The Color of Memory

Abstract

In this article, I am concerned with the relationship between the visibility of race as color, the memory of injustice, and American identity. The visibility of color would seem to make it a daily reminder of race and its history, and in this way to be intimately a part of American memory and identity. Yet the tie between memory and color is anything but certain or transparent. Rather, as I shall argue, it is a latticework composed of things remembered, forgotten, glossed, or idealized, and the traces they leave in our world, traces that keep that past from falling into the oblivion of forgetfulness. Finally, color, memory, and identity together belong to the struggle over racial justice in this country, a battle in part to recognize the past, of which color is the visible reminder, and to fashion an American identity that does not seek to render it invisible. Ralph Ellison's writings on memory and race, and particularly his defining work, the Invisible Man, map these issues and some of the ways of approaching them. The present essay is an exploration of those issues, conducted through an engagement with his work.

Beyond Martyrdom: Rereading Invisible Man

“…This leads her to promote a politics of modeling loss and appealing to sympathy as an exemplary form of politics. In this she joins Eddy (2003) and is joined by Booth (2008), Turner (2012), and Danoff (2019).…”

“…In his critical essays and interviews, he routinely frames American race rituals—from stereotyping to racist violence—as scapegoating or sacrificial acts, whose expiatory function benefits whites. 1 It is difficult to call Ellison’s views of sacrifice hopeful, but some commentators, including Allen (2004, 2021), Booth (2008), Danoff (2019), Eddy (2003), and Turner (2012), draw a hopeful lesson from these writings—they redeem sacrifice by situating it in a process of democratic aspiration, in which the risk of sacrifice moves witnesses (ideally) to greater empathy and action. W. James Booth reads the novel as responding to white Americans’ innocence, moving them to greater empathy by memorializing loss.…”

“… 2. Allen (2004, 2021) draws on Eddy’s analysis of sacrifice in Ellison, and Booth (2008), Danoff (2019), and Turner (2012) all cite Allen approvingly. …”

“… 22. For Booth (2008), the objects, which are traces of past racial injustice, highlight an “undergrounded” injustice, the perception of which is a goad to action for both IM and readers of the novel: “readers (like the story’s narrator) are led obliquely to the meaning of color and its reminding role, to what may be just out of sight, there in traces, to those things, smells, passing social encounters that are given in the full light of day, so to speak, but which point to what lies in the shadows, around the corner, undergrounded, forgotten” (699). For Danoff (2019), the Provos’ eviction spurs IM to action and the pursuit of political freedom: “Moved and disturbed by seeing the displacement of this couple, the Invisible Man makes an impromptu speech in which he calls for their possessions to be put back in their home, and in which he also talks about the ‘dispossession’ faced by all African Americans” (71).…”