Reviewed by:

• John Edgar Wideman and Modernity: A Critical Dialogue by Michel Feith
• Robert Butler

Since the appearance of A Glance Away in 1967, John Edgar Wideman has published over twenty important books of both fiction and nonfiction. Scholarly interest in his work has remained strong, particularly in recent years, as is evidenced by the appearance of four important book-length studies since 2010. The latest of these books, Michel Feith's John Edgar Wideman and Modernity: A Critical Dialogue, by submitting Wideman's work to a meticulous critical and cultural analysis, will draw added attention to the fact that Wideman is a major American writer who has charted new directions in African American literature with his bold fictional experiments and his unique vision of Black experience.

Thematically rather than chronologically organized, Feith's book focuses intensively on Wideman's lucid critiques of certain aspects of modernity that date back to the rise of capitalism, industrialism, and colonialism, and stresses their rootedness in various structures of racial oppression. Feith argues persuasively that Wideman's [End Page 260] response to modernism is kaleidoscopic, providing multiple perspectives that "decenter" narrative (244) and give voice to marginalized people. Viewed from one angle, modernism provides a "harmonious, organized universe ruled by universal, mathematical laws" (207) that promise progress and justice. But when Wideman's kaleidoscopic vision tips and is viewed from "a minority perspective," it reveals "a nightmarish culture of death" (23). Modern rationalism, far from releasing humanity from ignorance and superstition, has created structures of social and political oppression, beginning with slavery and later developing into colonial dominance and ghettoization.

Seen from this perspective, "Prison becomes a metaphor for modernity as a whole" (46); Feith persuasively argues from this view that "a continuous thread in Wideman's œuvre" (69) is an intensive scrutiny on how literal and metaphoric prisons function as a way of defining a carceral society. Wideman, like Michel Foucault, envisions the modern prison system as originating with the humanitarian project created by the Philadelphia Quakers, whose progressive reform deteriorated quickly into a brutal means of social control and political repression. Feith's brilliant analysis of Brothers and Keepers discusses Wideman's treatment not only of his brother's unjustly prolonged incarceration but also his vision of prison as "a total institution" (46), which serves as a model of the modern state that is centered in "an enclosed, formally administered life" (47), a "rational plan" (48) designed by a dominant group to control marginalized people. (In this sense, Feith claims that Brothers and Keepers, published in 1984, prefigures Michelle Alexander's landmark 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.)

Feith's highly original structural analysis of The Cattle Killing explores another central metaphor in Wideman's books: disease. Wideman's kaleidoscopic imagination is a critical instrument also in this work, as he triangulates Philadelphia during the 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic, South Africa during its era of slavery, and the contemporary United States. Challenging the modern faith in linear time's unerring ability to produce a steady development of "progress," Wideman draws revealing parallels between a disease devastating eighteenth-century Philadelphia, a "plague" (146) raging through eighteenth-century Africa, and various forms of cultural sicknesses afflicting modern America—urban violence, drug abuse, racial segregation, and family collapse. Ironically, the disease of American racism is traced back to a period when such Enlightenment thinkers as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were laying the foundation for American democracy while inscribing slavery into the Constitution. Like Paul Gilroy, Wideman makes "a strong connection between the Enlightenment and slavery" (16).

Feith traces a clear line of development in Wideman's work from modern alienation and isolation in works such as A Glance Away (1967) and Hurry Home (1970) to a search in his later works for roots in African American history and communal life. He regards the short story "Fever" and the Homewood Trilogy as pivotal texts because they redirect Wideman toward "a recovery of community and oral culture" (41) to which he devoted the remainder of his career. Brothers...

