Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking

Abstract

In Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking, Cord J. Whitaker argues that contemporary ideologies of race developed through a medieval tradition of metaphors that associated blackness with sinfulness, placing it in opposition to whiteness and purity. Black metaphors, in the literature of the Middle Ages, reveal a foundational concept of racial division that has influenced the way contemporary culture understands both blackness and whiteness. For rhetorical scholars, Whitaker’s positioning of metaphors as paramount in shaping culture is nearly as important as Whitaker’s overall argument. For Whitaker, these master tropes possess the power to influence ideology over time. To demonstrate this influence, he emphasizes the power of metaphors in three ways. First, Whitaker offers a new framework to discuss binary oppositions utilizing a metaphor: rhetorical mirage. Second, he backdates the timeline of racial ideologies based on early metaphor use. Finally, he marries literature and rhetoric to reveal the significance of medieval metaphors. Whitaker’s emphasis on the constitutive power of metaphors ultimately invigorates the rhetorical canon of style.Whitaker shapes his argument using the metaphor of rhetorical mirage, and with this trope, he offers an innovative lens through which to study binary oppositions. In the physical realm, a mirage appears because of material conditions, but the understanding of it lies in the imagination and is based on interpretation. Incorporating the work of Michelle R. Warren, Whitaker uses the phrase “shimmering philology” to examine the “space between material reality, imagination, and signification” (4). The rhetorical mirage, then, is “the visual mirage’s linguistic extension” where meaning is constructed out of materiality and imagination (6). The shimmer associated with this mirage is that which is “alternately and continually present and non-present,” and in a black-white binary, the shimmer is what “allows whiteness to be invisible sometimes and visible at others” (4–5). With the founding metaphor of rhetorical mirage and its accompanying shimmer, Whitaker examines how blackness and whiteness appear in several medieval works – including King of Tars, Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale, and Mandeville’s Travels – and in the rhetorical concepts of metaphor and enthymeme. Rhetorical mirages highlight not only the hazy space between binaries, but also the argumentative force of the ideologies embedded in binaries that may not be immediately recognizable – the ideologies that are only sometimes visible as a shimmer. Both mirage and shimmer, Whitaker argues, are present in the black metaphors implemented by medieval writers, and they are the elements that allow those metaphors to shape cultural ideas of race.Additionally, Whitaker argues that race-thinking dates back further than previously assumed, a claim that he makes based on the metaphors of blackness and whiteness in medieval literature. He contends that the Middle Ages have previously been classed as pre-racial and without a power system dependent upon racial biases. Prior understandings of the era state that modern race concerns began later in history with the Enlightenment (13). However, Whitaker argues that the metaphors of the Middle Ages reveal the construction of modern racial thinking in its earliest stages; it is in this time period, he notes, that contemporary concepts of race began to solidify, particularly the association of the term black with sinfulness and depravity. To support this claim, he traces metaphors of blackness through several texts of the Middle Ages, and his meticulous analysis of metaphors of color in this time period illuminate developing racial thinking that evolved into modern-day racism. For Whitaker, metaphors are powerful; black metaphors, in particular, did not merely function as tropes medieval society lived by, but they possessed the ability to influence racial ideology well into the future.Whitaker’s analysis brings together rhetorical concepts and literary study to position metaphors as influential in culture and race relations. He begins with situating metaphor within classical rhetorical treatises, such as the Ad Herennium, which defines metaphor as two terms expressing similitude (thereby giving one term multiple definitions). Whitaker argues that metaphors are “polysemous” because they call forth multiple ideas, and when metaphor functions as part of a binary (such as the black metaphor), even more definitions are possible since the elements of the binary rely on their opposition to create meaning (30). Moving beyond the metaphor to the enthymeme, Whitaker further links literature and rhetoric in the sixth chapter “Enthymematic Interpretation: Mandeville and Racial Rhetorical Mirage,” in which he analyzes the unstated assumptions of enthymemes in medieval literature to reveal how black metaphors and “racial logic” are reliant on a flawed unstated assumption that black is analogous to sinfulness or depravity (155). The rhetorical theories of metaphor and enthymeme provide Whitaker with a foundation for his literary analysis and ultimately, for his argument that medieval racial metaphors have shaped current racial thinking. Whitaker does fine work bringing the fields of literature and rhetoric together and negotiating the rhetorical movements of medieval literary works through acute analysis of both metaphoric expression and enthymematic logic.In using the metaphors of rhetorical mirage to understand medieval metaphors of blackness, in backdating racial thinking through an examination of metaphor use, and in implementing metaphors to link rhetoric and literature, Whitaker illuminates the importance of rhetorical stylistics, the canon in which metaphor is typically categorized. In the 1980s, some rhetoricians moved away from interest in stylistic analysis, linking it to the formalism associated with current-traditional rhetoric and deeming it to be merely surface-level rhetoric. However, the study of rhetorical style has more recently been regaining traction in the field, and Whitaker’s Black Metaphors provides an interesting historical perspective on stylistics that works not only to revitalize the canon, but also to situate style as a crucial source of meaning-making. Specifically, he merges grammar and rhetoric as nearly one in the same (as understood in the medieval period). By blurring this distinction, Whitaker places the minute nuances of grammatical style alongside broader concepts of argumentation, giving style a place of significance in rhetorical analysis. The small details of medieval metaphoric choice that Whitaker analyzes in the era’s literature reveal a larger social argument that privileges associations to whiteness and disparages associations to blackness. That is, word choices – particularly the metaphors writers choose – are style-level rhetorical moves that reveal and reinforce fundamental ideologies.Although he relies on the rhetorical tradition and an elevation of stylistics to craft his argument, Whitaker’s target audience is not necessarily scholars of rhetoric; instead, his text speaks most expressly to literary medievalists. Yet, Black Metaphors grabs the attention of rhetoricians and sparks curiosity about how his argument could influence research in rhetoric. Rhetorical scholars may find themselves wanting to study further the connection between enthymemes and race in argumentation (perhaps leaning on Matthew Jackson’s “The Enthymematic Hegemony of Whiteness: The Enthymeme as Antiracist Rhetorical Strategy” or Krista Ratcliffe’s “In Search of the Unstated: The Enthymeme and/of Whiteness”). Or rhetorical theorists might seek to make connections between rhetorical shimmer and Derrida’s deconstruction. In the context of rhetorical research, Black Metaphors can serve as a catalyst for new ideas about contemporary race theories, medieval culture, and the importance of metaphors.Overall, Whitaker’s book provides a compelling reading of medieval literature that resonates strongly with rhetorical scholarship. His prose is direct and his argument is enjoyable – it made me think, draw connections, and consider new concepts (like a rhetorical mirage). I found myself returning to his words long after I finished the book. I would recommend Black Metaphors to scholars seeking to bridge a gap between literary and rhetorical studies, as it is a prime example of the two fields coming together to craft new knowledge. For those rhetoricians whose interests lie in the Middle Ages or in critical race theory, Whitaker’s research expands understanding of medieval culture and contemporary race relations. Finally, rhetorical theorists may be especially drawn to the chapter “Separate and Together: Strife, Contrariety, and the Lords and Bondsmen of Julian of Norwich, G. W. F. Hegel, and W. E. B. Du Bois,” where Whitaker brings these three scholars into unique conversation with each other about social hierarchies and strife. Whitaker’s Black Metaphors proves to be an insightful contribution to rhetorical studies of the medieval era, of stylistics, and of today’s racial tensions.

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