Knucklebones and Knocking-bones: The Accidental ... - MsEffie

Knucklebones and Knocking-bones: TheAccidental Trickster in Ellison's Invisible Man

In "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke/' published in PartisanReview in 1958, Ralph Ellison discusses with his friend Stanley

Edgar Hyman the relationship between African American litera-ture and African American folklore. In particular, Ellison findsHyman's conception of the trickster simplistic and even misguid-ed. Tricksters, EUison argues, are not unique to African Americanfolklore; indeed, "from a proper distance all archetypes wouldappear to be tricksters and confidence men" (102), whether theyemerge in Ellison's own Invisible Man or Homer's The Odyssey.Ellison is not denying the influence of "Negro American foUdore"in his work, but he is questioning the reductive binary on whichHyman relies, a binary that designates certain archetypes as"Negro" (or African) and other archetypes as "American" (orEuropean). As a writer who claimed both "Negro" and"American" literary ancestry, Ellison resists such easy categoriza-tion. More troubling to him, however, is Hyman's contention thatthe " 'darky' entertainer" or African American minstrel isdescended from the folkloric trickster figure. To be sure, it isoverly easy to make such an argument, to see the " 'darky' "enter-tainer as "a skilled man of intelligence . . . parodying a subhumangrotesque" (112). But such a theory of appropriation and subver-sion is, in Ellison's words, all too "kind." Minstrelsy, he argues, isan act of "self-humiliation" and "symbolic self-maiming," reduc-ing the blackface entertainer into a " 'sacrificial' figure" ratherthan elevating him to the status of taunting trickster (112).

In distinguishing the minstrel from the trickster, Ellison high-lights the fraudulence of popular theatrical representations ofblackness. He writes.

The role with which they [darky entertainers] are identified is not,despite its "blackness," Negro American (indeed, Negroes are repelledby it); it does not find its popularity among Negroes but among whites;and although it resembles the role of the clown familiar to Negro vari-ety-house audiences, it derives not from the Negro but from the Anglo-Saxon branch of American folklore. In other words, this " 'darky' enter-tainer" is white. (101)

With their pseudo-Negro dialect, faces smeared with burnt cork,and outlandish costumes, black minstrels are reduced to "a nega-tive sign," a vessel of all things "grotesque and unacceptable"(103). Indeed, Ellison goes so far as to call minstrelsy a "ritual ofexorcism" (103), allowing the white audience to enjoy "blackness"in a safe, comedic context. By calling the darky entertainer"white," Ellison argues that minstrelsy originates not in Africa (asHyman believes) but right here at home. Indeed, even if thedarky entertainer is descended from the folkloric trickster, he hasso adjusted to "the contours of 'white' symbolic needs" that no

Julia Sun-Joo Lee is agraduate student in thedepartment of English andAmerican Language andLiterature at HarvardUniversity. She is completinga dissertation on theAmerican slave narrative andthe Victorian novel.

African American Review, Volume 40, Number 3© 2006 Julia Sun-Joo Lee 461

amount of burnt cork or greasepaintcan mask his true racial (and racist) ori-gins.

Although Ellison ends his essay ona more gracious note, thanking Hymanfor the "service" he performs in eluci-dating the African American folk tradi-tion, he maintains that Hyman "dis-tort[s] [literature's] content to fit histheory" of folk tradition and arche-types. As evidence, Ellison cites andthen rejects Hyman's overzealous(mis)readings of Invisible Man, a sectionof the essay that would make any liter-ary critic—including this one—flinch.Yet Ellison's admonition is a valid one.None of the characters in Invisible Manare meant to be perfect archetypes;indeed, Ellison's modemist convictionswould have precluded such complete-ness or flatness of character. And whileEllison concedes that Rhinehart"would seem a perfect example ofHyman's trickster figure," he adamant-ly denies that the Invisible Man fitssuch an archetype: "He certainly is nota smart man playing dumb. For thenovel, his memoir is one long, loudrant, howl and laugh. Confession, notconcealment, is his mode" (111).

If the Invisible Man is not a trick-ster, then what is he? Lest I fall intoHymanian oversimplification, let meimmediately acknowledge the futilityof identifying any neat archetype. Afterall, the Invisible Man revels in his mer-curialness, mocking those who wouldtry to pin him down. Ellison's impas-sioned words in Partisan Review yielduseful insights, not only about criticalinterpretation but also about Ellison'svexed relationship with minstrelsy and"darky" entertainment. On the onehand, minstrelsy allowed black per-formers as esteemed as JosephineBaker and James Weldon Johnsonaccess to the theatrical stage; on theother hand, the "blackness" they per-formed was hopelessly phony and"white." The Invisible Man himselfattempts to navigate notions of black-ness, and from the Battle Royal to TodClifton's Sambo spiel, he is forced toconfront the legacy of "darky" perfor-

mance. Indeed, at times the InvisibleMan seems practically to flirt, howeverunconsciously, with minstrelsy. In thisperformance, he is certainly no trick-ster, no "smart man playing dumb,"but perhaps more accurately, a "dumbman playing dumb"—unconsciouslyenacting the basest radal stereotypes.Yet even this characterization is undu-ly simplistic, for the Invisible Man'sstory is retrospective and, howeverconfessional and ragged, indicative ofsome narratological and epistemologi-cal sophistication.

Perhaps the Invisible Man's incon-sistency is linked to his ghostly status,for bom of Ellison, he is haunted bytheatrical and literary articulations of"blackness." Here, it may be helpful toinvoke Henry Louis Gates's study ofwhite signifying versus blackSignifyin(g). The two terms paradoxi-cally share, in Gates's words, "a rela-tion of difference inscribed within arelation of identity" (45). In the acade-mic critical community, signifying maybe traced to Derridean and Saussureanlinguistic theories, which attach a par-ticular signified (or concept) to a partic-ular signifier (or sound-image). In theblack vemacular tradition, however,the signifier is emptied out—or openedup—to include a multiplicity of rhetor-ical figures. Thus, stanclard English sig-nifying is transmuted into black ver-nacular Signifyin(g), a multivalent andmultivocal trope that is skillfullywielded by the folkloric trickster hero.

