Читать книгу Constructing the Self. Essays on Southern Life-Writing онлайн

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The “political” impetus of African American life-writing is also at the core of Robert H. Brinkmeyer’s essay, in which he discusses Booker T. Washington’s subversive use of his autobiographical writings—Up from Slavery and Working with the Hands—as metaphorical levers to create social change. Brinkmeyer explores “how Washington constructed himself” and at the same time sought “to construct a more racially tolerant South” through his life narratives, which function as tools for change. Challenging the traditional view of Washington’s ideas as accommodationist and reactionary, Brinkmeyer argues that Washington’s philosophy, deeply influenced by Benjamin Franklin’s canonical Autobiography and his notion of the self-made man, is more complex than has usually been acknowledged. Brinkmeyer focuses on Washington’s promotion of “education and meaningful labor” in his life-writings, which “simultaneously [engage] head, heart, and hand” or “intelligence, morality, and artisanship.” Brinkmeyer understands “this three-way engagement” as “the foundation of Washington’s most far-reaching and subversive tactic for dismantling the racist structures of southern society.” Thus Washington’s impulse to write, according to Brinkmeyer, emerges from his conviction that a new appreciation of manual work should allow him to produce a social change, remake southern attitudes towards blacks, and create a new order. The “metaphor of construction” he frequently uses and his educational philosophy were in line with the proposals of the followers of the Arts and Crafts Movement, who promoted a new social and economic order based on the work of craftsmen. Brinkmeyer contends that, even if not obvious at first, Washington’s theories on the education of African Americans are charged with subversiveness and disruptive power.