Chapter three is Gates’s remarkable summary and analysis of earlier studies of black signifying. That is, a system of wordplay and formal performance (rhetoric) becomes the goal or result of signification, rather than a system of delivering “meaning” (semantics). Black people vacated this signifier, then-incredibly-substituted as its content a signified that stands for the system of rhetorical strategies peculiar to their own vernacular tradition. We are witnessing here a profound disruption at the level of the signifier, precisely because of the relationship of identity that obtains between the two apparently equivalent terms. (Good opportunity to clarify your understanding and use of terms such as rhetoric, hermeneutic, semantics, trope, etc.) 25-28, 38-40) stands alongside Derrida’s discussion in much of Of Grammatology as an attempt to account for the dialectical relationship between language and thought.Ĭhapter two, one of the most often anthologized portions of the book, examines “the carefully structured system of rhetoric” in African-American letters, rather than “an indigenous black hermeutical principle” itself. In this way, for example, Gates’s description of the essentially divine injunction to recognize the form as much as content of discourse (see esp. Comparison, collaboration, or dialogue with Western criticism is therefore enabled, without recourse to a prior Western system of critique. Gates demonstrates that while many of the features of the black vernacular tradition will clearly share, reflect, and/or rename features familiar to traditional Western criticism, these features are also directly linked to African mythology.

In chapter one, Gates traces the connection between African-American rhetorical systems and African mythology. His chapters not only offer ideas that are interesting “in themselves,” but a pedagogical performance that illustrates where the ideas come from, who has been involved in their circulation, and why they are historically and institutionally (as well as intellectually) important. Gates, for example, argues a theory that demands close attention to literary history and anthropology as well as individual texts, and he follows through with the requisite scholarship. As we know, even “theory texts” are narratives, and it’s always important to understand (as clearly as possible) a critic’s assumptions and intentions. Notice the scope, shape, and character of this book. “If anything, my desire here has been to demystify the curious notion that theory is the province of the Western tradition.” (xx) The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary theory.

Gates the signifying monkey