The minstrel, however, is no trick-ster.^ Rather than Signifyin(g) black-ness, he signifies white perceptions ofblackness. In other words, the min-strel's burnt-cork mask, his whitegloves, his grotesque lips, his "nigger"dialect subscribe to a white model oflinguistics, of signifying rather thanSignifyin(g). An entire race is reducedto clumsy, exaggerated metonyms sothat even colored performers mustdarken their natural complexion to sig-nify blackness "correctly." Ellisonwrites, "The racial identity of the per-former was unimportant, the mask wasthe thing (the 'thing' in more ways

462 AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW

than one), and its function was to veilthe humanity of Negroes thus reducedto a sign" (103). The white audiencecontrols signification; the white audi-ence appends meaning to the sign; thewhite audience signifies. In this way,the darky entertainer ultimately repre-sents not blackness, but whiteness.Hence, Ellison's observation, "This'darky' entertainer is white."

Given minstrelsy's contentious his-tory, it is perhaps unsurprising thatcritics of Invisible Man have avoidedthis topic in favor of a less fraught formof African American performance: jazz.A. Timothy Spaulding has exploredhow the novel's narrative form embod-ies a "bebop aesthetic" while MichaelBorshuk links Ellison's "jazz aesthetic"of dialogism, intertextuality, and paro-dy to the development of AfricanAmerican modernism.^ To argue for akind of "minstrel aesthetics," converse-ly, seems almost laughable, if not plainwrong. Yet Love and Theft, Eric Lott'sseminal work on blackface minstrelsy,has compellingly revealed the culturalimpact of black dialect, music, anddance on the 19*-century Americanimagination. Is there room in minstrelperformance for jazz-like subversionand improvisation? In other words,with Christopher Shinn, I wonderwhether, behind the minstrel mask,could the Invisible Man be a trickster?^

Frederick Douglass and the Dictionaryof White American Usage

More than 100 years beforeEllison, Frederick Douglass

had expressed the same discomfortwith darky entertainment and its fun-damentally "white" complexion afterattending a performance of Gavitt'sEthiopian Serenaders, a group purport-edly composed of "colored people"who nevertheless blackened their faceswith burnt cork and lamp black, andcartoonishly outlined their lips, "thebetter to express their characters."

These minstrels, Douglass wrote, prof-fer only "an imitation of white per-formers, and not even a tolerable repre-sentation of the character of coloredpeople" (Douglass, "Gavitt's"). Blackperformers, he argued, "must cease toexaggerate the exaggerations of ourenemies; and represent the coloredman rather as he is, than as EthiopianMinstrels usually represent him to be"(141-42). Rather than performing fic-tive, white representations of black-ness, the colored man must locate anddisseminate his own, authentic repre-sentations of his race.

Yet how is the colored man to doso in a world defined by whites? Gatesechoes this plaint, in the semiotic con-text of The Signifying Monkey: "Whatdid/do black people signify in a societyin which they were intentionally intro-duced as the subjugated, as theenslaved cipher?" (47). Minstrelsy, likeputative standard English, transformsthe black subject into an "enslavedcipher" or, in Ellison's words, a "nega-tive sign." Theatrical and linguisticrepresentations of blackness are thusliriked in their enslavement to whitemodes of definition. Indeed, minstrel-sy, by attaching white meanings toblackness, becomes a lexicon of black-face, a Webster's Dictionary of what itmeans to be (or act) black. Yet in cata-loguing and performing the attributesof the Negro, minstrelsy relies on whitevocabulary and becomes not a perfor-mative Dictionary of American NegroUsage, but an entry in what could becalled the Dictionary of WhiteAmerican Usage.

In a retrospective review of AnAppeal in Favor of that class of Americanscalled Africans, an antebellum tract bythe abolitionist Lydia Maria Child,Ellison himself refers to this "unwrittendictionary of American Negro usage"when defining the word "signifying"as "rhetorical understatements" (qtd.in Gates 105). Gates elaborates,"Ellison's stress on 'the iinwritten dic-tionary of American Negro usage'reminds us of the problem of defini-tions, of signification itself, when one is

KNUCKLEBONES AND KNOCKING-BONES: THE ACCIDENTAL TRICKSTER IN ELLISON'S INVISIBLE MAN 463

translating between two languages"(105). Signifyin(g) becomes one way ofdecoding and, more importantly,redefining the "negative sign" and"enslaved cipher" of white-definedblackness, dne result is what Gatescalls a "black double-voicedness" andwhat Gary Saul Morson, paraphrasingBakhtin, calls a"special sort ofpalimpsest inwhich the upper-most inscription isa commentary onthe one beneath it,which the reader (or audience) canknow only by reading through thecommentary that obscures in the veryprocess of evaluating" (49-50).Signifyin(g) is "ghosted over" signify-ing in the way the "unwritten" dictio-nary of American Negro usage isghosted over the dictionary ofStandard (White) English usage.'* As ina photograph in which one image issuperimposed upon another, black dis-course lies atop white discourse, enact-ing the Gatesian "relation of differenceinscribed within a relation of identity."Thus, both visually and aurally,Signifyin(g) is a strategy of layered fig-uration—one image, voice, or rhetori-cal device atop another.

