Prophesy Deliverance!
McCann, Dennis P.
Go tell it on the mountains PBOPHEST DELIVERANCE! AN AFRO-AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY CHRISTIANITY Cornel West Westminster, $11.95, 185 pp. Dennis P. MeConn IN THIS brief programmatic...
...Who one is and is not becomes painfully clear in serious conversation with, to use Antonio Gramsci's words, an organic intellectual...
...So I end up hoping that West will grow in his appreciation for the pluralism of American culture...
...Similarly, I come away encouraged to find a philosopher not embarrassed by the refreshing vitality of American pragmatism...
...Chapter Three returns to Afro-American history to construct a typology defining four traditions of response within the black community to white racism...
...Beyond its epistemological radicalism, however, pragmatism may yet suggest to West more penetrating insights into the "petit bourgeois" liberalism with which so many of his Afro-American brothers and sisters keep the faith...
...This typology allows West both to pinpoint the shortcomings of much of Afro-American culture, and to advocate more intensive effort within this community's "humanist tradition...
...Yet my gratitude is mixed with consternation, for the America that he describes consists almost exclusively of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture of a once dominant elite and the subversive memories and liberating hopes of the Afro-American masses...
...Chapter Four seeks to reconcile a form of Marxism with the theology of revolutionary Christianity...
...That, indeed, would be to Prophesy Deliverance!, not just for Afro-Americans but for all the rest of us...
...No other practical theologian advocating Marxist "social analysis" has been as forthright as West in acknowledging the problems that Marxism's own praxis poses for "revolutionary Christianity...
...Here West contends that the fatal synthesis of modem scientific method, Cartesian epistemology, and neoclassical aesthetics resulted in "a normative gaze" that inevitably despises all things authentically African...
...West explicitly repudiates the totalitarian forms of praxis that have dominated Marxism since Lenin's consolidation of power in the Soviet Union...
...Consequently, West's historical interpretation strikingly makes our common American ambivalence about European modernity the ultimate horizon in which to interpret both the vicissitudes of the mainstream culture, and the struggles of Afro-Americans to achieve dignity and freedom within it and without it...
...A hallmark of truly innovative thinkers is their ability to challenge the reader's own self-understanding...
...Equally explicit is his complaint against European intellectuals and bourgeois politicians whose commitment to Marxism remains in the realm of pure theory...
...Blacks are also implicated, however marginally, in "the anxiety-ridden provinciality" that characterizes America's relationship to European culture...
...Inspired equally by the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School and by Richard Rorty's rediscovery of the radicality of American pragmatism, West's sketch demonstrates the indispensable role of revisionist historiography for all Americans involved in critical reflection on praxis...
...Here Rorty's work of philosophical deconstruction provides the basis for arguing that "the initial structure of modern discourse in the West 'secretes' the idea of white supremacy...
...Dennis P. MeConn IN THIS brief programmatic sketch Cornel West has produced the most promising Afro-American liberation theology to date...
...The struggles of the rest of us — among others, the bewildering variety of immigrant tribes, Catholic and Jewish — perhaps aren't revolutionary enough to warrant his attention...
...20 December 1985: 709...
...Thus literary humanists, like Ralph Ellison, and socialists, like the young A. Philip Randolph and Rev...
...Only this form of Marxism, in West's view, is compatible with the authentic aspirations of Afro-Americans...
...Whether we agree or disagree with their thinking, these religious intellectuals command our respect and admiration for having enlarged our sense of the possibilities and limits defining practical theological discourse...
...Be that as it may, the final three chapters advance the discussion in ways that stand or fall on their own merits...
...So I end up hoping that West will join other American pragmatists like Reinhold Niebuhr in criticizing Marxism's outmoded dogmas of class struggle...
...By way of conclusion, Chapter Five redefines the situation of praxis by plotting a path for Afro-American revolutionary Christianity "between the Scylla of bourgeois liberalism and the Charybdis of right-wing Marxism.'' While West is evenhanded in rejecting both alternatives, his typology defining the internal conflicts within the Marxist tradition is the most insightful and useful clarification of that tradition yet developed within the literature of liberation theology...
...Instead, he commends the left-wing Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg's "Councilism" because it seeks to institutionalize the values of individuality and democracy even while empowering the oppressed for collective action...
...breaks new ground for AfroAmerican revolutionary Christianity in particular and practical theologies in general...
...With his theoretical sophistication, his deep roots in AfroAmerican culture, and above all, his forthrightness in criticizing the intellectual traditions of Marxism and Christianity, West takes his rightful place among the architects of liberation theology, bold innovators like Mary Daly and Juan Luis Segundo...
...West's distinctive contribution here is to postulate a "triple crisis of self-recognition" for black Americans, one that involves not just their alienation from the African homeland and the degradations of a slavery legitimated by racism...
...Despite the indisputable evidence of racism in the seminal works of modern science, West's genealogy appears to be implausible and, quite possibly, counterproductive...
...I come away from reading West grateful for having encountered a genuinely Christian patriot, still deeply committed to the revolutionary promise of America...
...Herbert Daughtry, are seen as pathfinders in the process of cultural transformation...
...Chapter One provides an interpretive framework for Afro-American history...
...On the one hand, there are simpler explanations of racism available, such as a massive repression of guilt by Christian slave-owners, Protestants and Catholics alike, whose pious selfCommonweal: 708 righteousness depended on justifying the blatantly intolerable evils of modern slavery...
...Each of the chapters in Prophesy Deliverance...
...Chapter Two,' 'A Genealogy of Modern Racism," is equally provocative, if not equally convincing...
...Though the synthesis as argued here remains too facile and disarming to convince those who are not already favorable to it, West's insistence that "Christianity and Marxism are the most vulgarized, distorted traditions in the modern world'' raises hopes that in his hands their confrontation will be unflinchingly selfcritical as well as liberating in intent...
...on the other hand, by identifying white supremacy with the eros of modern scientific understanding, West unwittingly implies that Afro-American culture is inferior when examined according to this standard of judgment...
Vol. 112 • December 1985 • No. 22
