44 pages • 1 hour read
Ishmael ReedMumbo Jumbo
Ishmael ReedFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1972A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Tradition Versus Progress
Papa LaBas, a houngan in the Voodoo tradition, clings to mystical practices in his efforts to heal his community. However, with the onset of the 1920s and the Harlem Renaissance, there is a youth movement to modernize the struggle for Black advancement. Earline tells LaBas that the community “need[s] scientists and engineers, [it] need[s] lawyers” (26).
As the novel progresses, LaBas becomes more introspective about his resistance to modernization. By Chapter 12, he has grown “conscious of the contemporary” (49). Much later he turns inward and wonders, “Perhaps I have been insular […] limiting myself to a Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral, not allowing myself to witness the popular manifestations of The Work” (139). By the end of the novel, at age 100, he has embraced the radical change brought forth by the Black Power movement of the early 1970s.
Afrofuturism as an Alternative Perspective
According to the Oxford University Press, “Afrofuturism comprises cultural production and scholarly thought […] that imagine greater justice and a freer expression of black subjectivity in the future or in alternative places, times, or realities” (Oxford Bibliographies, August 2019). Throughout Mumbo Jumbo, the author offers an Afrocentric historical account as an alternative to the dominant Eurocentric perspective. In doing so, the story traverses vast expanses of time and suspends temporal constraints. This aligns with techniques used in science fiction, which is a genre often associated with Afrofuturism.
Postmodernism and Intertextuality
While there is no consensus on what exactly constitutes postmodern literature, there are some elements that books deemed “postmodern” seem to share. Three of these elements present in Mumbo Jumbo are metafiction, intertextuality, and temporal distortion.
There are times when the author uses the first person to suddenly insert himself into the text. For example, he states, “The author Mark Sullivan paints a picture I would imagine to be prolific with shadows, a waning witch moon covered with shiny oil, 1 dark figure darting through a deserted street” (146). In this passage, Reed employs a meta technique by bringing attention to his own presence in the story, thus distorting the boundary between author and narrator.
The author incorporates intertextuality by regularly interweaving other works into the novel, and even creating a partial bibliography. Also, the use of photographs, charts, and drawings creates a mixed-media text that broadens the scope of interpretation.
One example that temporal constraints are abandoned is Von Vampton, who is hundreds of years old. This allows the author to use a single character to draw direct connections between 12th-century Knights Templar and the present-day oppression of Black people, especially via the Wallflower Order of the Atonist Path.
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