Before examining the way thatEllison negotiates the two dictionariesand the two modes of "black" repre-sentation in Invisible Man, I want torevisit Douglass. As Ellison's literaryantecedent whose lofty figure hangs-liter ally—over the Invisible Man,Douglass is one of the first AfricanAmerican writers to recount anddemonstrate his mastery of literacyand language. In her essay, " 'While Iam Writing': Webster's 1825 SpellingBook, the Ell, and Frederick Douglass'sPositioning of Language," literary criticDaneen Wardrop catalogues the waysthat Douglass's signifiers "jostle anddisrupt the dominating sigrufying sys-tem" (649). In particular, Wardropdescribes three episodes of significanceto this discussion. The first isDouglass's attempt to leam the mean-

Ghost language isa hybrid ianguage,

hovering in that liminai spacebetween "x" and "y-"

ing of abolition. He writes, "The dictio-nary afforded me little or no help. Ifoimd it was 'the act of abolishing;' butthen I did not know what was to beabolished" (56). Wardrop explains,"We see that the accepted authority forthe dominating (written) discourse canhave no meaning for Douglass. He

must find his ownsignified for the sig-nifier" (651). Thedictionary defini-tion of abolition is atautology, mystify-ing rather than illu-

minating. As a guide to presumablystandard English usage, the antebellumdictionary censors certain "dangerous"definitions, thus relegating abolition'sreal meaning to the unwritten, unspo-ken dictionary of American Negrousage. Indeed, abolition is an exampleof a double-voiced palimpsest, the defi-nition of which word white slaveown-ers mean to restrict and obscure. Toone race, it denotes "the act of abolish-ing"; to another, it signifies "freedom."

Still, knowledge manages to slipthrough, as when Mr. Auld warns hiswife against teaching Douglass to read.Douglass writes, "That which to himwas a great evil, to be carefullyshunned, was to me a great good, to bediligently sought; and the argumentwhich he so warmly urged, against mylearning to read, only served to inspireme with a desire and determination toleam" (49-50). Wardrop describesDouglass's subversive interpretation ofMr. Auld's words as a "designat[ion]"of "(black) signifieds for (white) signi-fiers" (651). In other words, Douglassre-defines language for his own pur-poses, referring to his own intemal dic-tionary rather than the hegemonicwhite dictionary. Yet Douglass is alsoexploiting the ambiguity of language,the same ambiguity that allowsSignifyin(g) to exist both mside andbeside signifying. In Douglass's case,his master's proscription againstDouglass's learning to read, becomesprescription, an agnominatio, or repeti-tion of a word with an alteration of one


letter and one sound, that quietly yetdrastically destabilizes meaning.Douglass listens to Auld's words, thenquietly yet drastically tweaks them toreverse their meaning entirely.

Determined to leam how to write,Douglass painstakingly copies theItalics in Ws Master Thomas'sWebster's Spelling Book. Wardropeffectively analyzes the ways that thisSpelling Book could have taughtDouglass the "skewered signifiers of aculture" (651) such that I am interestedin what happens next. Taking MasterThomas's used copybooks, Douglassbegins "copying what be had w^ritten. Icontinued to do this until I could writea hand very similar to that of MasterThomas" (58). Much has been writtenabout the ways that Douglass is rele-gated to the margins, forced to write inthe spaces left by his white master.^Wardrop calls this marginalization "apalimpsest of a particular kind; theblack slave pens over the white spaces"(653). While this layering certairJydevelops, Douglass's palimpsest is of adifferent and more subversive kind.We have seen how a palimpsest is adouble-voiced (or double-sighted),"ghosted" kind of writing: Sigrufyin(g)superimposed upon signifying. Thus,in writing in the margins of MasterThomas's text, Douglass effectivelywrites over it. Douglass says his "hand"begins to look like his master's, aprovocative claim given that handwrit-ing is an individual's imprint, uniqueto him or her and representative of adistinct identity. Here, however,Douglass's handwriting becomes likehis master's, and their identities seemto elide. The ambiguity that arisesallows Douglass to mimic his master'swriting style while redirecting the con-tent of his words. In other words,Douglass becomes a ghostwriter, bothin the sense of shadowing his master'shandwriting and in the sense of writ-ing in the name (or hand) of another.

Ellison's Invisible Man is also aghostwriter: he is a self-described"phantom" (5) who literally writes outhis tale. Yet he is also a ghostwriter

who undergoes several incarnations ofblackness during the course of his nar-rative and who must constantly shiftbetween two discursive vocabularies,white and black. Indeed, the InvisibleMan ultimately coins his own, hybridvocabulary, comprised of what I call"ghost-words." A Merriam-Websteron-line dictionary defines ghost word as"a word form never in estabhshedusage." The OED traces the term's ori-gin to an 1886 joumal report that pro-claims them words with "no real exis-tence." This same report declares, "Weshould jealously guard against allchances of giving any undeservedrecord of words which had never anyreal existence, being mere coinages dueto the blunders of printers or scribes, orto the perfervid imaginations of igno-rant or blundering editors." Ghost-words are marginalized words, wordsthat appear in no dictionary of "estab-lished," or white, usage. As such, theytheoretically constitute the language ofblackness, a language catalogued inEllison's "unwritten dictionary ofAmerican Negro usage."

Yet ghost-words are fundamental-ly "blunders" and mistakes, and thislack of authorial (or editorial) delibera-tion or consciousness renders them theprototype, rather than the archetype, ofblack discourse. The OED provides thefollowing example: "The word meantis estures, bad spelling of estres; andeftures is a ghost-word." This accidentalagnominatio is a critical first steptowards fully-developed, "double-voiced" language, but it is a languagestill caught between the vocabulary ofStandard American English usage andthat of black vemacular.

