that I am that they appear. (Sartre, 53) Sartre's model expresses existentialist thought through the act of “creating” one's situation and accumulating an individual goal “in and through one's project”; its claim to authenticity resides intrinsically in the artistry and intention of the author. “Black and Blue,” a standard 1929 jazz composition by Fats Waller and distinctly improvised by Louis Armstrong, is directly referenced in the prologue, suggesting that Ellison adhered to notions of “black existentialism.” Armstrong drawled the following words: I'm white inside, but that doesn't help mycase/That's life, I can't hide what's in front/How would it end, I don't have any friends/My only sin is in my skin/What that I made to be so black and blue. (Armstrong, “Black and Blue”) The piece narrates the issue of black suffering as a philosophical problem. Black individuals often faced double standards in their efforts to achieve equality in the wake of slavery, colonialism, and racial apartheid. “Black and Blue” lyrically acknowledges the contradictory dichotomy of African-American identity; this indicates that “skin color” is the determinant of accessible action in American society. Ellison's narrative mimics that of improvised jazz both thematically and stylistically; the protagonist connects Armstrong's music to his own desires and self-conceptions. Regarding the message of “Negro blood,” Ellison directly associates invisibility with the aesthetics of jazz: Invisibility…gives a slightly different perception of time; we're never really in the rhythm. Sometimes you are early and sometimes you are late. Instead of the rapid and imperceptible flow of time, you are aware of its knots, those points where time stops or from which it jumps. And you slip into the breaks and look around. This is what we vaguely hear in Louis' music. (Ellison, 8) Ellison's ostensibly central metaphor of "invisibility" takes on an aural dimension when he considers Armstrong's lyricism and rhythmic dexterity to create a "slightly different sense of time." Literary translation and the reciprocity of Armstrong's artistry in swing rhythm provide access to the intellectual context in which Ellison interweaves his musical and social thought. Wilfried Raussert, in his article “Jazz, Time, and Narrativity,” explains the tensions and correlations that arise in jazz composition and the African-American social narrative. In reference to Armstrong's "swing" time signatures, Raussert states: While the jazz band typically plays a slow rhythm on the way to the cemetery, a sudden change to an intensified rhythm – due to double time – characterizes the music played when the group accompanies the grieving community on the way home. Double time leads to an intensification of the rhythm. (Raussert, 523) This “doubling” is reminiscent of the “doubling” theorized in Du Bois’s text; swing intonation adopts double time to provide the individual and communal dichotomy of the auditory experience. By applying musical characteristics to his own narrative, such as the changing and improvisational style, Ellison achieves a literary modality for jazz aesthetics. Just as Foucault aspired to a critique which "would attempt not to judge but to give life to an idea... do not multiply the judgments, but the signs of existence", the aesthetics of jazz, in the particular case of the novel of 'Ellison, undertakes to render the existence of the narrator as useful. Ellison's narrator is constantly subjugated by the limitations of ideology in the form of Dr. Bledsoe and the institution of academia, the Liberty Paints factory and Brotherhood affiliation. Throughout his encounters with these ideological systems, the narrator realizes that the racial prejudices of others cause them to perceive him only as they want to perceive him, and that their limitations of vision therefore impose a limitation on his ability to act. Sartre's entire philosophical doctrine is fundamentally interested in the individual and his own perception of himself; he affirms: “man is nothing other than what he makes of himself. This is the first principle of existentialism. accompanies him. During the trial ofprotagonist with Mr. Norton, they are victims of severe racial segregation in Golden Day; it is one of several ideological systems that the protagonist encounters and fails to gain agency within it. He engages in a discussion with a clinically insane veteran, who claims the following: He is recording with his senses but short-circuiting his brain. Nothing makes sense. It absorbs it but it does not digest it. He already is – well, bless my soul! See! A walking zombie! He has already learned to suppress not only his emotions but also his humanity. He is invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect realization of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man! (Ellison, 94 years old) Since the veteran is considered mentally insufficient, he cannot participate in the social discourse he speaks about. His complaint concerns the protagonist's unyielding servitude and devotion to Mr. Norton. However, the passage addresses a distinct philosophical situation, which Sartre can explain: There can be no other truth from which to start from this one: I think; therefore I exist. Here we have the absolute truth according to which consciousness becomes aware of itself... Secondly, this theory is the only one which gives man dignity, the only one which does not reduce him to an object. (Sartre, 36-7) Since the protagonist “represses his humanity” in a space that “has no meaning,” existentialist thought can prescribe a solution; Sartre inherits the model formulated by Descartes: “I think therefore I am” or “I think; therefore I exist,” which makes the invisible man visible, in existentialist terms. Consciousness equals existence; in these terms, the protagonist