Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:54:30.252Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Consent of the Governed in Ishmael Reed's The Freelance Pallbearers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Michael Collins
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The critical ingredient of American democracy—the consent of the governed—is placed under the microscope in Ishmael Reed's The Freelance Pallbearers and his related works. Reed's portrait of the consent of the governed—and of the ways in which it is undermined—allows us to discern the structure of what medical and legal thinkers call informed consent: agreement that is the fruit of neither force, fraud, nor incapacity. Reed's portrayal of battles for and against consent, in fact, allows us to theorize that a key distinction between more and less democratic societies is the sort of “consent horizon” within which their citizens operate.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 2 , March 2008 , pp. 422 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Baer, Judith A. Equality under the Constitution: Reclaiming the Fourteenth Amendment. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldwin, James. “Last Testament: An Interview with James Baldwin.” Interview by Quincy Troupe. Village Voice 12 Jan. 1988: 36. Rpt. in Conversations with James Baldwin. Ed. Fred L. Standley and Louis H. Pratt. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1989. 281–86.Google Scholar
Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon, 1988.Google Scholar
Bloom, Allan. “The Democratization of the University.” How Democratic Is America? Responses to the New Left Challenge. Ed. Goldwin, Robert A. Chicago: Rand, 1972. 109–36.Google Scholar
Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power. New York: Farrar, 1984.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda. New York: Seven Stories, 2002.Google Scholar
Dante. Inferno. Trans. Charles S. Singleton. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. Vol. 1 of The Divine Comedy.Google Scholar
Dick, Bruce Allen, ed. The Critical Response to Ishmael Reed. Westport: Greenwood, 1999.Google Scholar
Bruce, Dick, and Singh, Amritjit, eds. Conversations with Ishmael Reed. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1995.Google Scholar
Ellsberg, Daniel. Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. New York: Penguin, 2002.Google Scholar
Fabre, Michel. “Ishmael Reed's The Freelance Pallbearers; or, The Dialectics of Shit.” Dick 3–15.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “What Is Enlightenment?” Ethics. By Foucault. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: New, 1997. 304–19.Google Scholar
Fox, Robert Elliot. Conscientious Sorcerers: The Black Postmodernist Fiction of LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and Samuel R. Delaney. New York: Greenwood, 1987.Google Scholar
Friedman, Murray. The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, Peter. Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997.Google Scholar
Henry Louis, Gates Jr. “The Master's Pieces: On Canon Formation and the African-American Tradition.” The Politics of Liberal Education. Ed. Gless, Darryl J. and Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Durham: Duke UP, 1992. 95–117.Google Scholar
Gayle, Addison Jr. “Cultural Hegemony: The Southern White Writer and American Letters.” Williams and Harris, Amistad 3–24.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Anchor, 1990.Google Scholar
Hayles, N. Katherine. Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Max, Horkheimer, and Adorno, Theodor W. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cummings. New York: Continuum, 1999.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas. Writings. New York: Lib. of Amer., 1984.Google Scholar
Joyce, Joyce A. Warriors, Conjurers, and Priests: Defining African-Centered Literary Criticism. Chicago: Third World, 1994.Google Scholar
Kaimowitz, Gabe. “The Right of People (Misfits) to Refuse (Avoid) Treatment (Control) in Medical Facilities (Closed Institutions).” Duquesne Law Review 13 (1975): 863–78.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ernesto, Laclau, and Mouffe, Chantal. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. New York: Verso, 2001.Google Scholar
Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. New York: Free, 1997.Google Scholar
Lock, Helen. “‘A Man's Story Is His Gris-Gris’: Ishmael Reed's Neo-Hoo-Doo Aesthetic and the African American Tradition.” South Central Review 10.1 (1993): 67–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, John. “Second Treatise on Government.” Two Treatises of Government. Ed. Laslett, Peter. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 265–428.Google Scholar