To use Gates's mathematical modelof signification, putative standardEnglish and black vemacular representthe intersecting "x" and "y" axes of lin-guistic discourse. Such a model moreaccurately describes the "perpendicu-lar," rather than "parallel," relation-ship between the two "discursive uni-verses." To tbis model, I would pro-pose a third axis, a "z" axis, if you will.Representing the third discursive uni-


verse of ghost-language, the "z" axissplits the space between "x" and "y"axis and adds a third dimension to thepreviously two-dimensional graph. Inother words, ghost language is ahybrid language, hovering in that limi-nai space between "x" and "y." If wemap the minstrel and trickster figuresonto this graph, the former would liealong the "x" axis, or the axis of hege-monic white articulafion (signifying),and the latter would lie along the "y"axis, or the axis of black vemacular(;Signifyin(g)). The Invisible Man, then,is neither minstrel not trickster; he is anunstable hybrid of both.

Knucklebones and Knocking-bones

But enough of abstractions.Throughout Ellison's text, the

repercussions of the Battle Royal eventresound, and its depiction of (coerced)black performance provides troublingcommentary on "darky" entertain-ment. Following the fight, the InvisibleMan and his fellow victims are sum-moned to a rug covered with goldpieces and bills and told, "You get allyou grab" (26). The Invisible Mandescribes what ensues:"I lunged for ayellow coin lying on the blue design ofthe carpet, touching it and sending asurprised shriek to join those risingaround me. I tried franfically toremove my hand but could not let go.A hot, violent force tore through mybody, shaking me like a wet rat. Themg was electrified My musclesjumped, my nerves jangled, writhed(27). The white spectators, by activat-ing tbe electric current, successfullyoverride Invisible Man his physicalimpulses and force him to respond as apuppet, his body jerking and shakinguncontrollably. Indeed, the InvisibleMan reacts like someone possessed.Deprived of volition, he enacts thewhims of his audience and performs,however imwillingly, the physical bur-lesque of blackness. He describes

another "boy" who "literally dance[d]upon his back, his elbows beating afrenzied tattoo upon the floor, his mus-cles twitching like the fiesh of a horsestung by many flies" (27). Despite theboy's obvious pain, the white audienceresponds with "booming laughter," asif his physical agony enacts physicalcomedy—in other words, as if his painis voluntary, rather than coerced.

The battle royal functions as a bm-tal form of minstrelsy, with the audi-ence paying the Invisible Man to per-form white nofions of blackness, all thewhile egging him on with cries of"Thaf s right. Sambo" and "Slug him,black boy!" (26, 23). Sfill, in his narra-fion, the Invisible Man implies that heis somehow complicit in the perfor-mance. He continues to snatch coinsand heed the goadings of the specta-tors, and afterwards, he accepts a five-dollar payment for his services andwrites, "I did not even mind when Idiscovered that the gold pieces I hadscrambled for were brass pocket tokensadverdsing a certain make of automo-bile" (32). Even the Invisible Man'slong-awaited speech becomes anotheract in this grotesque minstrel show, asthe M.C. announces, "I'm told tbat heis the smartest boy we've got out therein Greenwood. I'm told that he knowsmore big words than a pocket-sizeddictionary" (29). Such an introductionis more befitting a vaudeville per-former than an eamest orator, and theM.C.'s possessive language—"he's thesmartest boy we've got"—and crackabout the "pocket-sized dicfionary"undermines the Invisible Man's acade-mic accomplishments. This paternalis-tic rhetoric confirms the InvisibleMan's emasculated "boy"-like status.He is allotted only a certain amoimt ofknowledge in the form of an abridged,"pocket-sized" dictionary—a dictio-nary carefully vetted by his whitesponsors and purged of threatening"big words," words such as Douglass'sabolition. The only "big words" that theInvisible Man knows are impotentphrases like "social responsibility,"words that his white patrons have


deemed safe for him, and, therefore,meaningless to themselves. TheInvisible Man not only relies on anedited (and censored) pocket-sized dic-tionary, be is himself securely "in thepocket" of his white patrons.

Yet the Invisible Man "slips" dur-ing his oratory, subsfituting "socialequality" for "social responsibility" atthe precise moment that the audienceheckles him to repeat his "big words."Despite its immediate effect, his slip isunintenfionally subversive, for untilthis point, tbe Invisible Man bad faith-fully and doggedly delivered thewhite-sanctioned, accommodationistrhetoric of Booker T. Washington. Hisinadvertent linguistic "trick" substi-tutes one big word for another: "equal-ity" for "responsibility." Yet one wordappears in the "pocket-sized dictio-nary" and the other does not; one hasbeen sanctioned and the other cen-sored. "You weren't being smart, wereyou, boy?" one man calls out, "yousure that about 'equality' was a mis-take?" The Invisible Man replies, "Iwas swallowing blood," an explanafionthat is simultaneously evasive and illu-minating. On the one band, theInvisible Man does not know whatcompels his act of linguistic treacheryand so offers a limp (bloodless?)excuse. On the other hand, tbe blood inhis mouth-evidence of his recentabuse and exploitation—triggers hisact of linguistic defiance. From signify-ing blackness by ventriloquizing white-authorized rhetoric, the Invisible Manis now, however unwittingly,Signifyin(g) blackness. The moment oftransgression is short-lived for, dulychastised, be reverts to his deploymentof standard discourse, and then grate-fully accepts the briefcase and scholar-ship to a Negro college. Still, he hasunconsciously broken bis minstrel rou-tine and become, for a brief moment,an accidental trickster.

