Page 132 - Introducing Cultural Studies
P. 132
Afro-American critics, Gates
suggests, should not shy away from
literary theory, but rather translate it into
the black idiom, renaming principles of criticism
where appropriate. They must evolve indigenous
black principles of criticism and apply these to explicate
their own texts.
Afro-American criticism has evolved through four phases.
1. The Black Aesthetic which linked Black literature and the struggle
for Black Power and repudiated white literary critical methods.
2. Repetition and Imitation which amounted to unreflective
mimicry of European and American theories.
3. Repetition and Difference which used
contemporary criticism to read Black texts,
but critiqued the theory implicitly.
4. And finally, Synthesis: a theory
self-contained, yet linked by analogy
to other theories.
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