Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 64

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Popular Culture Review

writing itself into African-American culture. This culture Baker
conceives as a "blues matrix," meaning "the blues" are the central
driving force of black expression. "(The blues) are what Jacques
Derrida might describe as the 'always already' of Afro-American
culture" (Baker 4). Baker defines the blues as a synthesis, "always
becoming, shaping, transfoiming, displacing the peculiar experiences
of Africans in the New World" (Baker 4). And, behind the blues is
the experience of the "economics of slavery," the severe conditions of
poverty which have been forced on blacks before and after
emancipation. A primary goal of African-American expression is to
negotiate this "economics of slavery."
Baker uses the theories of Fredric Jameson and Hayden White to
explain what he means. He understands Jameson as presenting a
theory of ideology as the ever present "historical . . . subtext in a
literary work of art" (Baker 191). Building on top of this he reads
White as claiming that under capitalism a central historical subtext
is the commodified form and thus a work of art must be considered in
terms of its commodified status. But this commodified status had a
unique role in African-American expression relating back to the
"economics of slavery." For, the commodification of black expression,
whether language or music, gave blacks the possibility of overcoming
this "economics of slavery." The ability to tell a tale or perform well
could protect or even profit blacks in confrontations with more
powerful whites.^® Under the conditions blacks have faced and
continue to face in America, commodification is not just to achieve
profit; the ability to, literally or figuratively, "sell" a story may
mean survival. It is in this sense that blues is the negotiation of the
"economics of slavery" (Baker 190-2).
For Baker, blues has a dual trajectory-on the one hand expressing
the common experience of being black in America, on the other
attempting to overcome some of the conditions of this experience
through the sale of itself. Both trajectories are part of "negotiating
the economics of slavery" which I have divided into the articulation
of two primary elements. First, it articulates an element that opposes
the racist image of blacks as unable to achieve economic success.
African-American expression sees blacks as intelligent, competent
human beings with the same capabilities of achieving in America as
any other group. Second, the emphasis on the "economics of slavery"
is important; for the other element holds that blacks have faced and