The Invisible Man has tasted bloodin his mouth, yet he persists in swal-lowing his bitterness and injury.Indeed, he is not yet conscious that hehas been wronged. At the Golden Day,

one of the vets tells Mr. Norton: "He[the Invisible Man] has eyes and earsand a good distended African nose, buthe fails to understand the simple factsof life.... Nothing has meaning. Hetakes it in but he doesn't digest i t . . . .He's invisible, a walking personifica-fion of the Negafive, the most perfectachievement of your dreams, sir! Themechanical man!" (94). Just as theInvisible Man swallows injusfice butdoes not "digest" it, so, too, does heaccept without quesfion his invisibilityand insignificance (or in-Significafion).His designation as "the Negative"recalls Ellison's description of tbe"negative sign" of minstrelsy. TheInvisible Man does not embodyauthenfic blackness; he embodies Mr.Norton's "dreams" of blackness.Described altemately as a "walkingzombie" and "automaton," as well as a"mechanical man," the Invisible Manbecomes a puppet or doll, manipulatedby those around him as he was manip-ulated by the white spectators at thebattle royal (94-95). More troubling,though, is his hermeneufic illiteracy.He "takes in" facts but he does notimderstand what tbey mean. In tbisway, he is a negafive sign surroundedby other negative signs, an inscrutablefigure that, like "the simple facts oflife," has been arbitrarily accorded def-inifion by a white authority. NeedlingMr. Norton, the vet says, "To you he[the Invisible Man] is a mark on thescorecard of your achievement" (95).Like Gates's "enslaved cipher," theInvisible Man is imprisoned within theparameters of a white evaluafivemodel. He has no meaning, no signifi-cation apart from his white patron, justas the marks, "A," "B," and "C" haveno meariing when detached from theso-called "scorecard."

Tbe Invisible Man is a "negativesign," both in the sense of containingall insidious, "negafive," white percep-fions of blackness, but also in the senseof being a vessel of blankness, empfi-ness, "negafive" space. Describing pho-tographs taken during the early days ofhis College, the Invisible Man writes:


[There were] photographs of men andwomen in wagons drawn by muleteams and oxen, dressed in black,dusty clothing, people who seemedalmost without individuality, a blackmob that seemed to be waiting, look-ing with blank faces, and among themthe inevitable collection of white menand women in smiles, clear of features,striking, elegant and confident. (39)

Here, Ellison's professional back-ground in photography allows theInvisible Man to express in provocafivevisual terms the difference between theraces. As in a poorly-lit photograph,black and blank become confiated,with features and idenfifies obliteratedby shadow. White men and women,however, are comparafively well-lit,their physical and disposifional quali-fies delineated sharply. The InvisibleMan adds, "the figures in the pho-tographs had never seemed actually tohave been alive, but were more likesigns or symbols one found on the lastpages of the dicfionary" (39). In fact,the figures in the picture—especiallythe black figures—are doublyinscmtable, obscured by time and theirvery blackness. Unlike the words anddefinifions that comprise the bulk oftbe dicfionary, tbey are marginalized—relegated to the back of the book in thespace reserved for punctuafion marksand proofreading symbols. Theseincomprehensible signs are also, quiteliterally, marginalia. Jotted in theempty spaces between and around themain text, they evoke Douglass's assid-uous copying in the margins of hismaster's copybook. And like the markson Mr. Norton's "scorecard of achieve-ment," these signs and symbols aremeaningless urdess attached to somemodel of white hermeneufic discourse.They, too, are "enslaved ciphers."

Previously, the Invisible Man badfelt little connecfion when gazing uponthe photographed faces of his blackpredecessors. Now, however, heremarks, "I felt that I was sharing in agreat work and, with the car leapingleisurely beneath the pressure of myfoot, I idenfified myself with the rich

man reminiscing on the rear seat" (38).In what seems an appalling act of racialdenial, the Invisible Man "idenfifie[s]"himself with Mr. Norton and, by exten-sion, the other white figures in pho-tographs. But Ellison suggests in parttbat this act of betrayal could also be anact of survival. Where the InvisibleMan had formerly felt alienated fromhis school's past history, he now feelsintegrated; where he had formerly feltdispossessed and "blank" like theblack faces in the photograph, he nowfeels an idenfity forming. That he canonly define bis worth through themediating presence of a white maninfimates Ellison's nofion of theAfrican American's vexed plight. Howcan he forge an idenfity when the onlyopfions are whiteness or blankness—two opfions that are, in fact, one andthe same? It is no wonder, then, thatthe Invisible Man has been read as aminstrel figure. His access to alternate"black" identifies denied, he acceptsthe only mask offered to him—themask of the "darky" performer whoembodies hegemonic whiteness.

Parficularly effecfive at donningthis mask is Dr. Bledsoe, who, despitehis pretensions of power over his whitepatrons, slips into blackface (or blank-face) all too easily. Iniuriated that tbeInvisible Man has driven Mr. Norton tothe slave-quarter secfion of tbe college.Dr. Bledsoe swiftly changes his per-sona when addressing his whitepatron. The Invisible Man describes hismasking: "As we [Dr. Bledsoe and I]approached a mirror Dr. Bledsoestopped and composed his angry facelike a sculptor, making it a bland mask,leaving orily the sparkle of his eyes tobetray the emotion that I had seen onlya moment before." Swallowing his bileas tbe Invisible Man bad sw^allowed bisblood. Dr. Bledsoe now adopts a toneof subservience and sycophancy. Hisvoice is full of "a strange grandmother-ly concem," and he "croon[s]" hisapologies to Mr. Norton, affecfing thebehavior of a faithful servant towardhis master. Even in his dress. Dr.


Bledsoe manages to "make himselflook humble" (102). No matter howelegant his "striped trousers" and"swallow-tail coat," he looks as if he iswearing a costume: "Somehow, histrousers inevitably bagged at the kneesand the coat slouched in the shoulders"(114-15). Like the black dandy popularin minstrel shows. Dr. Bledsoe is ablack man dressed in the sophisficatedatfire of a white man. But lest he seemthreatening, even subversive. Dr.Bledsoe makes sure the clothes don'tquite "fit." He pays homage to white-ness but does not presume to appropri-ate it. Instead, he treats his whitepatrons with ingratiating respect, let-ting "his teeth fiasb" as he grins frombehind his black mask.

