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A “Savage Mode”: The Transmedial Narratology of African American Protest

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Hall C.

Facta Ficta. Journal of Theory, Narrative & Media

2018

vol. 2

issue 2

155-172

This article explores narrative in African American protest art by examining Richard Wright’s 1940 novel Native Son, alongside 21 Savage (Shayaa Abraham-Joseph) and Metro Boomin’s 2016 rap album Savage Mode. I open with a discussion of Native Son as a project of protest and with James Baldwin’s criticism of the novel, and of protest fiction at large. Centring Baldwin’s critique, this article explores the violence and horror of the narrative worlds of Wright’s Bigger Thomas and Abraham-Joseph’s 21 Savage, in an effort to discover if these works are capable of complicating Baldwin’s claims and expanding notions of what protest is and how it operates. By applying Marie-Laure Ryan’s concept of storyworlds, and the attendant “principle of minimal departure,” the article lays out a narratology of protest. The social protest of these works, I find, is rendered uniquely efficacious by the violence that takes place within their storyworlds, violence that operates as a visceral, unignorable force urging real-world change. Because of its impact on the reader or listener, violence and discomfort within these narratives directs that user toward extra-narrative action. In building on the transmedial approach that Ryan encourages, and examining Savage Mode as a contemporary work of protest that shares a narrative technique with Native Son, the article also discusses some recent engagements with rap music in traditional scholarship and popular writing. Throughout, I put forth the argument that both Savage Mode and Native Son function as powerful works of protest against real-world conditions, protests that operate via narratives that empathically involve their users in violent storyworlds. Abraham-Joseph’s protest, then, furthers Wright’s, as both are works that operate in a “savage” narratological “mode”-one of intense violence and discomfort which, read as protest, has the capacity to prompt an activist response in the user.

Between lawfulness and lawlessness: The conceptual boundary between the system and the individual in Richard Wright’s Native Son

94%

Stiepanow J.

Beyond Philology: An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching

2017

issue 14/2

121-138

This paper explores the impact of the conceptual boundary created by the notions of lawfulness and lawlessness on the individual. Law in Western culture is a goal-oriented instrument of state. The legal limits established in legislative acts and judicial decisions delineate a territory for potential action. As a normative domain, law guides human conduct in the process of individual practical reasoning. In states where codes and statutes go against natural human inclinations, individuals view the conceptual boundary of law as a challenge, which leads to conflicts between the system and the individual. I analyze such a conflict in the personal narrative of Bigger Thomas, the main protagonist in Richard Wright’s Native Son. The growing tension caused by the discriminatory system of Jim Crow laws ends in the character crossing legal- and custom-determined boundaries.

Artykuł dotyczy zagadnienia metaforycznej granicy, jaka tworzy się między pojęciami czynu zgodnego z prawem a czynu zabronionego. Prawo w kulturze zachodniej jest instrumentem władzy nastawionym na osiągnięcie celu. Ograniczenia ustanowione w czynnościach legislacyjnych lub przez wykładnię przepisów prawa tworzą terytorium do potencjalnego działania. Jako domena normatywna prawo kieruje ludzkim zachowaniem poprzez proces praktycznego rozumowania. W systemach, w których prawo zostało ustanowione w sprzeczności z prawem naturalnym, ta metaforyczna granica staje się wyzwaniem dla jednostki i prowadzi do jej konfliktu z państwem. Artykuł zgłębia ten konflikt z punktu widzenia osobistej narracji Biggera Thomasa, głównego bohatera powieści Richarda Wrighta pt. Native Son. Rosnące napięcie powodowane przez dyskryminacyjny system praw Jima Crowa prowadzi do tego, że Bigger przekracza granice wyznaczone przez amerykańskie prawo i obyczaje.

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1 Beyond Philology: An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching

1 Facta Ficta. Journal of Theory, Narrative & Media

1 Hall C.

1 Stiepanow J.

1 2018

1 2017

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A “Savage Mode”: The Transmedial Narratology of African American Protest

Between lawfulness and lawlessness: The conceptual boundary between the system and the individual in Richard Wright’s Native Son