French thinker Michel Foucault delineated the intricate relationship(s) existing between the production of various systems of knowledge (i.e., discourses) and the production of power within a social framework. According to Foucault, each society exerts different rules and regulations that would ‘lawfully’ police and discipline the ‘undesired’ discourses, thus maintaining its hold on power. Those who are considered a viable threat to the dominant discourse and its tight grip on social structures may be dismissed as ‘mad’, ‘non-conforming’, to say the least. Classifying non-conforming individuals as mad eases the ‘burden’ of ‘dealing with them’; they could be almost surgically removed from the cultural unconscious, leaving a space which is momentarily filled up by subjects that have been instructed to conform to the norms and ideals of the dominant discourse. However, even in a ‘well-rounded’ oppressive social framework there is a push by the marginalized ‘mad subjects’ to re-claim/re-map this space which has been taken away from them. Reading Amiri Baraka’s (LeRoi Jones’) Dutchman (1964), we are confronted with one such revolutionary artistic attempt at re-defining one’s cultural image.
The play, which is set in a mystical New York subway car, revolves around the conversation banter between a young black man, Clay, and an enticing young white woman going by the name of Lula. Clay has been ‘modeled’ by the discourse of white society, which, in turn, has ‘trained’ him to regard ‘innocent’ strangers with politeness and courtesy even when their behavior disrupts the conformity of sophisticated public demeanor. He has been taught to accept, passively, the verbal abuse of Lula’s speech and in a way she has been ‘murdering’ him with it, long before she draws her knife inside his bellows. There is, however, a moment of violent break-through which surprises both Clay and Lula, as he sheds his controlled, proper self and responds to her provocations. He tells Lula that only murder would make the repressed culture he belongs to sane. But then again, he does not venture into this liberalizing practice, since such a violent task is beyond his social education. He fails to put up a struggle because he has been conditioned to turn the other cheek. Therefore, his fatal end is a mere result of his impassivity as a tragic character caught up in a web of misfortunate circumstances.
On the other hand, I have been wondering about Baraka’s rather complex use of “the Flying Dutchman” theme and how it relates to the casting of Clay’s character as a tragic man.
If we examine Clay and Lula as character sketches for a thought-provoking allegory, we only come half way to understanding the symbolical ambiguity of their relationship. Baraka’s subway car and its ‘crew’ (during the first part of the play the car is virtually empty, save for the two main characters, but with the passage of time, other passengers file in) provide the needed space and audience for Clay and Lula’s ritualistic confrontation. Both the car and its wraithlike cargo acquiesce the impossibility of redeeming love (the Wagnerian version of the myth), and the inexorableness of racial hate and reprisal as they inevitably lead to murder. In that respect, it is Clay rather than Lula who fills the symbolic part of the doomed ship’s captain; as a black man living under white culture’s rules and regulations, Clay can ‘lift the curse’ of his abode only by offering himself as ‘game’. He has been instructed by the dominant society all throughout his life so it is only ‘fair’ that he gives in, scarifying his own identity on the pyre of a rationalistic culture. Baraka’s conclusion sees Clay’s fatal end as an essential release from the vicious cycle of his cursed existence, allowing Lula enough space to hunt for her next ‘project’. Hence, Baraka’s “dutchman” is ripped apart from the mendaciousness of real-life American social existence as it simultaneously opens up a space for its much needed (and long-overdue) socially conscious relegation.
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