The legacy of minstrelsy haunts theInvisible Man even after he leaves Dr.Bledsoe's college and heads north. Thehorror of the Battle Royal is re-enactedin the examination room of the factoryhospital, as the Invisible Man is againelectrocuted and again deprived ofvolition. He explains, "I wanted to beangry, murderously angry. But some-bow the pulse of current smashingthrough my body prevented me.Something had been disconnected"(237). Subjected to the experimentalwhims of his doctors, the Invisible Manis effecfively debilitated. He becomes apuppet, his limbs and his emofionscontrolled not by his own will but bythe will of his doctors. He becomes adancing Sambo doll, spasming on theexaminafion table like his fellow battleroyal parficipant on the electrified car-pet. One doctor exclaims, "Look, he'sdancing" and another observes, "Theyreally do have rhythm, don't they? Gethot, boy! Get hot!" (237). The InvisibleMan exists in a curious state of limbo,divorced from his nafive blackness, butdivorced, too, from his coerced"darky" blackness. He cries, "Wheredid my body end and the crystal andwhite world begin?" and observes, "Iseemed to exist in some other dimen-sion, utterly alone." Between the axisof white signifying and the axis of

black Signifyin(g), the Invisible Manfioats, and his physical disorientafionmirrors his linguisfic disorientafion(237-38).

Indeed, the Invisible Man flits fromone axis of significafion to another. Atone moment, he can be seen strugglingtoward the axis of standard white sig-nifying: "I heard a friendly voice, utter-ing familiar words to which I couldassign no meaning. I listened intensely,aware of tbe form and movement ofsentences and grasping the now subtlerhythmical differences between pro-gressions of sound that quesfioned andthose that made a statement. But sfilltheir meanings were lost in the vastwhiteness in which I myself was lost"(238). The Invisible Man descends oncemore into semiofic iUiteracy, recogniz-ing signifiers but fishing helplessly forthe appropriate signified in the abyssof "whiteness." At other times, howev-er, he reacts to the doctor's voice byincliriing towards the axis of blackSignifyin(g). Presented with the ques-fion, "WHO WAS YOUR MOTHER?"the Invisible Man "looked at [the doc-tor], feeling a quick dislike and think-ing, half in amusement, I don't play tbedozens. And how's your old ladytoday?" (241). Of course, tbe InvisibleMan does not voice bis response, justas be does not voice his irritated reac-fion to quesfions of Buckeye the Rabbit,an "old idenfity" he both recognizesand wishes to conceal. But he doesbegin to suspect he has been roped intoa "game" in which the doctors are"taking part." "I felt like a clown," theInvisible Man remarks—and so he is,inadvertently acting the minstrel, theSambo doll, the "darky" entertainer.Such awareness becomes an uncertain,but important, first step towards self-realizafion.

Yet the arfifacts of blackface arestubbornly durable, co-existing amongthe venerated arfifacts of postbellumemancipation and retaining a strangemagnefism despite the passage of near-ly a century. Surveying tbe possessions(or dispossessions) of the elderly black


couple evicted from their apartment,the Invisible Man spies the expectedtreasures, both symbolic and senfimen-tal: the "faded tintype of AbrahamLincoln," the magazine photograph ofa movie star, the "fragile paper, com-ing apart with age, written in black inkgrown yellow [that read] FREEPAPERS" (271). Yet scattered amongthese iconic arfifacts are also a "pair ofcrudely carved and pohshed bones,'knocking bones,' used in black-faceminstrelsy; the fiat ribs of a cow, a steeror sheep, flat bones that gave off asound, when struck, like heavy cas-tanets (had he been a minstrel?) or thewooden block of a set of drums" (271).Nearby, in a basket, are "a straighten-ing comb [and] switches of false hair,"and among the contents knocked froma drawer is a "card with a picture ofwhat looked like a white man in black-face seated in the door of a cabinstrumming a banjo beneatb a bar ofmusic and the lyric 'Going back to myold cabin home' " (272). "Nauseated,"the Invisible Man almost vomits,releasing the bile of so much injusficeand racial self-batred, but "it wouldn'tcome up, only a bitter spurt of gallfilled my mouth and splattered the oldfolk's possessions" (272). Tom betweenthe talismanic powers of one set ofemblems and another, the InvisibleMan's irmer equilibrium is radicallydestabilized. He does not yet under-stand his emofions, but somewhere,"around a comer into the dark, far-away-and-long-ago," he summons thememory of "linked verbal echoes,images, heard even when not listeningat home" (273). These discarded pos-sessions are Signifyin(g), vibratingwith "more mearung than there shouldhave been" and seizing the InvisibleMan with a "discomfort so far beyondtheir intrinsic meaning as objects"(273). Yet their effect on him is sfillghostly, more a presenfiment of semi-ofic doubleness than its actualization.

Ellison saves the moment of fuU-fiedged Signifyin(g) for Tod Clifton's

Sambo show, a performance theInvisible Man inifially takes at(black)face-value. The Invisible Manconflates Tod with his paper doll,describing him as "riding easily backand forth in his knees, fiexing his legswithout shifting his feet," in seemingimitafion of the "boimcing doll" (433)that he manipulates. Yet Tod Clifton isno minstrel. In ventriloquizing thevoice of his puppet. Tod is acting thetrickster, ostensibly spieling conven-tional blackface rhetoric but injecfinghis lyrics with devastating irony:

He's more than a toy, ladies and gen-tlemen, he's Sambo, the dancing doll, thetwentieth-century miracle.

Look at that rumba, that suzy-q, he'sSambo-Boogie,

Sambo-Woogie, you don't have to feedhim, he sleeps collapsed, he'll kill yourdepression

And your dispossession, he lives uponthe sunshine of your lordly smile

And only twenty-five cents, the broth-erly two bits of a dollar because he wantsme to eat.