审核人：

• 约翰·埃德加·怀德曼与现代性：米歇尔·费思的批判性对话
• 罗伯特·巴特勒

自1967 年《一瞥》出现以来，约翰·埃德加·威德曼 (John Edgar Wideman) 已出版了 20 多本重要的小说和非小说类书籍。自 2010 年以来，四本重要的长篇研究的出现证明了学术界对他的工作的浓厚兴趣，尤其是在最近几年。这些书籍中的最新一本书，米歇尔·费思的约翰·埃德加·威德曼和现代性：批判性对话，通过提交怀德曼对批判性和文化分析的细致入微的作品将引起人们更多的关注，即怀德曼是一位重要的美国作家，他以其大胆的虚构实验和对黑人经历的独特见解为非裔美国文学开辟了新的方向。

Feith 的书按主题而不是按时间顺序组织，集中关注怀德曼对现代性某些方面的清晰批判，这些批判可以追溯到资本主义、工业主义和殖民主义的兴起，并强调它们在各种种族压迫结构中的根源。Feith 很有说服力地论证了 Wideman 的[End Page 260]对现代主义的回应是千变万化的，提供了“分散”叙事（244）并为边缘化人群发声的多种视角。从一个角度来看，现代主义提供了一个“由普遍的数学规律统治的和谐、有组织的宇宙”（207），承诺进步和正义。但是，当怀德曼的万花筒视觉提示并从“少数人的角度”来看时，它揭示了“一种噩梦般的死亡文化”（23）。现代理性主义远没有使人类摆脱无知和迷信，而是创造了社会和政治压迫的结构，从奴隶制开始，后来发展为殖民统治和贫民窟化。

从这个角度看，“监狱成为整体现代性的隐喻”（46）；费斯从这个观点有说服力地论证说，“Wideman 的“uvre”（69）中的一条连续线索是对文字和隐喻监狱如何作为定义监狱社会的一种方式的深入审查。像米歇尔福柯一样，威德曼设想现代监狱系统起源于费城贵格会创建的人道主义项目，其渐进式改革迅速恶化为一种残酷的社会控制和政治镇压手段。Feith 对Brothers and Keepers的精彩分析讨论了怀德曼不仅对他兄弟被不公正地长期监禁的处理方式，而且还讨论了他将监狱视为“一个完整的机构”（46）的看法，这是以“封闭的、正式管理的生活”为中心的现代国家的典范（47） )，一个由占主导地位的群体设计来控制边缘化人群的“理性计划”(48)。（从这个意义上说，费思声称1984 年出版的《兄弟与守护者》预示着米歇尔·亚历山大 (Michelle Alexander) 2010 年具有里程碑意义的着作《新吉姆·克劳：色盲时代的大规模监禁》。)

Feith 对The Cattle Killing的高度原创结构分析探索了怀德曼书中的另一个中心隐喻：疾病。怀德曼万花筒般的想象力也是这项工作的关键工具，因为他对 1793 年黄热病流行期间的费城、奴隶制时代的南非和当代美国进行了三角测量。威德曼挑战了现代信仰，即线性时间具有产生“进步”稳定发展的准确能力，揭示了毁灭 18 世纪费城的疾病、肆虐 18 世纪非洲的“瘟疫”（146）和各种形式的疾病之间的相似之处。困扰现代美国的文化病——城市暴力、吸毒、种族隔离和家庭崩溃。讽刺地，美国种族主义的疾病可以追溯到托马斯杰斐逊和詹姆斯麦迪逊等启蒙思想家在为美国民主奠定基础同时将奴隶制写入宪法的时期。像 Paul Gilroy 一样，Wideman 建立了“启蒙运动与奴隶制之间的紧密联系”（16）。

费斯在怀德曼的作品中描绘了一条清晰的发展路线，从现代异化和孤立在A Glance Away (1967) 和Hurry Home (1970) 等作品中，到在他后来的作品中寻找非裔美国人历史和社区生活的根源。他将短篇小说“发烧”和霍姆伍德三部曲视为关键文本，因为它们将怀德曼重新导向“社区和口头文化的恢复”（41），他将其余下的职业生涯奉献给了这一点。兄弟...