"Scriptor Poeticus or Scriptor Politicus?" - Charles Johnson's Ventriloquist Rendering of Phillis Wheatley
Abstract
The African American author and scholar Charles R. Johnson has artistically revisited historical issues such as the trans-Atlantic slave trade (in his novel Middle Passage), the slave narrative genre (Oxherding Tale) and the American Civil Rights Movement (Dreamer).
The choice of topics would seem to suggest that Johnson is steeped in the 20th century African-American literary tradition which frequently deploys Black American history as a vehicle for social criticism. However, Johnson's non-fictional writing indicates that, despite his brief love affair with the radical posturing of the Black Aesthetic Movement of the 1960s, he has repeatedly argued for more universalist black writing untainted by ideology.
In addition to his philosophical and critical writings, Johnson touches on this topic in several of his fictional or semi-fictional pursuits, perhaps most explicitly in "Poetry and Politics", a very short story from his 1998 collection Soulcatcher. The entire story consists of a 7-page dialogue between the 18th century African-American poet Phillis Wheatley and her mistress, and it centres around a single topic - the dichotomy between a universalist and partisan writer.
Johnson seems to be conducting the dialogue as a self-dispute over the public responsibilities of a gifted poet, in which the universalist and apolitical side eventually gets the upper hand.