It gives him pleasure to see me eat.(433; original italics)

Sambo re-enacts the antebellum mas-ter-slave relafionsbip, performing forhis white owner and supposedly thriv-ing under a system of benign neglect, aphrase that Ellison, in his 1981Introducfion to tbe novel, calls "dou-ble-dealing and insidious" and trans-lates as "Keep those Negroes run-ning—but in their same old place" (xv).Tod's inserfion of the phrase, "he'll killyour depression / And your disposses-sion" does not evoke white alienafionso much as the "dispossession," orevicfion, of the elderly black couple.And Tod's plea for "the brotherly twobits of a dollar" is a cunning pun onBrother Tobitt, tbe Invisible Man's col-league who is more of an adversarythan a tme "brother."

Tod's verbal pumning on the word"bits" does not end there. Sambo maynot need to be fed, but Tod does. The"bits" of money transmute into food,invoking the other Sambo figure whomthe Invisible Man encounters at Mary'shouse:


[I saw] the cast-iron figure of a veryblack, red-lipped and wide-mouthedNegro, whose white eyes stared up atme from the floor, his face an enor-mous grin, his single large black handheld palm up before his chest. It was abank, a piece of early Americana, thekind of bank which, if a coin is placedin the hand and a lever pressed uponthe back, will raise its arm and flip thecoin into the grinning mouth. (319)

"FEED ME," the Sambo bank hasemblazoned across its chest. "FEEDME," the Sambo doll appeals to hisaudience. Yet the Signifyin(g) contin-ues, for Tod is also making ahomonymic pun (antanaclasis) on theword bit, evoking its alternate meaningas a restraining device. Where refracto-ry slaves had been punished by wear-ing a bit, the present-day Sambo is"rewarded" by having his mouthstuffed with bits. Both "bits" are instru-ments of degradation, and both effec-tively silence their victims, the formerby rigging the black man's mouth shut,the latter by choking him with money.In fact, this episode is also Signifyin(g)on the battle royal, when the group ofhapless black victims must lunge aftergold coins and choke back their bloodin a brutal version of blackface perfor-mance.^

John F. Callahan argues that Tod's"ironic minstrel show" forces theInvisible Man to recognize himself as"the Brotherhood's ventriloquistdummy" (75). Like the Sambo doll, hehas been a mere mouthpiece forBrother Jack's rhetoric, a carefullytrained puppet who sermonizes theBrotherhood's beliefs but does not for-mulate them, himself. "You were nothired to think," Brother Jack snaps atthe Invisible Man. "For all of us, thecommittee does the thinking. For all ofus. And you were hired to talk" (469-70). Yet Tod thinks and talks, and in hissubversive minstrel act, he deliberatelymocks his former self. The Sambo doUis no different from the boy "dancing"on his back across the electrified carpetor the Invisible Man convulsing on theexamining table. None have volition;

all are seized, or "possessed," by anexternal force. In the case of the Sambodoll, however, the man manipulatingthe strings is black, not white. Studyingone of the dolls, the Invisible Man real-izes, "Clifton had been making it danceall the time and the black thread hadbeen invisible" (446). While critics havenoted that the thread, like the narrator,is "black" and "invisible," none haveadequately accounted for its symbol-ism.' Connected, as it is, between theSambo puppet and its trickster master,the thread could be seen as a metaphorfor the Invisible Man's unresolved, "in-between" status. Whether negotiatingtwo separate linguistic universes ortwo separate modes of "blackness," hefinds Mmself pulled in opposite direc-tions. Yet Ellison's chiastic inversion,through Tod Clifton, of the convention-al white puppef eer/black puppef rela-tionship proves that such archetypicalroles are overly simplistic and, more-over, ripe for revision: Tod Clifton, thepuppet master, is black, and his" 'darky' entertainer [puppet] iswhite." It is up to the Invisible Man,the "thread" suspended between thetwo poles, to determine the preemi-nence of one mode of blackness overanother. Indeed, if the relation betweenthe two poles is perpendicular, ratherthan parallel, and the Invisible Manforms a third axis perpendicular to theprevious two, he becomes the plane ofcommonality: the three-dimensionalhinge, rather than two-dimensionalpivot, on which chiastic transformationdepends.

In his 1981 introduction to InvisibleMan, written more than 30 years afterits original publication, Ellison revisitsthe issues of minstrelsy he had firstaddressed in "Change the Joke andSlip the Yoke":

Shortly before the spokesman forinvisibility intruded, I had seen, in anearby Vermont village, a posterannouncing the performance of a 'TomShow,' that forgotten term for black-face minstrel versions of Mrs. Stowe'sUncle Tom's Cabin. I had thought suchentertainment a thing of the past, but


there in a quiet northem village it wasalive and kicking . . . and that duringWorld War II! . . . But what is com-monly assumed to be past history isactually as much a part of the livingpresent as William Faulkner insisted.Furtive, implacable and tricky, itinspirits both the observer and thescene observed, artifacts, manners andatmosphere and it speaks even whenno one will too listen, (xvi)

The Invisible Man is thus summoned,like a spirit (or demon), from Ellison'sencounter with a minstrel poster andthe deep-seated racial stereotypes itrepresents. In fact, the Invisible Manbecomes the voice of "past history,"not so much embodying blackface min-strelsy as reminding us of its lingeringpresence. In "Change the Joke and Slipthe Yoke," Ellison had called minstrelshows a "ritual of exorcism" for thewhite audience, allowing them toindulge their fascination with black-ness while simultaneously purgingthemselves of their fears. With InvisibleMan, however, Ellison introduces a dif-ferent kind of ghost, a spirit that"speaks even when no one will listen"and who enters his white hosts in asturming reversal of black disposses-sion. "Who knows but that, on thelower frequencies, I speak for you?"the Invisible Man asks. Under tberadar, on a subsonic bandwidth, theInvisible Man becomes the ventrilo-quist and the white reader the puppet.Soon, however, he plans to emergefrom this "underground" register, for"even hibernations can be overdone"(581). He has already taken the firststep towards full disclosure, evendefining "hibernation" according to hisown, revised lexicon: "A hibernation isa covert preparation for a more overtaction" (13). The lilt of his definitionand its intemal rhyme mark the wordsas the Invisible Man's own. Moreover,his language predicts imminentredemption and resurrection, renewaland change.