prevails intellectually, because his thought processes include his “dignity” and humanism. As the novel progresses and the narrator enters the Brotherhood, he seems to show advancement in the ideological systems that have consistently oppressed him throughout history. his community of origin. But this progress is an illusion; on the contrary, the protagonist remains incapable of acting according to his own existential conduct and literally becomes incapable of being himself. The Brotherhood announces opportunities to fight for racial equality by working within the organization's ideology; However, the system abuses the narrator by considering him as a "symbolic" black man in its abstract project: Realizing that I was two: the old me who slept a few hours a night and sometimes dreamed of my grandfather and Bledsoe and Brockway and Mary. ; the self that flew without wings and dived from great heights; and the new public self that spoke for the Brotherhood and became so much more important than the other that I seemed to be in a foot race against myself. (Ellison, 380) The narrator becomes aware of his own feeling of “double consciousness” when he refers to the duality of his character; the “old self” represents the African origins of Du Bois’s model, while the “new public self” signifies forced integration into American society. Du Bois explains the “illusion” of human equality: Human equality does not even imply, as is sometimes said, absolute equality of opportunity; for it is certain that the natural inequalities of inherent genius and variable gifts render this expression doubtful. But there is more and more clearly a minimum of possibilities and a maximum of freedom to be, to move and to think, which the modern world does not refuse to any being it recognizes as a real man. (Du Bois, 144)The protagonist's character corresponds to Du Bois's theoretical framework; the veteran depreciation of the narrator's intellectual capacity and the "invisibility" which distorts him throughout the progression of the plot coincide to manifesta character who does not have the recognition of being “a man”. Only by coming to terms with and embracing invisibility can the narrator gain an achievable identity with the ability to act within the ideological systems imposed upon him. Absurdity and absurdity are imperative characteristics of existentialist thought because they help to conceive of human purpose in a world that presents no purpose. Ellison's narrative style is sometimes erratic and improvisational, mimicking the unpredictable nature of the "solo" in the swing and bebop jazz genres. The mode of transportation borders on the absurd in some cases, such as the protagonist's confrontation with Ras: I looked at Ras on his horse and their handful of rifles and recognized the absurdity of the whole night and the arrangement simple but bewilderingly complex of the hope and the desire, the fear and the hatred, that had brought me here, still running, and now knowing who I was and where I was and knowing also that I I no longer had to flee for or away from the Jacks, the Emersons, the Bledsos and the Nortons, but only from their confusion, their impatience and their refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity and mine. . . . And I knew that it was better to live for your own absurdity than to die for that of others, whether for Ras's or Jack's. (Ellison, 418) This excerpt documents the epiphany the narrator experiences; it represents a pivotal moment in the narrator's existential life breakthrough, as he realizes that his own identity is the source of meaning in his life and that acting to meet the expectations of external forces can only prove destructive. Ras's threat to kill the narrator prompts the narrator to perceive the world as meaningless and absurd and the complexity of American life as equally absurd. Ellison borrows the word "absurd" directly from the work of French existentialists, such as Sartre, who characterized the universe as such and asserted that the only meaning that can be found in existence is that with which the individual invests his own life . The only motivation the narrator can cling to is the assertion that his own absurdity is more important to him than that of Jack or Ras. The action of throwing the spear of Ras back at him demonstrates the narrator's refusal to be more submissive to the visions and demands of others - he finally fully commits to an attempt to assert his true identity. The novel ends in the same state as at the beginning: the narrator finds himself in the underground housing unit, finely decorated with thousands of bright lights. Light can be a mechanism to highlight the humanity of the narrator, as his skin and soul are made visible “beyond the veil” of human existence. The epilogue determines the existential status of the narrator: And my problem was that I was always trying to follow everyone's path except my own. I was also called one thing and then another when no one really wanted to hear what my name was. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others, I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man. (Ellison, 417) This is the final revelation of the protagonist; it summarizes the ideal of “existence precedes essence” which is intrinsic to Sartre’s doctrine and the “double consciousness” of Du Bois’s argument. The invisible man adopts an attitude of perception of himself which favors individual existence and becomes aware of the double structure of his imposed identity, against which he ends up rebelling. The predominance of existential influence in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is no coincidence; on the contrary, by contributing to a discourse philosophically, sociologically and psychologically established by figures such as WEB Du Bois and Jean-Paul Sartre, the type of ".