Ludwig, Sami. “Ishmael Reed's Inductive Narratology of Detection.” African American Review 32 (1998): 435–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, James. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet. New York: Viking, 2004.Google Scholar
Martin, Reginald. Ishmael Reed and the New Black Aesthetic Critics. New York: St. Martin's, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGee, Patrick. Ishmael Reed and the Ends of Race. New York: St. Martin's, 1997.Google Scholar
Poundstone, William. Prisoners' Dilemma. New York: Anchor, 1993.Google Scholar
Prigogine, Ilya, and Stengers, Isabelle. Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature. Toronto: Bantam, 1984.Google Scholar
“Psychosurgery Returns.” Time 3 Apr. 1972: 50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. Airing Dirty Laundry. Reading: Addison, 1993.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “Before Columbus Foundation Interview.” Roundtable with Bob Callahan et al. Dick and Singh 161–80.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “A Conversation with Ishmael Reed.” Interview by Judith Moore. Dick and Singh 219–34.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “D Hexorcism of Noxon D Awful.” Williams and Harris, Amistad 165–82.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. The Freelance Pallbearers. New York: Atheneum, 1988.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “Going Old South on Obama: Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man.” Counterpunch 14 Jan. 2008. 24 Mar. 2008 <http://www.counterpunch.org/reed01142008.html>.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “An Interview with Ishmael Reed.” Interview by Ruth Abbott and Ira Simmons. Dick and Singh 74–95.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “Interview with Ishmael Reed.” Interview by Stanley Crouch. Dick and Singh 96–110.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “An Interview with Ishmael Reed.” Interview by Reginald Martin. Dick and Singh 235–44.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “An Interview with Ishmael Reed.” Interview by Mel Watkins. Dick and Singh 245–57.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. Introduction. The Reed Reader. New York: Basic, 2000. xi–xxx.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “The Many Battles of Ishmael Reed.” Interview by George Paul Csicsery. Dick and Singh 314–38.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “The Ocean of American Literature.” The Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology: Selections from the American Book Awards, 1980–1990. Ed. Reed, Kathryn Trueblood, and Wong, Shawn. New York: Norton, 1992. xxi–xxvii.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “Overview: A Conversation with Ishmael Reed.” Interview by Bruce Allen Dick. Dick 227–49.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. “When State Magicians Fail: An Interview with Ishmael Reed.” Interview by Walt Shepperd. Nickel Review 28 (1968): 4–6. Rpt. in Dick and Singh 3–13.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. Writin Is Fightin': Thirty-Seven Years of Boxing on Paper. New York: Atheneum, 1988.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf, 1999.Google Scholar
Sereny, Gitta. Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. London: Picador, 1996.Google Scholar
Shannon, Claude E. “The Mathematical Theory of Communication.” Shannon and Weaver 29–125.Google Scholar
Shannon, Claude E., and Weaver, Warren. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1963.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Michael H. “Is Autonomy Broke?” Law and Human Behavior 12 (1988): 353–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapiro, Michael H. “Legislating the Control of Behavior Control: Autonomy and the Coercive Use of Organic Therapies.” Biological and Behavioral Technologies and the Law. Ed. Shapiro, , with Bunn, Thomas S. III, Newman, Jeanne M., Wranzel, Claudia J., and Bernhard, Linda. New York: Praeger, 1982. 49–101.Google Scholar
Shuman, Samuel I. Psychosurgery and the Medical Control of Violence. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1977.Google Scholar
Skyrms, Brian. Evolution of the Social Contract. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Washington, Robert E. The Ideologies of African-American Literature: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Nationalist Revolt. New York: Rowman, 2001.Google Scholar
Weaver, Warren. “Some Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication.” Shannon and Weaver 1–28.Google Scholar
Williams, John A., and Harris, Charles F., eds. Amistad 1: Writings on Black History and Culture. New York: Vintage, 1970.Google Scholar
Williams, John A., and Harris, Charles F., eds. Introduction. Williams and Harris, Amistad vii–ix.Google Scholar