/lit/ - Literature

I am thinking of race as the global spirit which animates particular modes of being in a people and distinguishes their homogeny with one another by vague geographical boarders. It may exist in a manner similar to the platonic form or jungian archetype, producing various material phenomena representative of its influence.These material would therefore be symbolic in nature, being that they allude to a psychic dimension of existence and significance upon apprehension. Such material may be found in the arts, political attitudes, intellectual temperaments, spiritual dispositions, and other aspects of humanity. We do not always realize this in our daily experience of it, but when we say things like “he acts so black”, or “jazz is an expression of blackness” or “this painting has such a French quality”, we may not simply be referring to the cultural distinctions and social constructs surrounding these ideas, but the reality of an underlying force which necessitates that these people are characterized as such nature and not another, that there is a reason or blueprint for their coding which metaphysically illustrates their manner of being, an invisible painter of the unconscious.

Those with similar theories, such as the followers of Nation of Islam and 5-Percenters who believe in a black messianic spiritual destiny, or the Nazi occultists with Aryan supremacy, have generally only furthered these ideas as a means to self-aggrandizement or political propaganda. Most have not attempted to consider them with objectivity, but I would like to do so, and particularly with the “black race” and black Americans, as a means to discover the ontological condition of “blackness” and what this implies for people of the African diaspora. I believe that this knowledge is part of what allows one to understand the psychic trajectories of their people, their moments of Spirit, essentially, what the “myth” of one’s people is (although the definition of a “people” here is hazy due to the ambiguity of “racial” boundaries and distinctions like ethnicity and nationality).