THE SIGNIFYING MONKEY A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism Henry Louis Gates, Jr. IRVINE SULLIVAN INGRAM LIBRARY WEST GEORGIA COLLEGE CARROLLTON, GEORGIA New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1988The Siping Monkey andthe Language of Sigyin(g) 45 ‘ack linguistic sia, “Signifcatin,” tothe standard English sgn, “sgnion- tion” This level of conceptual iicuty stems fomindee, sems to have ‘een intentionally inserbed withthe selection ofthe signier "Signfon- ton” to represent a concept remarkably distinct from hat concept repre tented by the standard English signi, “signification.” For the standard En fish word it a homonym ofthe Afro-American vernacular word. Aad, tO ‘The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g) Eompound the dizziness and the giddiness that we must experience in the ‘ertpinous movement between these two “identi” signer, there two hom- Rhetorical Difference and the Orders of Meaning ‘ayes have eveything to do wih each oter and hen agai, eoltely pothing* Some of the best done cea beste dace {ication of changes in the signification of words, and more especially the rela- Soe a ene eer ee Feeley are tape one onient cetera ae ee es oe oo eee ‘And they ake me ght at Christas Tey bitches, would ru? Tid, ask your Mama Tangston Hughes 1 LE EsuBleghara stands atthe central fgure of the Ifa system of interpret tion, then his Afro-American relative, the Signifying Monkey, stds se the theovcal principe in Afro-American vermacuar discourse. Whereas my com ‘em in Chapter I was With the elaboration ofan indigenows black hermenet ical principle, my concern in this chaper is to define a carefully stevtured system of tetri, traditional Afro-American figures of igication, and then / ‘0 show how a carious figure becomes te rope of Iierary revision isl. My ‘movement, then, from hetmeneutics to rhetoric and terantics, only 0 re \ tam te hermeneutics once aps, Thinking about the bldck concep of Signifying) is «bit ike stumbling ‘unaware into a hall of misrors: the sign iself appears to be doubled, tthe very least, and (fe)doubled upon ever closer examination. ti not the sgn ‘itself, however, which has muliplied. 1f onentation prevails over madacs, ‘we soon realize that only the sigur as been doubled and (re) doubled, 2 Siguier in this istance thats sient, = "Sound-image" a Sausure defines the ‘ignfr, but a "sound-image” san the sound, The dificolty that we expe fence whea thioking about the nature ofthe visual (Fe)doubling at work in 8 Ill of mirrors i analogous tothe dificlty we shall encounter in relating hethe vel of the sig, Derrida's neclogism, “ierace” in its relation to "Giference,” i a marvelous example of apsominato, or epeition of word with an aleration af both one letter and a sound, Inthe ever manner, Det fdas term resists reduction to ele-identical meaning. The coriously sue [ended relationship betweea the French vers to dir and lo defer bath de. fines Derridas revision of Saussure's notion of language as a relation of dilerenes and embodies his revision which “in its own unstable meaning Ts} graphic example of the proces at work” have encountered great culty in rtving at sutaly similar gesture, have decided to sinity the dtlerence between these wo signifies by writing the black signer i upper case (*Signlication”) and the white signer in omer case signification”). Similarly, Ihave selected to wit the black term ith a bracketed fil g (Sigafyin(g)") and the whit erm as "sgnifying” ‘The bracketed g enables me to connote the fact that this Word is, more offen than not, spoken by black people without the final a “iain” This a- Dburary and iiosyneratic convention alsa enables ate to recall the fact that ‘whatever historical community of Afo-American coined his usage did so in the vernacular as spoken in contradtinction to the Irate writen wsages of the standard English “shadowed” term. The bracketed of aurlly erased g, lie the giseourse of black English and dialect poetry general, stds asthe trace of black diference ina remarkably sopbistated and fascinating (e)aa- ing sual graphically in evidence ere, Peshaps replacing with «visual sign the erase in the black vernacular shal like Deri’ logis, serve bth to avoid confusion andthe redcton ofthese two distin sts of homonyms to a false identity and to stand as the sgn of a (black) Signifying) ifer- fence isell. The absent gi figure for the Sinifyin(g) bik