To close, I retum to Douglass.Gazing at Douglass's portrait, theInvisible Man remarks, "How magical

it was that he had talked his way fromslavery to a government ministry, andso swiftly" (381). Douglass had man-aged to bamess the "magic" of writtenand spoken words, a magic that leadsto his spectacular rise in status."Perhaps," the Invisible Man wonders,"the sense of magic lay in the unex-pected transformations. 'You start Saul,and end up Paul,' my grandfather hadoften said." But Douglass has alsoembued "white written text" with a"black voice," a Signifyin(g) "trick" towbich the Invisible Man pays homagein his closing line. Thus, Douglassteaches the Invisible Man that words,and the artifacts they represent, are,themselves, loci of unexpected trans-formation. From the debris of thepast—the free papers, the old pho-tographs, the knocking bones, theSambo dolls—new meaning can yet bederived. Brother Tarp, for example,gives the Invisible Man a broken link tohold onto as "a keepsake andreminder," saying, "It's got a heap ofsignifying wrapped up in it and itmight help you remember wbat we'rereally fighting against. I don't think ofit in terms of two words, yes and no;but it signifies a heap more" (388). Anartifact of enslavement, previously rep-resenting white mastery {"yes or no"),now throbs witb added meaning.Slipping the link over bis knuckles, tbeInvisible Man "struck it sharply againstthe desk," and Brother Tarp chuckles," 'Now there's a way I never thoughtof using it" (389). A fetter transformsinto a weapon, an instrument of subju-gation transforms into an instrument ofliberation. This chiastic inversionSignifies on Douglass's appropriationof white literacy and language ("hehad talked his way from slavery to agovernment ministry"), but it may alsoSignify on anotber ignoble artifact ofblackface minstrelsy. "Hear thatsound?" The Invisible Man seems totaunt us. "Those aren't knocking-bones. Those are brass knuckles."


1. Lott does trace minstrelsy's lineage to the trickster figure in slave tales, as well as the harlequin Notesof the commedia dell'arte, the ciown of Engiish pantomime, and the burlesque tramp, among others.For the purposes of my discussions of Signifyin(g), however, I assume an Eilisonian skepticism of theminstrel's affinity to the trickster, focusing less on historical lineage and more on the divergent waysthat the minstrel and trickster represent and signify blackness.

2. See Spaulding and also Borshuk {passim).3. See also Shinn.4. Here, I use "ghosted" as a rough synonym for "superimposed." I coin this term to describe a pho-

tographic technique that superimposes (or "ghosts") one image over another. In more recent years,ghosting has described or referenced computer re-imaging or copying. The hard drive of a computermay be "ghosted," or superimposed, onto another media, to create a backup or "ghost" of the originalfiles.

5. See Gates's and Davis's introduction to The Slave's Narrative and O'Meally.6. Perhaps Ellison Is also punning on the phrase, "to eat crow" when composing the Sambo doll's

spiel. Such a phrase would accurately describe the humiliating aspect of minstrel performance, aswell as allude to the seminal blackface character of Jim Crow.

7. See Nadel and Callahan.

Borshuk, Michaei. Swinging the Vemacular. Jazz and African American Modernist Literature. New WorksYork: Routledge, 2006. Cited

Callahan, John F. 'Frequencies of Eloquence: The Performance and Composition of Invisible Man."New Essays on Invisible Man. Ed. Robert G. O'Meally. New York: Cambridge UP, 1988. 55-94.

Davis, Charles T., and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds. Introduction. The Slave's Narrative. New York:Oxford UP, 1985. xi-xxxiv.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative ofthe Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written byHimself. 1845. NewYork: Penguin, 1968.

—. "Gavitt's Original Ethiopian Serenaders." The North Star 29 June 1849. Rpt. in The Life ofFrederick Douglass. Ed. Philips. Foner. Vol 1. NewYork: International, 1950-75.141-42.

Ellison, Raiph. "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke." The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison. Ed.John F. Callahan. NewYork: Random House, 1995.

—. Invisible Man. 1952. NewYork: Random House, 1980.Gates, Jr., Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New

York: Oxford UP, 1989.Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford

UP, 1993.Merriam-Webster OnLine. 2006. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 13 Sept. 2006. <http://www.webster.com>.Morson, Gary Saul. Bakhtin: Essays and Dialogues on his Work. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.Nadel, Alan. Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1988.O'Meally, Robert G. "Frederick Douglass's 1845 Narrative." Afro-American Literature: the

Reconstruction of Instruction. Eds. Dexter Fisher and Robert Stepto. NewYork: MLA, 1979.192-211.

Oxford English Dictionary Online. 2006. Oxford UP. 13 Sept. 2006. <http://www.oed.com>.Shinn, Christopher A. "Masquerade, Magic, and Carnival in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man." African

American ReWew36 (Summer 2002): 243-61.Spaulding, A. Timothy. "Embracing Chaos in Narrative Form: the Bebop Aesthetic and Ralph

Ellison's Invisible Man." Callalloo 27.2 (2004): 481-501.Wardrop, Daneen. "While I am Writing: Webster's 1825 Spelling Book, the Ell, and Frederick

Douglass's Positioning of Language." African American Rewew32 (Winter 1998): 649-60.


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Lee, Julia Sun-Joo. "Knucklebones and Knocking-bones: The Accidental Trickster in Ellison's "Invisible Man.." African American Review 40.3 (2006): 461-473. Literary Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 1 Feb. 2011.

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