ference, [Let me attempt to account forthe completes of th (re)naming ritual, which apparently took place anonymously and unrecorded in antebellum ‘America, Some back gens ora community of wity and sensitive speakers tempted the signer “sgnicaion” of its received concepts and filled this ‘empty signer with their own concepts. By doing so, by sopplanting the re- {sted standard English concept assoiated by (white) conenon with tis Particular sigaifer they (un)witingly disrupted the natu of the sign = sg- riled signer equation sll bracket witingly with x negation precisely because origins are always oxzasons for speculation. Neves, F tend 1 think, or T wish to believe, thet this guetils etion occured intentionally on this term, beeause ofthe very concept with which iti sociated in standard English *Signifcation,” in standard English, denotes the mearing hat aterm con- veys, os ntended to convey Is fundamental term inthe standard Boe ssh semantic order. Since Saussure, atleast the thee terms signification, Sige, sgnfied have been fundamental to Our thinking about general li ulti: and, of ate, about criticism specially. These neologisms in the 4eademiceritcal community sre homonyms of terms in he Back vernacular Itadtion pethaps two centuries ol! By supplanting the recived terms a te sociated concept, the black vernacular tration eested& homonyiae pun of the prfoundest sor thereby marking it sense of diference from the fest of the Eoglish community of speaker. Their complex act of language Signfes ‘pon both formal language te and its conventions, conventions established, st leas ofall, by middle-class white people "Tis polticalffensive could have been mounted against all sorts of san- dnd English term—and, indeed, it was. am thinking here of terms suchas down, nigger, baby, and cool, which sobbishly tend to be writen about as “alot” words of “slang” There are scores of such revised words. But to revise the term signification isto select aterm the process of mesning-restion and is represeata ould have been so dramatic, or 9 meaningful. We are witnessing here npro- found diseuption atthe lovl ofthe sine, precisely because of the relation. ‘hip of identity that obtains between the two apparently equivalent terme "Ths disturbance, of course, hs been effected atthe level ofthe concep, corte signified. How accidental, unconscious, or unintentional (or anyother ‘hde-word substitution forthe absence of reason) could such a briliant ch Tenge at the semantic level be? To revise the reeived ign (quotient) ie counted for inthe relation represented by sgnfed/siife at is ost ap- parently denotative level isto eitguethe nature of (white) meaning sll, £0 hallnge through a Titerl erique ofthe sign the meaning of meaning. What {is/do black peope signify in 4 Society a Which they weee intentionally ine troduced a the subjugated, arth enslaved cipher? Nothing onthe = axl of ‘hie sguiication, and everything onthe ais of blackness* Tis not slclent merely to reves that lack people colonized white sign A level of meta-cscourse i at work inthis process. I the sigafier sands ‘opted bythe silt n concepts denoted nd connote, then we are engaged tt the level of meaaing fel 2 the semantic Tepste, Black people vacated this signifier, then-inereibly subsite as is concept a signed that tands forthe system of retoriel strategies peculiar to their own vernacul Uae dion. Rhetorie, then, has supplanted femans inthis most Iteral meta ‘ononttionwitin the stucture ofthe sgn. Some historical black comm nity of speakers most certainly struck directly atthe heart af the mater, 02 the ground of the referent ise, thereby demonstrating that even Cor espe= ‘inly) the concepts signed by the signifier are themselves arbitrary. By a8 ‘Sco wll some historically nameless community of remarkably self-conscious ‘peskers of English defined their ontological status as one of profound ifer- face vise the rest of society. What's more, they undertook this act of ‘elfdefinton, implicit in a (re) taming rial, within the process of signif ‘ion that the English langage had inseribed for itll. Conary to an aser- tion that Saussure makes in his Course, “he masses” di indeed “have [a] ‘oes the mater” and replaced the rgn “chosen by language." We shall re turn to Sauwute’s discussion of the “Inumutabiity and Muabiity of the ‘Sip beiow* ‘Before critiquing Saussure’s discussion of signification, however, perhaps y7